Tentacles of fire, tenuous and lithesome, their orange corpses painting the skyline with blood of scarlet, a monochrome world of vibrating catastrophe where even the concept of air was massacred. That's what it should have been, a horizon of destruction painted in the same reprehensible hue, so then why…why did Eros see green amidst the incandescent hell. A debauched shade, a pigment belonging to the sea, too dark to be a vestige of the once vivacious ephemeral realm.
Seaweed green bearing dominion of a corpse, a physique, a visage akin to the carrion flora that now appeared ashen and desecrated. Four metres, such ungodly titanic height shattered the inferno that simmered in the backdrop. No shadow was cast, no all-consuming umbral plague to fester amidst the pallid cadaverous corpse of the forest. It was as though the sun, neigh, even the flames lay petrified, aghast and terror-stricken, their overbearing ascendent pride little more than fictitious pusillanimous bravado. Beads of onyx, a void of darkness bearing an origin from such abhorred ornaments, scoured the land before Eros, zealous in their quest given forth from their bedlamite purchaser.
The world shook the ground fracturing with every motion, splintering into great chasms of diabolical intent, courtesy of the creature's apathetic yet tyrannical approach. The troll had arrived. Of course, it had. Its head, diminutive when compared to its sovereign skeleton, appeared pointed and haughty, its neck craned blandly to the sky, the beak it possessed directed in the position upon which Eros lay, inhaling, its grand nostrils burgeoning as though hoping to draw in the entire atmosphere with but one breath, however, such broad gasp was imminently followed by a mercurial storm of sniffs, as though wishing to confirm the scent that befell its sinus. Its once disinterested beads of ebony colour, soulless and without pupil, appeared to shimmer, the troll's head of cavalier and contemptuous position lowered, a slaughterous, barbaric and bloodthirsty rent forced upon its lips.
Rows of yellow flashed in Eros's direction, stained orange by its most recent meal, contemptible and repugnant, with no molars to be seen, sole canines of atrocious incisiveness. With such a display of glee, Eros apprehended something, attained enlightenment as to why he and Fiamma had lived while the rest remained mere bygone memento mori. It wasn't fate nor sheer luck of the draw. This creature, neigh, this personification of slaughter, simply targeted that which reeked of claret sanguine. It coveted battle, the termination and extinction of all which bore the epithet of human.
Trembling hands stained crimson reached for a world dripping with gore, a mask of red, and as if to confirm Eros's belief, the beast released the same dastardly sadistic smile as before. Hollow brown trembled, lifeless, as if in wait for the inevitable, the confirmation of fate Eros knew insurmountable, his destined death. Seaweed-green muscles of untamed dogmatic power rippled, growing, blossoming in size with every step the troll took towards the disheartened youth.
'Ah…We're going to die, though I suppose we knew it was inevitable. After all, we can't leave here without killing that…thing, ' Eros absentmindedly commented. To run would just arouse the creature, give embodiment to the idea of prey it portrayed them as, a vain venture that would only prolong the inevitable. Unconsciously Eros's lips tremored like a timid panic-stricken newborn, his thoughts an incomprehensible mass of tempestuous, hysterical disheartenment and relinquished hope.
"Fi…Fi-amma," Eros spluttered, the words he wished to spill caught in his throat, buried amidst myriad layers of blood and asphyxiated regurgitation. He gagged, the mere act of forcing words out of his blockaded throat, a tortuous mind-rending presentation of fearfulness, and yet, he had to do it to alert the girl and bring attention to their impending demise. Instantly the crimson-haired beauty swung around, her form precarious and jittery, as if already aware of the monstrosity that would befall her view, whether it be Eros's bloodied sanguine display of carrion consumption or the unhallowed beast of sin.
Hollow brown momentarily met sirenic ruby, a mask of crimson bile befell petrified ivory, coagulations of running blood falling listlessly between the two, the sole sound they refused to thwart. Eros awaited the imminent downfall of affection, paying no heed to Fiamma's compassionate forbearing stare. He merely gestured to the virulent malign creature of rancorous disposition that overshadowed the dying second sun with a look of unmitigated despondency. Infinite feelings transpired within the beauty's brain in all but a second. Eros saw her gleaming eyes lose their incandescence, fuliginous and bedraggled, her body instinctually hunched while peerless opals of crystalline body streaked her face. She had a life, a prospective future, valued by society, a memento Eros couldn't partake in, a family she knew and yet, this creature, this hellish beast of satanic disposition, existed solely to spite her, a living calamity with thoughts perpetuating a path of destruction.
