Chapter 24: Planes
The color of red spread in the four directions. In this world of monochrome that knew only black, white and grey, an ocean of beautiful and passionate red was born from the body of a youth who refused to die.
There in the middle of it all, he laid. The blood walked slowly out of his mouth and missing appendages. It marched dutifully to reinforce the royal vanguard that would conquer this dull world.
With his one good eye, he seemed to glare at the sky that had forsaken him. But that was not true, his gaze was unfocused and thoughtless. And despite the mind numbing, ceaseless torment… the endless sky had not abandoned him.
A new star appeared in the profound darkness, and day by day its radiance became brighter and brighter until it silently broke through the clouds. It was no star, no, it was a luminous little boy accompanied by two glowing orbs of light.
They floated above the blood soaked youth, approaching him in a meekly but tenderly manner. The orbs could not speak, but their light dimmed and their flight weakened, communicating to the boy.
The luminous boy extended his delicate arm and with his one good hand, he slowly shut the youth's remaining eye closed.
Finally, the darkness held him once again.
…
Zan’s eyes opened wide. Immediately after he woke his head was assaulted by a mind splitting pain.
‘AHHHH! What the fuck!?’
Clutching his head with his hands, he endured the pain while moment by moment it slowly dissipated. At first, the sharp pain felt like a knife lodged in his head but eventually and thankfully, the sharpness of the pain went from a knife, to a needle, to simply a dull headache.
After it was finally gone, the youth tried to take a deep breath as he assessed his circumstances.
‘What the hell was that? And how long have I been asleep for?’
The first thing he did was take a look around himself. It was pitch black once again but he could sense everything just fine. Did his senses improve after the fight? Yes, he could already see quite adequately in the dark, but Zan was surprised to find that he could perceive…everything. Everything around himself— no, everything quite a bit further around himself to a much higher degree, his sight, his hearing, etc.
The problem however…was exactly that.
The “room” Zan occupied was quite wide and spacious, with a tall ceiling. It was every peasant’s dream to live in such a place. A large house, a big room— that in itself, he had no problem with.
The issue came in the choice of interior design…
The “floor” and the “walls” were made of hot, throbbing, living flesh. In all the directions that surrounded him he heard wet, squishy sounds and a subtle but deep booming.
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The flesh was an eerie green and on its walls were unknown runes and symbols. They were not drawn on with paint or blood, no— some crazed individual directly carved them on to the repulsive being with some sharp object. Perhaps because its flesh was torn open, the heat that emanated from the unknown symbols was much more intense than everywhere else. Zan, unfortunately, could feel the disgusting invading heat in great intensity with his higher perception.
‘Fuck! What the fuck!’
It was great that he did not directly make contact. Wait. Contact?
Zan turned his perception below him, towards the “floor”. A gigantic circle almost the size of the “room” was carved underneath the flesh floor. Beautiful symmetrical shapes intersected and layered one another inside the circle, along with a new set of runes and symbols. Despite being carved from the sickening thing, the circle emanated no heat. The different set of runes and symbols in of themselves boasted a hellish elegance. Alien, strange, unnerving, disharmonious yet mesmerizingly perfect. The circle in all of its demonic grandeur seemed to be of superior quality to the carvings on the wall.
The circle however, was not the most eye-catching thing. No, right in the middle of that unholy circle was a gigantic stone altar that seemed to have been melded onto the green flesh. And what sat atop that altar…was a body. It was…his body. At the very least, it looked exactly like him.
‘What the fuck…’
Connected to it were various see-through tubes made of flesh that came out from the floor. A black murky liquid could be seen running through the tubes, into various holes that led to his bloodstream, the veins on the body turning black from the process.
The body was…also missing its left leg and its right arm. Green maggots were swimming in the empty holes and Zan could see that a pile of them was swimming in his body’s missing left eye. The youth could not stop himself from ingesting the scene despite his urge to vomit. It was good that he didn’t, for he noticed that the green maggots were spawned from the black blood that bled out from his holes.
The resemblance to himself was too uncanny for it not to be him. Ultimately however, he held off on looking at the vessel that he used to experience such a thing. A gut feeling, his trusted intuition, told him to observe the movement of the maggots.
‘Blech! Ughhh.’
Faithfully, yet loathingly, he focused all his senses towards the luxurious maggot swimming pool that was the bleeding hole of his left arm. With his heightened perception and genius innate talent he did indeed notice a pattern. The maggots were moving in a profoundly mysterious way. Each individual worm seemed to know where to move and how to move its body, in a manner that boosted the movement of the collective maggot population to an impossible degree. They moved faster and faster until images started to hover over the maggot mess.
Zan’s eyes opened fully wide.
Congruent to Balon’s dragon manifestation, the maggots manifested a similar image in a higher layer of this multi dimensional universe. The image shifted and transformed enigmatically, what Zan saw in these images was comparable to that time he unknowingly consumed some strange mushrooms. It looked utterly divine, so much so that it hurt his brain to look at it.
Suddenly, Zan felt a pulling sensation. Finally his attention was brought to the vessel that even allowed him to experience these things. He looked to his hands to see that they were glowing in seven different colors— no his whole body was glowing under these seven colors. Sometimes parts of his body would shine one color, sometimes a separated combination of four and five. Despite the luminous glow, it did not make his surroundings any brighter in any way. The darkness stayed the same, all consuming black.
The glowing body was floating in the air but Zan was too preoccupied with his surroundings to have noticed. In actuality this was not his fault. The hovering body felt natural to his spirit, because it was. Just as humans do not regularly assess at any given moment whether they are standing or not, Zan in this body found it perfectly normal to simply be floating in the air.
OMMM!
A deep hum resonated throughout the space and Zan once again felt the pulling sensation within his glowing body. The maggots swimming in his left arm started to slow and devolve from their divine communion.
Zan saw his physical body move. It jerked once, before his muscles started to spasm until violent convulsions consumed him. Zan saw all this while hovering from above, and he felt a deep desire to…merge together with it.
SCREECH
Out of nowhere a loud tearing sound resounded. It loomed closer and closer until a wall of flesh was torn open and a devilishly beautiful woman stepped out from the rapidly healing meat. She held in her hand a wicked but graceful curved dagger. It was a beautiful bright red, resembling blood. It looked as if the whole dagger was made of bright, red blood.
Runes appeared on the dagger and on her right hand.
“Laiyam.”
The demon woman turned behind her in a graceful sweep and slashed with the dagger in a horizontal arc. A circle of fire bursted forth from the move and new runes appeared on the fleshy walls.
“Quin? Is that you?”
Zan stared at the unholy but captivating woman.
‘Is that…the insane doctor?’
“Quin, help me.”
‘What is she talki—’
OMM!!!
The sound resounded again, louder than ever, though only Zan could hear it. Like water going down the drain, his astral body was warped into his physical body. The boy uttered a scream before he was fully devoured.