Quorus watched through the womanly body of a corpse as the sky turned vivid shades of purple and red; as the competitors within his little playtime arena found themselves with twelve fewer among them. A smile creeped over every one of his thousand puppets’ faces. Corpses blooming with the fruits of happiness flowered all over the planet as all at once the thousand year plan of The Hidden Emperor had at last been brought to fruition.
He had known about David from the start: seen him with his own eyes through Regulus. He had known about Xevis sending him to die and Zorvilon’s pursuit of their company’s supplies. What better place to invigorate the growth of a being counter to the weight bearing down on the planet than sending him to die? An immortal must always be born through strife. They must always find for themselves at the end of a path of mastery that the thing lying within them that had been there since birth was a solid core— a pillar and sword to be carved out— to drive the goals of eternity forward. This was the first task of any immortal: to strip themselves of the weights holding them down; to tear away the flesh binding them to the mortal coil. Quorus had watched as David fell to earth once more through a tear in his side of the sky, and he watched as Amanda returned to his side.
It had been unclear where this partnership would lead, but with Sion dead its destiny would be to come back to him. They would return, and Quorus would allow David to join him at the top of the world just long enough to bring his power to the height necessary to tear down Yaldabaoth’s stagnation. It had just so happened Amanda was a destined child of Yaldabaoth, leading them to this day some ten or twenty years ahead of schedule.
But Quorus had built his armies and influence for a thousand years in preparation for this day, and had forced the followers of Yaldabaoth into a subordinate position to prevent his armies from being plagued by reliance on those stripped of the grace of their once all-powerful God now rendered absent forever from this creation. He had allowed Zorvilon and the other Covenant members to lead for so long, and bided his time with Xevis and Aphelion to watch for the prospective holders of a god. He had watched the fruits of his patience bloom and his Triumvirate take hold of the largest continent. Now he had poised armies in the trees through garrisons erected beneath the earth in giant quartz and diamond domes; all waiting at his capital for the order to drain massive reservoirs of blood necessary to bring them to the corners of his empire today.
They would march and the world would fall, and though this day had come so much faster than anticipated, this was the mark of the dawning of his triumph. The sky was alight with the fires of his ambition; all that was left was to take hold of what had always been his and to smother out the flame of David’s ambition to become a second Yaldabaoth before he could take hold over this world never destined to be his.
But for today, the bodies of corpses smiled and were not questioned by retainers smart enough to understand this meant something big was abreast. His corpse-puppet grinned through a tightly-wrapped cloak only just showing the sunken face, raised a fist wrapped still tighter in purple-blue cloth, and regenerated the shield protecting his subjects from their somewhat-too-soon demise simultaneous to a second larger and thinner shield to envelop the entire arena. When the barrier was reformed the puppet began to unwrap its hand as the cloak to hide a dead body finally became unnecessary. Gnarled fingernails revealed themselves as the body fell unnaturally to all fours, contorted and writhing in what should have been pure agony. And yet through the body of a corpse there was no pain, only the actualization of a self traded in exchange for power; actualization of Quorus’ will through the destruction of another self. The skin bubbled like boils of water through paper as limbs tore themselves out of flesh. His retainers stepped back but it was too late. The hands and feet gripped them and tore their limbs asunder, tying them with sinew to the boiling writhing mass of flesh burning with magical power strong enough to tie them together in some kind of hideous human spider. The puppet began to dance as though pulled by heavenly strings to dance about and consume those around it.
All over the arena the bodies began to run and to writhe, a sea of humanity itself brought to a steady boil. Techniques rained throughout the enclosed space in an attempt to destroy the puppet and walls, but outside them was an opaque wall of glass stronger than steel while within was a being far faster than man could hope to overcome. The spider’s prey was enclosed and there was no escape. Techniques rained and kindred bodies fell as the temperature steadily increased for all the magical fire. Steam began to rise as acid and water made contact with pillars and rays of fire and light. Smoke choked out those on the highest rafters just below where the arena’s roof broke into the open sky. Bodies fell and jumped to escape a fate worse than and leading into death— boiling and choking on smoke and burning to death in a twisted inferno of a thousand fires.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Some were lucky enough to fall into the ever-gaping jaws of a corpse spider puppet dancing for the will of its master rather than watching the ground come up at them in a steady approach to an inevitable end. Others, those who did not strike the ground at a reasonable angle, found themselves paralyzed and trampled by the other members of humanity still remaining. Those within the inner barrier seemed confused, but continued to fight for fear of what would happen if they didn’t. It wasn’t a fear of The Hidden Emperor— hardly a hidden being now— or the Triumvirate’s wrath that drove them to continue the acts of butchery towards their other competitors, no, to the contrary they fought out of the knowledge that the rules would continue to apply and that in theory the barrier should still resurrect them to a safe place outside the spectators’ seating. Perhaps they would be spared, and perhaps the winner would be crowned champion by The Hidden Emperor himself.
It wasn’t uncommon for acts of butchery such as these to occur in places dense with humanity. They had expected the Triumvirate to be safe under its great masters’ protection, but there were tales of similar stories from the Covenant from before the Great Scourge. Some great masters had discovered how to take the power of other people into themselves and attacked an arena or bar or restaurant to take the power they felt they deserved. Sometimes they were slain by the masters of the land, but in at least one instance the being became a god and joined the ruling elite. It seemed she had been so strong that Dagon, Lord of Blood, had taken the child on as a pupil. Why an emperor would slay his countrymen remained unclear, but if they were to be his soldiers, who were they to question the orders of their great master? Besides, those who stopped to question this series of events found themselves butchered by those who did not.
Quorus, meanwhile, tore through the last of those gathered to watch his fun little recruitment event, stood up straight on eight limbs of braided arms and hands, and began to walk as best a spider could upright. The prospective soldiers within fell to their knees and trembled, awaiting the determination of what would become of their lives. The spider-god graced all twenty-eight remaining with the tap of a finger and when finished gave the offer of a lifetime.
“Accept me and you will be remade in the image of my legion.”
A man built like a cinder block stuffed with pastry cream beat his chest and shouted,
“All hail!”
Quorus graced him with a spider’s thread from the sky and his spider-puppet fell just an inch shorter for the distribution of its power.
“All hail!” Another shouted.
“Praise to our great Hidden Emperor!”
“Grant us your strength oh mighty one!”
Six remained silent, fists to the ground. Quorus walked up to the first and brought a painted left hand to her face. The nails were so long her cheek bled with determination not to fall, so he slit her throat with his right index fingernail. Another corpse puppet bloomed, and his spider turned to jump into the sky, leaving the other five to their fate amidst his now expanded consciousness.
Only, he had no need for five more corpses. They strained him more than the living, forcing him to control their every movement when it was far preferable to control only the overall direction and commands. So he watched through twenty-three eyes as the others had their entrails pulled out and consumed to power the flesh of his now-expanded army.
It had been a thousand years to come to this point, and now with so many gods and archons and soldiers at his command it was finally time to bring about its final phase. Yaldabaoth had thwarted his mind’s expansion to a thousand bodies, but with his interference finally destroyed Quorus could expand to no end and finally claim the world with his own two and two-thousand hands. Xevis and Aphelion might object, of course, but they could not oppose a god strewn about over a thousand entities. They were two and he was a legion. They were finite and he was not. There would be no end to Quorus’ domination, and when at last all had fallen he would be complete. Not man, not woman, not mortal; she would be God split over a trillion forms; she would be complete; he would be total; he would reclaim at last what Yaldabaoth had discarded as a creation to take the mantle of heaven at last and ascend beyond creation.
Then, and only then at last would Quorus be complete.