Instinctually a trembling hand rose, eyes remaining listless and unfocused. Conflagration sparked within Fiamma's palm, the sea of flames shimmering, aggregated by her aphonic call, the chimerical air of patched fiction coruscating dyed in the same orange tint as the horizon, which slowly moved closer with serpentine grace. This was Fiamma's decision, the performance Eros urged. They would not run, spend the last minutes of their lives in wretched melancholy, to combat the inevitable was their sole hope of survival.
A supercilious magisterial ardent incalescence prevailed amidst the massacred domain of prior zoetic nature, a heat so overbearing the crimson bile that cloaked Eros's person began to sizzle upon his flesh, branding him in a mask of seemingly permanent crimson, vapours of iron swirled amidst his nostrils, petulant and repulsive. Agony, pure, perverse agony wracked his form, yet Eros couldn't even cry. His throat remained clogged, his eyes focused upon the impending sea of flames. The moving horizon of condemnable opprobrious kaleidoscopic colours, mottled reds and oranges flecked with yellow, gathered as if magnetised by the inconceivable polarity of Fiamma's palm that sparked with but a singular subdued flame.
Innumerable tendrils dyed the sky a volatile shade of destruction. Still, despite such apparent aggression and miraculous power, the troll appeared placid, its steps frozen, not out of fear, nor even distress from the torturous enflamed portrait of empyrean but insupposable conceitedness spurred on by the sultry embrace of atramentous miasma that clung tight to the beast's body.
The dainty flame within Fiamma's hand soon gained animation, gliding fastidiously upon a gust of non-existent wind, its direction apparent to all who beheld its grace, the troll. It loomed there, momentarily flickering upon the advent, before the world fell still, the distant sizzling a muted cry, colour drained from reality, a monochrome world of scarlet, an instant, a fraction of a second, in such little time the blaze that brewed in the backdrop rushed to the spark, a maelstrom of orange, slaughtering, massacring the very concept of distance, it arrived there, bloodthirsty and cataclysmic.
"Die," Fiamma ordered, her voice apathetic, purely sovereign and matriarchal. With her order, calamity befell the realm like a pestilence, a stain upon the earth; the flames infected the troll's body, embracing every inch of exposed flesh in a crazed serpentine frenzy of eroticism. A mere silhouette cast of charcoal coruscated from within, an opaque visage of four metres that danced within the blaze's carcass, yet, no cry emanated, no low grunt nor bellow of rage, pure, harrowing silence. The second sun had been extinguished, forced upon the monstrosities form. Reality fell cold. A shiver ran down Eros's spine, a prophetic sense of foreboding bubbling from within the pits of his stomach that the youth couldn't falsify as needed expulsion.
As though acting on impulse, Eros's head craned towards Fiamma, the beauty who stood not even metres to his side, his stomach lurching, aching, Eros's mind frayed and unhallowed, stuck in perpetual anticipation of visceral dread. Ivory skin stained in a blaze of demonic majesty, her crimson hair billowing courtesy of the fabricated breeze generated by her all-consuming python of flames, Fiamma's appearance should have been steeped in magisterial illustriousness, yet, she felt distant, her mind absent from her body, her eyes lost of light were hollow, saliva trekked the precipice of her cherry red lips, she had overused her ability, and now faced the repercussions. Infinite forlornness riddled Eros's form, for from behind the girl, he spied motion once more, a blazing conflagration bearing a titanic corpse, a silhouette of ebony sporting a fiendish, crazed chasm in the form of a smile, row upon row of bladed teeth peering through the sea like evil possessed.
Fractuable muscles tensed, insubstantial bones forced into motion, the form of the boy lurched, a race against the creature, the beast that propelled itself forwards with a maniacal howl of a twisted joie de vivre.
