Strung Part 4

Author: Irk
Title: Strung Part 4

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Strung___
Snared in the Lacings___
Part Four___

Xelloss lay on the floor, murmuring prayers under his breath. He'd cast his mind to the Sea of Chaos, floating in its waters for what felt like days. The ebb and flow of oblivion merged into the pulse of his heart, pumping the blood of infinite possibilities. A ripple of causality swept through him, teasing the scales along his spine and setting the golden fibers of his hair on end.
To swim in chaos was to be a part of it, and Xelloss' form here was always the same: ever-changing. The fins of his tail split into a gossamer spider-web of yellow light. The light wrapped around his body, his flesh and fur and scales and feathers, gathering his shifting form in a golden net. He felt himself being pulled down, away from the surface and the daylight there. But as he sank into the depths of eternity, Xelloss saw that the real light was not above the sparkling water's edge. Surely no luminance in that sky could compare to the pure glow he basked in where the sea's heart pulsed. Such intense brightness should blind him, but no harm could ever come to him here.
Suddenly the light shifted, silhouetting the body of a greater fish than he.
The Lord of Nightmares smiled, twirling the lines of the net around her finger. There are few fish in my worlds that can survive in these waters. Did you know that?
Xelloss righted himself, flipping his tail around so that he could face his Mother. His gills rippled as his face echoed perplexion. "Why? Nothing has harmed me here. What could be so lethal to the rest of my kind?"
Why has nothing harmed you here?
"Because nothing CAN harm me here." Xelloss cocked his head, the seaweed ribbons of his hair bobbing with the movement. Surely this was obvious to his Mother?
The Lord of Nightmares stroked her lip, smirking. I believe that many would disagree with you, Xelloss my child.
"What's so funny?"
Nothing. Indulge your mother's quirks. The Golden Lord cast her gaze upwards, the tides of her sea roaring at the motion. Nothing hurts you here because you know you cannot be hurt here. Others are not so enlightened.
"But how could they not know?" Xelloss' eyes wandered the sea around him, beautiful and benign. "This is a place of love."
You and I bring love into this place, and that is what it gives us in return. The many others who find the Sea face it with fear, anger, hate and sadness. The waves approach the shore and then return to their birthplace, each action in balance. The fish approach the sea expecting danger, and it returns their expectations. This is also balance.
Xelloss was quiet, watching spirals merge and split on the faraway surface. From here, the patterns were dark and shadowy, but somehow their gold had no tarnish. "I've never been this far down."
His companion chuckled. That's only because you're lazy. She tugged on the net playfully. You always sport on the surface, too entranced with any aspect of this realm to explore the deeper sea. I finally had to drag you down here myself.
"...Oh."
You're so cute when you're sheepish. The Lord of Nightmares paused, her features shifting into concern. Xelloss?
"Yes Mother?" He saw the look on her face and grew worried. "What is it?"
When did you last eat?
Xelloss was quiet for awhile, thinking of the realm of mortality. "It was when Fibrizo was still alive."
The Lord of Nightmares was silent for a long time. I'm so sorry, Xelloss.
"It's alright." Xelloss sighed, letting the cold current wash through him and refresh his weary mind. "I was there with her up until the end. She wasn't herself anymore. She had deteriorated over the course of centuries, and finally she just fell apart. I was sad to see her go, but..." Xelloss bit his lip. "Honestly, I knew it would come. I knew the minute Fibrizo took Gourry that the whole thing had been set into motion."
Because of Lina?
Xelloss nodded, almost smiling. "Lina is the great finisher."
Or the Great Destroyer?
Xelloss blinked, taken aback. "No, not at all...Mother, why did you say that?"
I... The Lord of Nightmare's face was indescribable. The conflict she felt inside showed starkly in her features, a mental war in which nothing won. Finally, a weary truce was called. I apologize for ever allowing Zelas to be created.
"It's...it's okay..."
No it's not! What will you do now? Who can help you now? I killed off your great savior only days ago! Now that she's gone, there will be no one to deliver you! The Golden Lord took in a ragged breath of seawater and regret, the currents of the sea shifting as she exhaled. What sort of mother am I?
Xelloss laid his hand on his mother's cheek, brushing stray golden strands aside. "You don't have to do anything for me. I draw strength from you because I love you, and you love me."
The Golden Mother seemed to shrink for a moment, becoming almost human. Xelloss...she's coming for you. She's coming for Lina. And I can't do anything.
