My tears, my only weapon, as her wicked grasp slinks over my skin. She lifts my body up with her energetic appendages like raising up an offering over the remains of her altar, covered in human blood and the dust of what was once a human’s corpse. Avoiding her eye contact leads my sore eyes to a childling’s charcoal black, fluffy downy feather on the soiled stone floor. Lifting my raging shame filled, grief drowned, heart through my stare to her ceaseless blackhole leer swirling beneath dead spinel. Gritting my teeth against that vile smile.
“Koriath, I wish you could see the beauty I have primed on your face. It’s your turn to come to my realm.” She slams by body against her altar.
“You came to my realm on your own.” I struggle to protest, trying to rise up in her hold.
She reverses my gravity, pinning me down, not saying a word, just a look in her eyes. A fiendish predatory gaze that no creature of nature can make. She withdraws a jeweled blade from her thigh scabbard. Tilting it first so that I can see my reflection in the blade before she lifts my chin with the knife point.
Darkness bends slightly just outside the space. We both look toward the door as it flies open. Three Dimperial soldiers, their uniforms read that they are scouts from the four hundred and forty fourth battalion. My body falls in heartbreak. They are the royal soldiers at Malencia’s command, the ones she flies with and leads into battle. One stands in the doorway while the other two fly in.
“Emperor!” One shouts as two fly toward us.
“High Gen-” The other stops mid-flight and lands with disbelief.
Malencia swats away the one who charges with a single wing tentacle with a powerful, calculated hit. I try to escape in the moment of distraction, but her eyes turn back toward me, her force keeps me captive. The warrior's body hits the stone wall and falls limp from it, laying as if another corpse in this cursed place.
“Take one more step and I will zombify the Emperor of Darkness.” She drags the blade tip from beneath my chin down the side of my neck, twisting the blade and softly breaking skin and drawing a surface stream of blood ether just above my jugular.
“High General, where is your crown?” His wings lower, purple skin pales to lavender as his citrine eyes widen, he forces himself to reach for his thigh scabbard. His blade is unceremonious and tactical.
“I- annul-.” Is all I can shout as she silences me with another tendril. My fight is trying to bite it off.
The one standing in the middle looks to his left with only the sides of his eyes. “The Emperor made an emergency annulment. Relay it.”
An aspect of darkness fades from this planet, closing my eyes and sensing their life forces. Five. Five warriors.
“I have seen you pray before.” She points to the fallen soldier. “And you.” She addresses the one in the doorway “You prey, but you do not pray.”
“My faith is the hearts who call the Dimperium home. And that is my emperor you are threatening.” He draws his blade.
Malencia presses her blade into me, my blood ether spilling upon the rubble repairs the altar.
“Swords down.” I command.
They both look toward me. I am tired, ragged. I could surrender, and save the moment, buy my princesses time. I cannot surrender, yet I have not the strength to fight, nor the heart to see anymore die in my family’s name.
“Princesses Karasu Phantisma is crown princess. Your duty is to make sure Princess Karasu Kurai comes home.”
Malencia interrupts. “Are you surrendering Moonflower?”
“No. I will never surrender.” Tears burn my eyes, I do not know how they can continue to fall. I turn my eyes to the scouts. “Fly now.”
One flies off, but the one in the doorway remains, with coldness on his face. Malencia slaps me, then turns her head toward the scout. “Care to join us?”
She-her body is already dead, I will not be forgiven. I have danced with her wicked form. With the ecstasy of night in flight within sunless voids, I have made love to her body and the depth of her soul that she allowed me to feel and see. ~ My childlings- I do not know what they are. The gods may see them as cursed, and maybe the demon self was right, yet... I love them.
Regardless of what they were and are, I loved each of them, and each had or has a soul. The last two living, or living dead of mine, I will sacrifice all that I am for. Even before I knew it was twins, even before I knew whether I was going to keep their egg, I still gave my fertility. I sold my soul to keep them both alive. I will go to hell worlds and back for them. This time I will not surrender, as soon as I can move, I will fight again. I will drag this tainted body of mine anywhere they need me too. Kurai is not home yet.