"Fiamma!" Eros screamed, repressing the urge to cough up mutilated intestines through sheer force of will and overbearing amounts of adrenaline. Absent-mindedly the girl's head turned, responding with a serene unknowing smile, one of perceived accomplishment ignorant and obtuse to the present. A scintillation of pink sparked within Eros's left eye, notifying the youth of an impressive +4% affection that Eros forsook. He didn't care for the inscription nor Fiamma's absentminded adoration. Eros needed her to move. No, he needed to move her, his hand feeble and bony spread forth like a net, his will given form, consuming the air, the distance between the two in a manner akin to the girl's former disposition.
She reached, misinterpreting his actions, a faint blush upon her cheeks. Like the creation of Adam, the divine attempted to mingle with a human, yet, the moment her warmth befell Eros's figure spreading forth like a plague from its point of entry, she would have her very perception of corporeality ruptured. He grabbed her, intertwined hands, and pulled, exchanging his form with hers, his mass incapable of stopping.
A knowing martyr.
A sheep without shepherd who walked deliberately to inevitable death.
*Bang* Fiamma's inattentive body collided with the scorched earth underfoot, her silken head of crimson disseminated upon the bleached world, skin of ivory ashen, her eyes of ruby quivering. For before her heralded a sight of heartrending torturous mistreatment and agony.
The smouldering frenetic maniacal form of the troll, clad in aegis of orange, its silhouette of ebony demonic and vicious, a nauseating, undying aberrant grin permanently affixed to its grotesque malformed face. Its form of four metres unperturbed, ignorant to the searing pain its leather-like skin prevented, unlike the creature that lay broken within its grasp.
Eros.
Skin of sickly, anaemic colour cracked, sweltering, bubbling from excess heat, blood boiled within its vessels while tendrils of flame perversely licked his form, his stomach unseen cowled by the conflagrant muscled palm of his tormenter. His ornate obsidian blazer seared, sparking as if on the precipice of ignition. Eros's legs hung listlessly without motion nor will, upheaved, never to return to the earth from which they belonged. Unutterable pressure built forth within his stomach. With a lack of air, his lungs appeared set on bursting as if they hadn't already popped. Crimson trickled endlessly from his opened lips fertilising the ground with its abhorrent colour, eyes of obsidian locked upon Eros's form, vivacious and full of joy as if a toddler acquiring a toy, its grip tightened from lackadaisical to lighthearted.
*CRUNCH* "AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Eros screamed…before his voice fell silent, never to utter a word again. His lungs had been punctured, his ribs skewering flesh, prodding forth from within his stomach, laced with countless amounts of crimson. Few had shattered, while the remaining were dead set on tormenting their host. Both his humerus prodded forth from his finely woven blazer that now appeared desecrated and singed, blood spurting infinitely from their tip as if antagonistic to the idea of a comedy. Scapulas poked forth from flesh, mutilated and maimed, yet the boy could not scream, for his mouth occupied a lake of blood, frothing endlessly from within. Tandem legs remained unharmed. However, that which they connected appeared crushed, compounded free of mortal confinement. A lake of crimson dripped underfoot, bubbling within the presence of the beast., while hollow eyes clutched desperately to a light they ought to not possess. Eros had yet to die, experiencing infinite torment.
His brain lacked blood, faint and abstruse. His thoughts appeared disorganised and chaotic, and that was when he heard it, a voice mellow and sensuous, both celestial and provocative despite the pressing reality, the savage depravity he suffered, a cry he should have been incapable of hearing, for from his ears dripped nought but scarlet water.
"What is it that you want? What is your dying desire?" The voice spoke, magnanimous with its words, as though a delusion created by Eros's mind, and yet, it sounded strangely real, its effeminate tone oddly nostalgic to the corpse-like boy.
'I…want…to-be.' Eros inwardly stuttered, the fibrous tether he held onto his life and mind now fine-spun on the verge of deteriorating within his grasp. What had he always wanted, tempted but never to achieve, tantalised by the possibility yet disheartened because of his inadequacies? The boy mulled over such an idea for merely a fraction of a moment, more significant than dying, occupying more of his brain, his final wish, not to live but to feel, to be accepted.
'Loved,' The boy inwardly declared, his gaze's hollow, lifeless figure burning with a boundless incessant hatred, a glare that fell upon the incendiary troll's bulging eyes of flaming ebony.