"Pray for me, and I'll pray for you. Don't we always-" Xelloss was cut off as pain ran through him, piercing him from one end to the other. With a sharp tug, the ivory hook was set. He felt it pull him up towards the sky and its false light. The Lord of Nightmares cut her net before he could get tangled in its bonds, letting Zelas steal him away to the surface. She watched him disappear, leaving her all alone in a vast sea of gold.
Please forgive me.
* * *
"Are you done praying? I require your services now." Zelas nudged Xelloss with the toe of her shoe. "Aha! Asleep, I see. I've given you plenty of time to prepare. Stop pretending you're communing with anything greater than your own dementia and get on your knees."
Xelloss opened his eyes, the room slowly coming into focus. This was the Ivorista, Zelas' private chapel. While most mazoku were not religious, Zelas felt that it was prudent to devote a special room solely to magic and its workings. The Ivorista was a five-sided room, its ceiling rising so high that staring up at it caused vertigo. It was supported by gothic arches of ivory that rose up like the skeleton legs of a giant. The floor was a white sheet of marble, flawless and seamless. The walls were white marble as well, giving the chamber a mood of sterile death. The crimson threads of Zelas' puppetry wrapped around and merged into the columns, spiraling up into infinity and stretching down into the floor. The only things in the room with any color, the threads seemed like veins pumping blood through a pale, undead beast.
Xelloss rose to his knees, eyes fixated on the floor. If he looked deeply enough, he could see his reflection - pale and ghostly, barely even real. That's how I feel right now. I feel like I'm a ghost in this tomb of a chapel. His eyes crawled over Zelas' reflection, staring down at him. A ghost that's been wed to a harpy.
Zelas snapped her fingers, calling for Xelloss' attention. He looked up, taking in the form of his mistress. She had kept her dress of pale pink silk but also donned a cloak of white satin. It could almost have been a set of very scandalous clerical robes. But it looks more like a wedding dress. Her long red tail of hair had been neatly braided with a tassel tied to the end. Xelloss had never seen his mistress in any religious setting before. It looked horribly wrong.
"Are you finally ready?" Zelas frowned at her priest. Xelloss nodded. A smile played on his mistress' lips. "Good." She tossed something to Xelloss in a flash of crismon light. It rattled through the air and landed in his lap.
Xelloss lifted the string of fat red beads, watching them click together. His stomach turned. "Gods no."
"The blood of your brothers." Zelas' grin was truly wicked now, her fingers playing through Xelloss' hair. "Their passing was convenient in a way - they astrally bled to death. And you of all beings should know the peculiar properties of spilled astral blood. I strung it on a necklace and saved it. See? They really were useful after all."
Hands shaking, Xelloss pulled the beads close. His voice rasped through his chest, hoarse and weak. He counted the tufts of black fur strung along the beads. "All...all five?"
"All five are there. They all bled." Zelas smiled and gnawed on the bones of anguish that Xelloss' emotions were tossing to her.
"Oh gods..." Xelloss almost collapsed as memories siezed him by the neck, vaulting his senses out of reality. The beads...the blood...they were pure death, dead to the touch, death crawling into him, death creeping along his spine, up his back...
A shaft of pain cleaved his upper back, returning Xelloss to his senses. He gasped, the scar on his back throbbing as if the wound were fresh. "N-no!"
Zelas shook her head. "No, I won't be playing with that. You don't have to worry about your poor back. I know you're sensitive about old wounds. These beads are merely here for a focus. See? Two tufts at one end symbolize the legs, three tufts at the other become the arms and neck. The necklace is a symbol of your body..." Her lips curved up into a devious grin. "...and of Lina's body."
Xelloss hunched over as waves of pain radiated through him. "I...can't...I can't touch them, I...Ruby Lord! It hu- it hu-"
"I don't care if it hurts!" Zelas snarled at her servant, claws unsheathing. "Just do it, you worthless little shit of a priest!"
"Th-the light of radiant gods is but a glimmer..." Xelloss dragged in a deep breath as he turned a bead in his fingers, threading them through his hands. "...a faint and dying glimmer of hope in the vast dark void of the Chaos Mother. The breath of the Dragon God is a faint and weary sigh of death. Blood pulses through the veins of the buried Ruby Lord, growing warm as he gathers himself to shatter the shell of the world."
"The blood of six is the blood of one." Zelas knelt in front of Xelloss, gathering the other end of the necklace in her fingers. Her nails clicked against the beads, the astral blood hard and cold like polished rubies.
