The Grand Priest of Masolis looked down at Iris. Her cap no longer hid her face. Her crystal-like azure eyes pierced through his body, gleaning the secrets within his flesh.
“The Court’s Black Rose,” The Grand Priest said. “We’ve finally met.”
“I don’t take kindly of uninvited guests.”
“Our Lord has set his eyes upon you.”
“Yet he failed; are you confident?”
The Grand Priest narrowed his eyes. He glanced at Agent of Healed Heart, who lightly nodded. The illusory night rumbled. The dreadful clouds congregated into an upside-down tide, whose crimson vapours welled and ebbed like a sickly heart.
Blood fell around the singular crown. Its glimmer, tainted by the metallic dyes, dimmed until the crown itself turned pitch black. The devil’s eye at its centre focused. Large veins popped on its nauseating sclera; all things outside its gaze lost their importance. The world stage became confined within this bloody thunderstorm.
Iris caught her blown-away cap. Her jacket flapped like a pair of translucent wings on her back. She pressed her cap in her palm and clasped her hands. A swarm of fireflies spread around her.
The fireflies rushed out like a tsunami, lighting up the terrible darkness. They cut through the dripping blood drops, which screamed and dispersed as ghastly figures. These ghosts reached for Iris, their rotten hands filled with sharp nails and glass shards. The bright fireflies burned the spectres before imploding as visages of translucent symbols.
Iris pointed at the gigantic eyes. The symbols surrounding her accelerated their rotation and intensified their radiance. Thin threads emerged from their glows, connecting each other into a formless array, and enveloped the black sky with rainbow lights.
The gigantic eye glared at the revolving array. Its veins burst into a splash of flesh-eating insects. The undead centipedes devoured the magical symbols they could reach, but more symbols struck them down with rays of light resembling holy swords.
Under the intense gaze of his master, The Grand Priest knocked his pitch-black cane against the air. A sharp noise rang, accompanying a rift in spacetime. Fragmented glasses spread outward. Their tainted surfaces reflected the other side of the world, where demons crawled around the earth and monsters occupied the sky.
These demons threw themselves at the holy swords. Their mighty claws shattered the magical symbols along with themselves. Heart-piercing screeches filled the night, though no sound leaked from the glasses.
The river of glass surrounded Iris. The ravenous clouds rained rotten stenches onto her. Only her cap became drenched, yet she held onto her possession. She put it on herself.
Dark purple glows sparkled around the cap. The decaying rain vanished from the cap’s fabric. Iris smiled.
The Agent of Healed Heart frowned. He yanked the sacrificial dagger from his staked heart. The thunderstorm intensified. Lightning descended from the false sky. Its fleshy appearance, writhing with spikes and broken teeth, thrust at Iris.
“Teaming up against my mistress, how cowardly.”
Darkness rippled. An insignia of a feminine skeleton hand manifested in front of Iris. A maid in a uniform made of shadow itself stepped out from nothing. Antina raised her right hand. Her index fingertip tapped the fleshy lightning.
The world twisted. The fleshy tendril collapsed onto itself. The metallic spikes and shattered teeth crushed themselves into a bloody rain. Tens of shadowy maws emerged from Antina’s skirt. They consumed every drop of the unholy blood.
Iris walked up to her maid. She leaned close to her maid’s right cheek and rewarded it with a light kiss. She pressed her weight onto her maid, who excitedly supported her mistress.
“Please let me take care of the minor things.” Antina glanced at the Agent of Healed Heart before focusing on her mistress’s lips, which remained close to her face. “I’d like to witness your grace once more.”
“Allow me to fulfil your desires.”
Iris pointed at The Grand Priest. Silver lines flowed out of her jacket’s sleeve, spread like the roots of a thousand-year-old tree, and branched into a fractal maze that threatened not only the Grand Priest but also the wicked eye of the immortal. Trees and bushes of gem-like colours sprouted from the roots. They decorated the sky into a floating continent, filled with the vitality of the living, which suppressed the deathly aura of the wicked.
Among silvery vines, apparitions of living statues rose. These spear-wielding constructs, soaked in the bloody rain, cried their war songs and fought against the demons in the mirror world. Elementals, beings of living flames and waters, manifested at the heart of the forest and rose skyward. Their searing gazes met the lone Grand Priest.
Frowning, The Grand Priest knocked on his cane. Portals split behind him. Immature mutants, whose demonic forms still resembled their human selves, stumbled out of the pits. They recoiled at the sight of The Grand Priest, but the smells of pure magic excited them. Their ravenous cries echoed along with their mad rushes toward the battles.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Your plan is doomed to fail, Black Rose,” The Grand Priest said. “There is no end to the power of the immortal.”
“Even though I’ve successfully devoured his curse?”
Iris spread her arms to the side. A greater silhouette materialised on top of hers. Three pairs of black feathered wings rose behind Iris. Their reach covered the sky, towering over the rusty crown and the trembling eye. The lady stared into Masolis’s eye and flashed an aggressive smirk.
The Grand Priest shivered. His flesh wanted to rip out of his skin and escape this horrible forest. He gripped his cane, on which cracks appeared. The visage possessing Black Rose terrified him. That being gave him the same pressure as his master, whose mere gaze had sent him to his knees.
He bit his tongue until he cut it in half. Purple blood gushed out of his mouth. He dripped his hand in it and painted the sky with sacrificial symbols. The mutants surrounding him froze. They wished to escape, but an invisible chain bound them.
Tens of obsidian altars rose upward. At their centres were the chained mutants with their innards gouged, their blood drained, and their souls laid bare. Their hoarse screeches rang only within themselves.
