Merlin – 24 Apostasy
When the suns hast freedom to desecrate through reverence the waves of amber grain, the flowers of open pasture close themselves to the world and hold their leaves to shelter while hiding on the torrid ground, it is only in the reflection of the pale moon that they blossom. These eager blooms peak from beneath wary leaves through the wilting limbs of the great forests while the suns join elliptical excelsior. As the suns begin to make rest over the horizons they hold just, peering over the land and travel the edge separately until they join and sink together, as the wolves howl and the piercing eyes of the owls open once more.
Trenchant lurking eyes not far from the edge of dissolute madness, clouded and red turbid windows into undiscovered hate, and this particular chimera demon has lived a life of resentful shame, through wars to impede countless years, killing for wealth in the name of personal faith to best his ego. Over idle ground, his years spent murdering the innocent wise leaders, with sound mind and solemn body, to replace them with darkness and anxiety.
The monks, they are camped in the woods, nearing the fields, cult ritual and rites, nuptial tithing to the heavy dark, ritual sacrament practicing their sacred order’s tradition of shedding the blackness of night with incantation spoken in dirge, in the garb of their sacred order with blood simple official colors and special coronation in particular credence. As a hawk is howling at the precipice of nothing, three scant monks, no more experienced with practical magic than their sole experience with Merlin and Nickolas in the woods near the ocean city just north of the horde lands. In the extemporaneous forest a form of sacrament, conducting a ritualistic ceremony to realize the truth of the spiritual life, the esoteric beginning of dogma and stale tradition, and the very cult practices of those that met similar pagan heritage with violent force many centuries prior.
With anger and evil the chimera demon at first discovery decrees them as prolific hypocrisy and declares them enemies to himself. With the stealth of inner silence, the warlock of many hides grabs two by their collars and pulls them back to the ground and strikes the standing one leading their chorus to the moon, discombobulating him. The wicked beast then renders the other two unconscious, in the moments they knew not what assailed them, as they are fell.
He is dragging them, bound by their feet, and they begin to wake, one by one, the first long before the others, scared of abysmal fate seen, as doth any apocalyptic worldview, an antaean figure in a black costume pulling them through the coppice like lifeless bounty, serious becoming the occasion.
White: “God damn awaken, it’s raining hell.”
Brown: “Are we still in Weald?”
Red: “Cloud buried.”
Brown: “It’s an overlord demon.”
White: “Mazes of fate think!”
They speak in voluble whispers but with apocalyptical frantic emotion and become too loud. With freedom just out of reach, alone on a darkened trail near a dead end, they stop as the demon hears them awaken. He drops the cord standing sole intimidating, provoking surrender to suffering as they stare, shaking in fear as it stares to them.
Chimera: “Never make an effort to understand the world.”
White: “Be intolerant and judgmental as you can be.”
Red: “Keep to your own demons elsewhere evil.”
Chimera: “What is of say that I will harm thee?”
Black: “You have not yet begun to harm us.”
Chimera: “You speak of war.”
White: “The world is this way,”
With a fallen branch held with a deathly embrace the demon raises it above his head and strikes the darkest one unconscious, and then the others, beginning to drag them again. Then as later, he ties them to a tree each and makes a fire deep in the forest black among the evil empire of unforgiving darkness. The demon sits around a fire in night forest as the demonstrative canopy reclaims its cover from the brazen suns. Eating as two of them watch tied each to a stoic tall thin tree grown through the endless layer of small dry leaves, as are two attached one is lost.
He takes from the missing one their holy book by reaching into the expansive cloak that covers much forest floor, as they stare in slight terror. As it sits, it reads the sacerdotal book reflecting fond disposition, quoting the text to explain their ill fate as certainly they obsess about revenge, scanning his armor with their desperate eyes for the first trace of forgotten flaw whilst the demonic creature in burning sermon of what he does not consume. Enthusiastic decontrol as errant truancy keeps taunting them with details of their demise and other deceitful lies.
Chimera: “, And this is a wondrous place to burn. Only the living can die as death is moved.”
The monk with fire-colored hair screams desperately into the night to wake the slumberous of the silent night, awakening that which stirs in the eternal evening as he tries to escape. The captives notice eyes from the forest floor, distantly staring from just beneath the light of the fire. The ginger top looks to the very pale other, pale of origin and not of fear he looks to the spying eyes and back again without turning his neck. The demon with power of renewed bleak communion crawls to the light-faced monk.