Malencia traces my chest with the tip of her blade as the soldier casts down his, then silently walks toward us with his head low.
Widening my eyes and gasping as if a specter of surprise has shown its shadows. “Mali, look out behind you!”
She turns her head, but she does not release her grip on me like I hoped. Damn it.
Now only her eyes slowly cast toward me. “There is nothing there.”
Her scout venerably walks beside us and bows his head to her. “Orders Ma’am?”
Her cruel smile twists across her face as she looks at me, the expression then calming as she turns to the scout.
“All this grudging warring work, all the light snuffed, all the blood and ether spilled, and still this coward of an emperor hides behind his excuses of family, sanctity, and paperwork. Drinking himself merry while we do his dirty work. Then we are reprimanded when in our stress, we take spoils of war, and whether those trophies are living or objects, we are labeled greedy, cruel, and uncivilised.” She hands him her ceremonial blade. “Unlike him, I feed my soldiers what they need. Feed my child. Indulge in whatever reward you wish. I will hold him down for you.”
I force myself to search deep within his gemstone eyes, searching for the soul, the heart. There it is. Gods I hate to do this, but just as Kurai showed me what happened, so too am I vulnerable. I let him feel everything I have ever felt with her. Showing him that she chased out those who were hired to help with childling care. Showing him that to save lives I had to become what she wanted me to be. Showing him everyone she has threatened or killed.
Increasing the gravity when I show him how I found Nephti’s withering body. Then I stop, ceasing when showing him Malencia stepping into the garden with me and Desiderius that fateful night. Showing him only the love I felt for Kurai and Phantisma when they were hatched, but withholding Malencia’s cruelties. After that I retreat from his heart with a prayer to the gods that no one can hear but me.
He in turn shows me Malencia’s command. I have no words for this. I feel his rage, his sorrow, and how divine the darkness of his soul is. I close my eyes as he brings her dagger to my third eye system, then down my face, neck, and chest.
I am sorry my emperor, you are the strongest among us; if you are captive then what hope in resistance do the rest of us have?
In the sea of stars amongst the bleakness in the cosmos, I see life, riding comets, seeding star systems. I feel water. A tide surges in from beyond the stars of this universe, beyond any fae, demon, or heaven realm.
They both turn toward the door as an icy tsunami surges in. Sweeping the bodies into the corner with the tide, then freezing them over as if a burial crystallization from the Hielotico star system. With the three of us being Corvapian bodies, we perceive the coldness, yet it does not hinder or threaten us.
A second surf rages in, washing the scout from her, deluging over me, yet Malencia does not release me. Baltin’s two longest tentacles step in front of the soaked scout on the floor, with his kingly presence as Lord of Merfolk and Guardian of Water, floating toward us with six arms raised. “Release my comrade, fiend.”
“Fiend?” She giggles with her nesting voice.
Malencia turns toward him, severing her tendrils from herself, which continue to keep me bound upon her altar. She struts her vileness toward Baltin, new eldritch tentacles reforming as he raises his six Cephalin tentacle arms valiantly.
Still with the remnants of her tendrils around me, I force myself to roll off her altar, then drag myself to sit up behind it as they step toward each other. Before I can even ask, Baltin answers for me.
“Atesh and Maema are helping Catha with her demon. I came here to save you after they saved me.”
“I fought the demon me, Malencia was meant to fight Hokulani.” I shout, trying to break free.
Malencia turns from Baltin “I thought I told you to never say her name in front of me.”
Struggling with all that I can to break from her tendrils. No longer able to see their battle, but from the salted mist, I know Baltin attacks her.
If I invite them in and upon, one last time, can I master them instead of being on the subservient end? Opening up my soul, I feel only poison, without love or passion. Hate and the pleasure of suffering surges through me. Through my grief I force these from my soul and back into their flesh forms, as my flesh is still bound with them. My heart cannot empathize with malevolence, hubris, nor avarice.
“Evil could not comprehend the Love and Light that is Hokulani. That is why Hokulani had no demon.” Baltin derides her.
“Fool.” She says as I hear her eldritch tentacles surge, as his hymns of ice and surf defend against the abyssal force that she is. “I will become Evil Itself.”