“With half my blood and all these half-demons, I beseech your descent. Please grace us with your might and crush this heretic.”
The altars quivered. Hundreds of hands crawled through the void and ripped the flesh from The Grand Priest. He intensely watched Iris’s weak smile while blood continuously poured down those hands.
The rivers of blood formed a lake, an ocean of viscous, suffocating liquid. Whirlpools sank the centre of the ocean, revealing a circular path. Its depth spiralled through spacetime, shifting between Planes.
The crimson world on the other side reared its head into the Main Material Plane. A gigantic arm, on whose palm was a snake-like pupil, plunged from the Abyssal Plane and into the Main Material Plane. Its spikes and chains and seals violently shuddered. The void’s turbulence cracked the barriers between Planes, but the world’s pressure mended all cracks.
Two of Masolis’s eyes focused on Iris, on Black Light’s visage. Their visions dyed the forest red, and the forest became demonic with their wills. The gemstone trees turned into ashes while the living constructs grew rotten flesh and lost their reasonings.
“What do you think?” Iris said.
“You’re too generous, Dear.”
“She’s important to me, too.”
“We cannot take everything. Your power is also ours.”
Iris observed the intricate flows of powers, branching and merging, dancing and striking. These invisible energies drew incomprehensible symbols. They constructed sentences, paragraphs, pictures, scenes, towns, mountains, continents.
A breathing world appeared before Iris, moving from the beginning toward prosperity and finally the end. The decaying nature cast a long shadow over the lifeless landscape, but light sparked within the emptiness, and the world began anew.
By Iris’s side, Black Light overlooked the creation and destruction of the abstract world. She commanded their progress, strung their paces, and weaved events into existence. She controlled the weather, which influenced the Main Material World, and seized authority over the order of things.
The thunderstorm of blood and flesh quietened its roars. The rusty crown dimmed. Masolis’s eyes flickered with worldly glares. The sky above and the land below prostrated before Iris, who held the golden scale which balanced order against chaos.
She raised the scale and plucked the gigantic eye at the centre of the crown. Black blood vessels and nerves tore the fabric of reality apart, desperate to hold on. Masolis screamed, screamed until his Divinity leaked out from hell and flooded the sealed space. His satanic voice shocked the sky until the sun above the clouds no longer dared to send down strong light, until the ocean waves no longer dared to rise and fall audibly.
Masolis’s hand tensed. Its dark eye stared into Iris’s soul, into her realm of consciousness, into her memory. Crimson letters, arising from sacrificial blood, etched themselves onto the eye. Their cursed formation whispered a song into Iris’s spirit. It talked about a young girl abandoned by her family.
The girl must feed herself with leftovers tossed by a wealthy passerby, drink dirt water near a leaking pipe, and sleep ill in a small unused grave. One day, a beautiful lady came to the girl and offered her work in exchange for food and a bed. The exhausted girl signed the deal with her purity.
She worked with her body and soul, using all to please her clients. She became famous, and her living conditions grew better. She drank whatever she wanted and worked whenever she wanted, but she could never escape this way of life.
Yet she never wished to leave. She enjoyed this life; she enjoyed the touches of those clients, men and women. They excited her, filled her with purposes, and kept the emptiness of days past at arm’s length.
The lady who pulled her out of poverty never left. She had always been there—tending, consoling, loving. She was the torch on the stormy night, although that torch was dimming.
As the girl aged, her beauty faded. Her clients dwindled, and her status fell like tears in her eyes when the beautiful lady could no longer come to visit her. She still had food and drink to drown her sorrow away. She still had clients to make love with. What she no longer had was a beating heart.
She locked herself in a room, ripped the curtains into pieces, pieced them into a long string, and tied it to a wooden beam. The music from the pub below seeped through the creaky flooring.
Orange light peered into the dusty room. With a light kick, a chair fell over. A snow-white silhouette hovered at the centre of it all.
A rope tightened around Iris’s spirit. She gasped but failed to produce a voice. Her mind pulsated between clarity and daze, but she did not stop her motion. Her pale expression maintained a smile.
She slid her finger into the gigantic eye socket, pinched the flesh, and yanked the eyeball out of Masolis.
The noose snapped. Iris’s spirit regained its clarity. Masolis did not scream. His hand fell over, disintegrating as insects. They dissolved under the radiance emitted by the scale of judgment.
The Grand Priest’s body limped. His cane splintered into pieces. He brutally retreated while coughing out clumps of worm-infested organs. His widened eyes could not blink or refocus. He couldn’t even think of looking at Black Rose, whose status had ascended beyond mortality.
The Agent of Healed Heart disengaged from Antina. He turned away and escaped with The Grand Priest, who did not look back or even wait for his accomplice. Antina only coolly glanced at their departing figures.
The rusty crown, smashed by an unseen force, only left behind cursed fragments. The thunderstorm also vanished, the seal lifted. The outside world intruded; The Grand Formation slowly lit up.
Antina returned to her mistress, who was motionless, deep in thought.
“Mistress . . . you have fought and won against a God,” Antina said. “Your name will forever remain in the monument of eternity.”
“You’ll have to take better care of me, Dear.” Iris’s voice was fleeting. She gave her right hand to her maid. “It’s time to leave. The Orthodoxy will be arriving soon.”
“Please allow me, Mistress.”
Iris tightly embraced her maid. Her strength rapidly diminished. Her eyes grew teary. Black Light’s visage merged back with hers.
As her maid held her like a sleeping princess, she calmly fell asleep.