Chimera: “Where is your god?”
White: “Is that where we err, into your hatred of faith, you are my god to my worship let us free and I will follow you to hell.”
Chimera: "You will?"
White: “As sure as possibly can be.”
Chimera: "Take whatever we desire…"
The monk shakes hoping for freedom from the ties that bind, but the demon only sits and leaves him to languish. Spark becomes a flame becoming fire, to light the way or warm the midnight skies, timber becomes ablaze as the demon forges a blade’s sharp edge to carve the second stranger, as the vampires Blond and Brunet watch from the darkness.
Chimera: “We will keep you hostage fair child, they will surely come for you and not the others.”
White: “What do you suggest?”
Chimera: “They always want to bargain for the light ones.”
On this Black Sabbath, behind the wall of sleep, the other survivor, whom coy had feigned unconsciousness, has given up the ploy to escape with surprise after realizing the ropes binding his hands and he to the tree cannot be broken, begins frantic throes and disgruntled fretful clamor to the contaminated layers woe. Dancing fire is the scene where hostages helpless are in company with a hellish mercenary covered in lawless armor, incontrovertible fearlessness, and unwise recluse torn and tattered scale. Placed in a situation that impedes physical movement, detestable a foul crime of spiritually wretched mode and morally in vicinity of obscenity, the creature sits with loathsome wounds still slowly healing from his most previous conflict encounter, the captives sit with hearts filled and covered with fear. Suddenly obsolescent to their place and the disposition of an ally vampire who will hath blood by any fair means or foul, a notably unpleasant distressing obstructive fear at the sight of every concatenate razor sharp edge in the darkling's armor impure with wrought wounds.
In their nascent adoration while walking in the moonlight, fondness and roseate they explore each others' boast, lovers bonding as suddenly they heard a scream in the night, a timid endlessly long cry for survival, the kind of hopeless lament of prey murder unrelenting that astonished their attentions. Now an indisputable intrigue, two minds as one stare a fire for the endless night has begun, both suns hiding for some time the world to come, Blond with Brunet having found sacrilege victims, sneaks to the installation.
Blond: “Who is he?”
Brunet: “I don’t know, he came from nowhere in the dark, he's killed one already.”
Blond: “They both could hold us for a full moon.”
They continue studying the chimera and the hostage monks, the excommunicated vampire princess and her new devout passion pore enthralled by the demon. The evil demon with nescience broken mirror spirit sits carving and eating, slow and exacted heavy motion steadily primordial and isochronal.
Red: “Are you going to kill us?”
Chimera: “No use in letting you tell others I exist.”
White: “You could let us free and I will bring you another.”
A facetious quip hoping to paragon the impression of prey, to surpass being the effigy of a hearty struggling supper consumed by staggering fears of pain and torture, antipathy and aversion adverse to avert into the macabre.
Red: “Come hell or high priest.”
White: “Many others, I will give a blood oath.”
Chimera: “It is not your blood I need…God hates us all…I am going to dismember you.”
Heavy with smoke or mist, turbid depths of degradation and misery characterized by an emotional response, frantic as Chimera stops dragging sharp knife’s edges across stone and points with knife to the fallen comrade, the pale monk discomposes at the sight of his companion.
Circadian nil of lurid night, endless vacancy of the nocturnal domain the hap of creatures such as the chimera demon given to urges in whilst to wreak havoc on the restless and sleeping. The vampire girl presents herself in an appearance as a normal weak apposite human. In their plan, they are overly optimistic and presage the outcome as favorable and wise, ever so quickly Brunet sneaks to hold a knife to the demon’s neck from behind him and Blond speaks.
Brunet: “Do not breathe.”
Blond: “We will do you a favor and kill the others for you, and you run in the darkness breeder.”
His wounds still sacrilegiously hallowing bloody and torn, with wounded molt scale missing or breaking through, the demon vapidly stares with solid eyes and utters not a sound. They move to murder him, but he reveals himself formidable, moves fast, and holds Blond against a tree by neck, after sliding faster than the shadows, without dropping the book. She stabs to him, yet for his disgraceful appearance his size is more than hers, her blade cannot reach his side or face, he compresses more as she drops her dagger, he rolls his head as tired by the vespertine winds.
Chimera: “You are vampires.”
Blond: “Yes.”
Brunet levitates to slide swift as a crimson owl, stabbing him in the stomach. Holding her, the demon takes his shoulder and tosses him aside position effortlessly to a tree.