"Fire walks the land on feet of magic, staring out at the world with ruby eyes. Her soul is the puppet of gods, a doll for the the will of the Lord." Xelloss paused for a moment as words left him, the slate of his mind wiped blank as a bead brushed against his fingertip. Lina was a Goddess, not a marionette. This is wrong! Everything in this is wrong! But clarity came back to Xelloss with the flash of ruby blood, and the taxing chant resumed. "As she is a doll, so am I. She bears my blood, and through it I know her."
Zelas' head was bent in prayer, her face solemn and her voice calm. "The blood of one is the blood of the other."
Xelloss felt a force overtake him with those words. It washed through him, numbing his limbs and blurring his thoughts. It swept him up and dragged him out of Awn Fawlning and to dawn in the woods, where a girl was just waking with the eerie feeling of being watched, and as Xelloss touched her the talismans glowed and the beads flashed with angry red light and he was knocked onto his back in a burst of pain.
"They switched! They switched!" Xelloss blurted it out before Zelas could wrap her claws around his neck for breaking the chant. Fire crawled over his shoulders and down his spine as the beads rolled on top of his chest. Xelloss' body jerked upward in recoil from a surge of agony. A phantom voice echoed in his head, telling him that he had betrayed his brothers, that they were glad that he was alive if this was how he'd live. He tore at the beads, trying to knock them off his chest. "Please...please take- they switched, I saw them switch! Take them off! Take them off!" Xelloss saw Lina before him and he clawed at the talismans, fingertips unable to find purchase on the smooth surface of the ruby blood. "TAKE THEM OFF!"
Zelas reached over Xelloss' twitching form, turning a bead between her fingertips. In one flowing motion she twisted the string of beads around Xelloss' hands. Knotting them at his wrists, she pulled him up into a sitting position.
Part of Xelloss screamed to be let out, to tear at the string with his teeth and shatter the beads. But this part was silent, held down by five pairs of hands, muted by five forgotten voices. 'It's been ages since we've seen you, Brother Xelloss. Too long since we've spoken. Are you going to be with us forever now?'
The rest of Xelloss just shuddered as a red veil dropped over him, wrapping around his senses, blinding him with shadows, tangling up around his muscles. It weighed on him like a net.
"You performed beautifully. But before we conclude the ceremony..." The Red Queen tugged Xelloss forward, the string of beads sturdy and unbreakable. "...you must meditate on what you've done." Zelas smiled with satisfaction and dragged Xelloss out of the Ivorista as he let out mumbled pleas of forgiveness to five dead brothers.
* * *
"Didn't know...I didn't...sorry...I didn't..."
Xelloss lay in what he could only guess was a bed. He couldn't tell. All he could sense was that he was reclining on his side. There was no impression of blankets or mattress or even the air that he breathed [when did I start breathing again?]. All that Xelloss could feel was the cold glass fingers squeezing his wrists together.
The broken apologies spilling from his lips were a shadow of the words in his mind. I never knew! I was only told that you were dead...nothing of the ways or the means. I didn't know about the beads until she threw them into my hands. Don't look at me like that! I didnt know! I would have searched for them and stolen them from her clutches! But I didn't know!
"You knew....you knew...you'd never steal from Zelas, ever...you knew, and you only gloated that you were alive...you knew..."
I didn't! I didn't! She said you were dead!
"You ate up her words like a starving dog swallows garbage. When did Zelas ever tell the truth?"
How can I ever tell? I'm just a slave! Xelloss felt chills pierce the scar on his back as alien fingers crept over his spine. You know what it's like to serve under- The icy fingers crept over his neck, claws dragging over the flesh without piercing the skin. HELP! HELP!!
"We are helping."
Xelloss struggled as hard as he could, but five pairs of hands held him down, helpless against Zelas' advances. ...Why?
"You're alive, aren't you?" The voices chuckled at Xelloss' unvoiced whimpers as his mistress' touch became far less polite. "It's just not fair."
Please...please...please... Pain wracked Xelloss' body as Zelas mounted him. Oh gods...oh gods...she never did this to you! Only I was cursed like this! Please...please stop her...
"Don't misunderstand us. We are grateful that only you had to suffer through this. It's only fair, after all."
Please...stop it...
"It never stops, Xelloss. That's your curse."
Xelloss couldn't find the inner voice to reply. He only felt himself rising...rising...above Zelas...above Awn Fawlning...above the sky and the stars that filled it...
You can find more of Irk's works at http://www.mazoku.com/~snapple/ficarc/

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