“You are already in nest with It!” I croak.
“Just as with you.” She crows as the two continue to battle.
Kurai. Phantisma. Hokulani. Devadas. Adumbra. Amara. All in my heart. Let me not fail you anymore. I will fly free and home to each of your smiles. Peeking out of the corner as Malencia’s gravity begins to shake this planet. The soldier on the floor lifts his eyes to me. The other subtly flashes me the dagger, as Baltin takes Malencia’s attention.
In one fell swoop, she engulfs his psyche with a dark energetic attack. He washes himself away from her, but I feel in his soul, her darkness infecting him.
Looking down at these tendrils. Turning my palms upward, whispering to them. “Embrace me now for all that I am or part that I may face your master.” Breaking the abyssal cosmic limbs from me, yet Malencia’s laughter swirls inside my soul.
“So embrace me as your master.” She chuckles as she walks toward me.
Baltin surges toward her, but once again she blasts him backwards, this time his soft Cephalin body crashes against the wall. The scout on the floor lifts his talon, trying to gain control of her talon through manipulation of darkness as I do with objects. She turns her attention to him as the one with the knife flies at her. A dance-like rhythm of her arms flings them both into the heartless stone. One’s body crashes against the wall behind me. The other is blasted back beside Baltin, the two struggling to get up.
I rise, no longer cowering behind her stone. “Malencia, let us just be done. I lost to you. The elemental guardian of darkness lost to you.”
“What are you saying comrade?” Baltin scowls with what is left of his breath.
“I am saying I am already lost. Darkness has already lovingly served her for twenty ages.”
“It is not too late Koriath-”
“I am not his empress, or are you taking that back my little moonflower?”
“I will never withdraw my word that we are forever done. If you want this heart, body, mind, or soul, you will have to take it by force Malencia. I am done surrendering to you. I am done with having others fight my battles.”
Turning my head as I pause, before locking my stare into her soul crushing spinel leer. “Yet you are still the mother of my childlings. No law can undo what we have done together. I refuse to hurt you for that reason. Fight me and me alone.”
“Fight you if you won’t fight back? Don’t be stupid, that would be boring.”
Throwing up ether as I use my power to fly within the speed of teleportation in front of Baltin and her scout. “As long as I stand, as long as I perceive, I resist you. Attack me, not the innocent such as Baltin, not the family as my Battle Siblings.”
“Have I not already taught you the fate of martyrous men?” She lunges toward me. “Or shall I teach you again?”
Baltin and the scout pull me out of the way, the three of us barely dodging. She parries and Baltin defends us with a wall of ice that she slips through like a ghost.
Something far worse than Malencia comes this way. Time and Space seem to warp in the most sinister of senses and yet all remain unchanged at the same time. My darkness is too sensitive to stand the energetic tempest. I am too weak to help them… too broken to warn them as the overwhelming force silences my tired and worn being. The space from this place begins to twist, all pain within my being manifests, as it does for all of us. Pain that snuffs the life of the fallen one who tries in his final moment to rise.
Find freedom in a loving death battle sibling. Find your heaven plane or next life with ease.
For the rest of this place, everything is sickening and twisting. Sulfur and Decay are pleasant smells in comparison. A force beyond chaos floods over Malencia. It's voice ageless, adjective less. It’s mere presence brings the demonic raven into true fright.
"This one is beyond the laws of nature." It speaks.
Malencia's wicked laughter joins in It like a songbird of hell worlds.
“I really do find what you are doing adorable, my malevolent one, but the situation has changed and the gods that oppose us have declared war. We need to make our leave for now. We can always pick up our reluctant pets and playthings later.”
Malencia diverts her attention. “I am not leaving without my favorite thing. I have grown and cared for this flower for twenty Dimperial ages. That is twenty thousand years in disgusting, pathetic Earth human years! He is coming with me-”
“No I am not.” Gods, I am so tired of it all.
Evil, bearing the form of a bronze human with storming curly black hair, then lifts its hand. It sends out a blast that pushes all of us to the ground. Baltin tries to shield the three of us with a psychic surging water wave. As I try to lend my power with his, all goes colorless.