“You moron!” Sadea shrieked. She drew her staff and swept it in a wide arc. Another net of electricity burst into existence, forming a perimeter around her, Raksha, and the creature that could only be Stannes Erban, or whatever now wore his flesh.
Ghouls and corpses clustered beyond the crackling barrier she’d created. Though her lightning would disintegrate them upon contact, the dead had the sheer weight of numbers to overwhelm it.
But they didn’t try. Instead, they surrounded the net, their rotting faces resplendent with desiccated grins.
Blissful Death, they gurgled, over and over again.
“Ah, goddamn it.” Sadea sighed as she walked over to Raksha and nudged him with her boot. “Live stupidly, die stupidly. It’s a bit sad, but it definitely suits you.”
“Shut up,” Raksha gasped, clutching at the metal spike protruding from his chest. “I’m not dead.”
Sadea didn’t know whether to hug the martial scientist or wring his neck, so she settled for swatting him across the back of the head instead, drawing a pained grunt from his bloody lips.
Greetings. I see you’ve finally calmed down enough to speak, the hooded creature said. Its voice was an incoherent gurgle bubbling through decayed vocal cords in the physical realm and a sibilant whisper in the immaterial one, resounding clearly in her mindscape.
“Chief Erban, I presume?” Sadea asked, focusing her lightning onto the tip of her staff’s crescent head. She swept it through the section of the spike jutting from Raksha’s back, parting the metal on a molecular level a finger’s breadth from his flesh. The martial scientist pulled the rest of the shortened spike out from the front of his body.
Blood poured from the wound, but it slowed to a trickle as Sadea watched. Raksha coughed and tried to stand, but she shoved him onto his ass, inwardly shocked at the ease with which she’d manhandled him.
“Catch your breath, idiot,” she hissed, before looking up at Erban and flashing him her most splendid smile. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Likewise. The creature wearing the chief’s flesh pushed its hood back. Where a head was supposed to be instead, amidst an ectoplasmic miasma, floated a single, massive bloodshot eye, dark of iris and resplendent with green veins against violet sclera. You have me at a disadvantage, for though you know my name, you have yet to introduce yourselves.
“I’m Sadea,” she replied. “And this slow-witted dullard here calls himself Raksha, but he also responds to ‘dummy,’ ‘imbecile,’ or any word that describes a stupid person.”
Sadea. Raksha. Yes. I must congratulate you both. Your souls blaze so brightly in the Ethereal Tides. Raksha’s with unbridled contempt, defiant and impregnable. Yours with boundless hatred, annihilation incarnate. Such beauty as I’ve never felt in eons. Erban’s eye blinked as he paced a small circuit to and fro before the mass of fused corpses. Such beauty deserves to be mine, you see, forever praising Blissful Death.
“Tell me more, Chief Erban, of Blissful Death,” Sadea said. “Surely one as wise as you would not leave us unenlightened.”
Of course. It stands in metaphysical opposition to the death offered by the Tyrant of Skulls, He who claims dominion over humanity.
“You’re talking about God?”
If you must term Him so. In life, He demands your worship. In death, He enslaves your corpse. How can any soul abide such injustice? Erban’s eldritch voice rose in psychic pitch, scratching painfully at the edges of Sadea’s consciousness. How can any soul not rage against such tyranny? How can any corpse not desire to forgo His embalming and shackling rites and instead seek out decay and slaughter, to turn His material kingdom to eternal charnel, to bring Blissful Death to all?
“A compelling argument. I see much merit in it.” Sadea nodded. “But before we contemplate it further, Chief Erban, might I ask what that is?”
She pointed at the carrion pile. Up close, it blazed with necromantic energies. It was definitely the source of this disaster.
Ah, that. Of course. Erban turned to the fused corpses and stroked it fondly. Once, before I became Stannes Erban, I was much lesser in spiritual stature, much less lucid in thought. I knew only to kill and eat. I was called to the material realm by a group of dabblers who desired my power. The warrior known as Lan Feng killed them shortly after and destroyed the flesh I’d possessed.
“Destroying a demon’s host banishes it to the depths of the Ethereal Tides.” Sadea frowned. “How are you still here, then?”
Those who first called me had partaken of some sky-fallen mutagenic substance. It strengthened the light of their souls, allowing me to better heed their call amidst the Ethereal Tides. They’d also fed it to the flesh I was to inhabit. After Lan Feng had slain them and vanquished my lesser self, I was unable to leave. Instead, I found myself bound to their corpses, growing stronger with every moment, even as they were gathered and brought here to rot, until I found myself able to call to the man whose flesh I now wear.
“Those who first called you. Did they eat some kind of fruit thing?” Raksha asked, coughing clots of blood between words.
“Fruit thing? What?”
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Yes. My initial callers did indeed eat of a fruit born of heartsblood. How remarkable. Spite and resentment so perfectly encapsulated, these metaphysical concepts bound irrevocably to physical embodiment. Erban rubbed his stolen hands in glee. As I lay trapped here, wreathed in carrion enriched by the fruit, my soul opened itself to greater possibilities than hunger and bloodlust. It freed me from the inevitable causality of the Tyrant’s will. It led me to the path of contemplation that would eventually culminate in the conception of the Blissful Death.
“Yeah, thought so.” The martial scientist stood shakily, which meant he’d recovered from the worst of his wounds. The heat emanating from his body had diminished further, though. Standing next to him had been like basking in the radiance of an overly fed hearth. Now, she could only just barely feel minute flickers of warmth drifting from his massive frame.
He’d sheathed his sword sometime ago. The fingers of his right hand rested lightly on its hilt.
“Goddamn Tree of Hearts,” he muttered.
“What’re you talking about?” Sadea demanded.
“I’ll explain later.”