Chimera: “Should I kill her leech?”
Brunet: “...No.”
Chimera pushes with his hand around her neck, choking her slightly to test the resolve of living dead, and then releases her, he turns and stares into the darkness, feckless and nescient he turns to them and begins to sermonize as he opens the latching of his vestment.
Chimera: “A trade, my blood for yours and in return I will leave you these two a parting gift, as another child of burning time.”
He waits inadequately and silent, while one sedulously helps the other to stand as the humans stare.
Chimera: “Use this cask.”
The darkling holds aside his leather armor, revealing another grisly area of scoria and damaged flesh around and beneath the edge of a loft tunic to pull and throw a small pouch to their feet. Brunet opens his shirt and Blond takes her dagger and cuts him from his neck to his chest, he begins to pour his essence into the cask, black blood of immense disease and death. The demon grabs him and wretches his shoulder causing some anguish for him, and worrisome grief for her, until the blood flows over and of then, overflows the silver cask and they deliver him the container.
The ignominious demon drops the book, slits his wrist and begins to pour. The blood is thick opaque with or as if with roiled sediment. His bloodshot eyes turn white as the dark bloody waters within shrink and recede, showing a martyr existence as the wound on his arm sears without sealing. She steps forward, ghostly pale as the moon, but hesitates in lingering darkness esurient, a primal fear of bromidic ukase religion.
Brunet: “Wait.”
Brunet steps forward to take her place.
Chimera: “My time sophisticated leeches.”
Brunet then Blond laugh somewhat awkwardly, they look to each other with a stare of consternation.
Chimera begins serving spilling blood that slowly pours into hand, interrupting the monks discussing their plight, dripping from the side of his talon hand standing in the shadow realm.
Chimera: “You are alone with us.”
Darken demon smiles; it stares to the hostages, as Brunet begins to drink of the darkness lord. The suitor vampire’s eyes widen and glare, his skin becomes heavily luminescent against shining firelight as he slowly lifts, resolve of instinct appeased, and a shown pleasure. Levitating he spreads his arms and slides away from the outstretched arm euphoric and stunned with bliss, his eyes awash with eccentric delight. The wildling vampire countess of endless abandoned region flights to the wound after only a single wasted drop and continues the same excitement of a risen faithless sermon, the blood turned to tears, ecstasy of the mind.
Chimera walks over to the dead monk and tears into the carrion, he rends and wrests into the body lest aggregate, to tear the heart within wounds, a remorseless corpse given not to wry complicity, eventually pulling the heart.
Chimera: “You understand.”
The rapacious evil spirit venomous, tosses a piece of the dead boy’s flesh through the trees, consumed it gives sound by and of the darkness. Chimera brings from the shadow, a horse so dark unseen until the demon clasps its reigns and brings it closer to the fire, gets upon his black steed and rides fast out of their distant nocturnal sight of a translucent netherworld. The moon shines from above only to them through scarce breaches in the deep desolate wasted darkness, nowhere and abandoned by the caged mechanical hearts of society or the ignorant torches and crude weapons of defenseless hate, the agent of demonic secrecy leaves back into the dark distance, the echoes of his mare's thundered tread within the shadows deeper cast.
Brunet: “Sated?”
Blond: “, As we walk our desperate graves.”
She wipes her mouth staring into the haze absence of light. Fear of death the dark inside has overcome the two remaining monks in sacrificial red robes. Their lost hope and screams of their consciousness pass through their thoughts, as does the blackened demon through the darkness. Their fidgeting breaks the silence and their focus on the darkness, reinvigorated recently espoused turn to the incarcerated.
Blond: “Let them go.”
Red: “Are you going to kill us?”
Brunet: “Not hence, you are free to go quickly.”
White is first untied, with his hands he wipes his sore arms where the ropes had held him tightly, and as reminded by his restless compatriot he unties Red. In immense fear and panic, Red runs and screams, as soon as White releases him straight upon the woman vampire as she stares at the moon twice so brightly lit by two hiding stars.
Red: "And shall live no demon of hell!"
While running, Red grabs a fiery club and attacks Blond, Brunet swiftly stops him by turning his head beyond its capability, deficient in clarity or purity, producing obscurity in mind and emotion to the sole survivor who watches a still running feckless body stumble.
Blond: “Do you have a village?”
White: “Yes...far from here.”
Blond: “Make haste hence anon, and tell them of your nightmare until avenged sevenfold.”