A chill instantaneously spread throughout the beast's body, one that the infinite flames failed to suppress. The hatred of a dying human, the wrath and damnation a boy could procure in his final moments, rationality momentarily returned to the barbaric mind of the beast only to leave within a millisecond, replaced by sadistic glee, the pressure that bedevilled and bewitched Eros's person building to an unbearable degree, euphoria raped the flesh of the troll, for Eros's right eye soon imploded in a display of crimson carrion bloodshed, while his left, once vigorous and zoetic, lay nugatory, uninhabited by the flame that blossomed with life.
"EROS!!! EROS!!!" Fiamma screamed seconds prior to the boy's destined demise, yet, her words fell upon deaf ears, drowned by immeasurable layers of sanguine life essence, her mind and body remained unstable, fractured from the overuse of her ability, and yet, she lashed out, screaming, her opulent eyes burning with a desire, a longing she would imminently come to ascertain, flames sparked within her grasp. However, their existence was cursory, ephemeral akin to the spark that would soon fade within Eros's eye. Her heart hurt, urged on to attack despite the resentment that would only build upon her body. Muddled thoughts riddled her mind, a tumultuous typhoon of longing. Images of the youth who sat upon the precipice of good-looking flooded her gaze, a fictitious reality as though hoping to escape the one set before her, a world where he was fine. Still, such fantasy would instantly be shattered by a coarse, jarring.
*SNAP*
Eros's body contorted at an unnatural, unfeasible angle. His legs that squirmed with insubordination fell placid, static and unmoving, without so much as a final twitch to compel their form. Colour drained from the world, crimson now mere stains of obsidian, a midnight blackness that littered the floor. Anguish, unrivalled depression befell Fiamma's form. Strength seeped from her body, listless, without use. She folded, innumerable pearls falling from her eyes of ruby. She didn't understand why she hurt as such, or rather, she had been ignoring it, the burning passion that exuded from her person the moment he said her name, the inconceivable vehement fever that flooded her cheeks with a mere touch from his body. Initially, Fiamma had refused to accept that she, a B rank esper of utmost esteem, could fall so easily for a boy, and yet, at every instance, they spoke, with every rapturous recovery, her unknowing obsession only continued to soar, to kindle a flame that would never die.
'Why…why did I only realise it now!' Fiamma inwardly cursed, her heart butchered, carrion streams falling listlessly from within, torturous, indescribable pain, rueful anguish. It said that separation only makes the heart grow fonder, yet, what Fiamma experienced was a barrier that could never be overcome, that of life and death.
Her figure lay paralysed, sprawled across the ashen land, her skin flecked with stains of grey while the departed residue of trees intertwined with her silken head of hair. Her brain failed to work, to stir motion amidst her body. It simply wanted to rest, to recuperate from both the shock and the overuse of her ability. Still, she wasn't alone in the world. The earth trembled, debris scattering with every step. The troll was still alive, and within its hands toyed the broken body of Eros, his left eye, drab and hollow, bearing not its prior pigmentation of brown but mere abyssal black, firmly fixed upon the creature, a display it found inconceivably amusing, its blazing skin popping pustules that sprouted underneath the boy's flesh while it squeezed ever tighter upon his shattered form.
It held Eros at an excessive height, cradling him at eye level. Profanely praying for another implosion similar to that of its divergent peer. Bones grated, splintering in myriad manners, muscles spewed little more than superabundant amounts of torrential bile, frayed and destroyed the boy's figure obscured by the beast's clutches could hardly be considered human. Yet, no matter how much the demonic creature crushed, Eros's body would never fully shatter, like a toy that would never break, a broad perverse smile spread upon the deconsecrated being's infernal lips as its legs gained motion, steps slow, tormenting, it walked to its prey, absentmindedly pressing upon Eros's body…that was until it met a macabre resistance. An odd sensation of dissent heresy, it pressed against the troll's palms as though combating the pressure applied with a greater force of its own.
Indifferent, the beast glanced at the human, desecrated and tainted within its grasp, only to freeze, its mind faltering.
Where once was hollow brown erupted pink, a lifeless stare now full of apathy towards the monster's continuance upon the face of the earth.