Now that I’ve exhorted the virtues of the Blissful Death to you and spoken of its birth, what are your thoughts? Erban asked. Would you join me, as Lan Feng did? Not that I gave him much of a choice, mind you, but it would be so gratifying for you to bring Blissful Death to one and all of your own volition.
“Chief Erban? I know nothing about you, but I wish things had turned out differently. No one deserves what happened to you.”
Erban? I sense you’re not addressing me. If you wish to talk to my host, the man’s soul is gone. I devoured it.
“I know, demon.” Sadea grasped her staff in both hands and called the fading remnants of her lightning to life. “I know.”
Raksha took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. “Usually, I hate it when my enemies prattle on and on. But this time, I’m actually not that irritated. Somewhat grateful, in fact.”
“Demons like to talk. They can’t help it,” Sadea said.
The Blissful Death…
“Can eat shit. Time to die, demon,” Raksha growled.
“Not how I would put it, but yes, something like that.” Sadea nodded.
You reject Blissful Death, then? But you two are no match for me. Erban raised his hands, palms faced outward. Steel plating tore itself from the floor or off the walls. Suspended in midair, the metal flowed and warped, eventually metamorphosing into an arsenal of spikes. They spread outward, surrounding Sadea and Raksha in a hovering cloud of steely death. The contemptuous one might resist the direct touch of the Ethereal Tides, but I can break his body, just as I can break your mind, hateful one.
Sadea hopped onto Raksha’s back, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing a grunt of confusion from the martial scientist. The warmth of his aegis washed over her, shielding her psyche from the demon’s metaphysical grasp. She didn’t believe that Erban could possess her anyway, thanks to Doctor Horatius’s gifts and training, but she didn’t want to expend any mental strength fending off the demon’s advances.
Erban staggered back as Raksha’s aegis rebuffed his psychic tendrils. His eye turned blood-red, as if the demon were enraged at being denied.
No matter. Willing or not, Blissful Death will claim you both. Erban gestured. Sharpened metal shards streaked at them.
Sadea pulled their flesh into an electrical cloud and rode the hurtling steel, jumping from one spike to another as each zipped toward where they’d stood. Less than ten feet separated them and the demon, and the gap shrank with each hop across the sea of metallic electrons.
Just before they reached him, Erban threw up a barrier of black light at his feet. It was a potent creation. Sadea doubted she could breach it even if she were at full strength.
But she didn’t need to, for no heretical sorcery could stand before their combined might.
Sadea and Raksha rematerialized right in front of the demon. She funneled the residual lightning from their electrical aspect into the martial scientist’s aegis-wreathed blade.
The demon’s eye widened. He raised his hands and flexed his ethereal will. In Sadea’s peripheral vision, she saw the spikes they’d flown past slow in their flight, their momentum leeched in readiness to be reversed.
“This one’s for Lan Feng!” Raksha snarled. He drew his blade and cleaved Erban from hip to shoulder, slicing right through the demon’s ethereal barrier.
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The edges of the massive cut burst into flames immediately, reducing the demon’s stolen flesh to ashes in a heartbeat. The lightning coursing through Raksha’s sword reached out and lashed the demon’s eye, causing the ectoplasmic miasma in which it floated to bubble and flail.
Erban’s metaphysical shriek resounded through the Ethereal Tides. Steel rained down behind Raksha and Sadea, wreaking havoc on the undead horde clustered beyond the lightning barrier. The martial scientist cut out once more, seeking to catch Erban on his return stroke, but the demon’s eye flew out of his reach to hover twenty feet in the air above them.
There will be no Blissful Death for you! Erban raved. I will take your souls, instead, and make them behold the defilement of your flesh! Then, I will torment them for eternity! I—
“Shut up.” Raksha pointed the tip of his sword at Erban and peeled his aegis from its length. Lightning streamed from the blade and struck the demon. Erban drowned his threats in renewed shrieks of agony.
Sadea took off her right glove and stuffed it into her kilt pocket. Then she reached out and grasped Raksha’s sword by the blade, several inches above the guard. She winced as the palm of her flesh opened beneath its edge and she began bleeding onto the steel.
The martial scientist shot her a quizzical glance, but he remained silent when he saw that the lightning pouring from his sword did not cease. Sadea fed the electrical stream with her lifeforce, pouring into it the hatred for the unclean and the unnatural Doctor Horatius had instilled within her.
The sclera of Erban’s eye began to boil. Ectoplasmic ichor leaked from its edges. His screams rose in pitch.
Then a dimensional rift opened beside Erban’s eye, laying bare the maddening swirls of the Ethereal Tides. The demon dove into its depths, even as Sadea’s lightning continued to tear it apart.
“What just happened?” Raksha asked.
“The demon has somehow managed to establish a foothold beyond the wards of this mortuary!” Sadea cried. “It’s going to get out!”
“We can’t let it!”
“No, we can’t. We’ll have to follow it into the Ethereal Tides, chase it with my lightning, and kill it!”
“Let’s go.”
Sadea looked at the martial scientist, aware that she’d gone slightly slack-jawed. “Are you really that stupid? Do you even know what I’m asking you to do?”
Raksha frowned. “Yes? Kill the demon? Chase it first?”
She laughed and pinched his cheek with her free hand. He brushed her away irritably.
“No time for your nonsense now, woman!” he grunted. “Quickly! What should we do?”
“Think you can jump into that rift? We’ve got to get there before it closes and breaks my lightning’s grasp on the demon.”
“Hold on tight.” Raksha bunched his legs and leaped, bringing her with him. Sadea’s lightning net dissipated, just then. Corpses and ghouls poured in, baying for their flesh and blood, but the two were already airborne, streaking toward the shrinking rift.
Leaving the carrion sea behind, Sadea and Raksha dove into the Ethereal Tides, the realm of demons and unthinkable terrors.