Dead air, an utter void of secrecy, a silence that even a passing zephyr dared not interrupt. Flames once vibrant condensed into a lesser, more miniaturised size, their potency recluse, without power, mere embers that failed to scorch the blubberous body of the deceased beast, skin of snow white shimmered listlessly under the overhead sun, its body no longer barred exit from the empyrean realm it occupied.
Serenity incarnate, a world of peace, the beast had been slain, a hero, neigh, Fiamma's hero had emerged, her eyes of ruby and dilated mind permanently affixed upon the lackadaisically incumbent body of the youth, his visage eerily bewitching, carnally hedonistic and epicurean, his odd shade of skin, pure and virginal the antonym to the apocalyptic calamity that formerly befell the land.
Merely gazing upon Eros's resting figure caused myriad palpitations to dementedly take hold of Fiamma's vital organ, her eyes glimmering in the imperceptible shape of hearts. Once again, Eros had saved her, and once more did she fall deeper down the rabbit hole known as love.
'That was my ability…wasn't it?' The girl absentmindedly questioned, her shatterable arms pressing upon the cavernous cratered earth that loomed underfoot, the ashen realm of decay she would soon escape. The visage of the lecherously smiling boy, his face stained in an abhorrent shade of black, in the primordial sanguine essence of the pugnacious creature, an ocular organ rapaciously captured in the right hand, fibrous tendrils of nerves and capillaries strewn across flesh akin to a neglected net, a crosshatch of the same reprehensible bloodied hue tattooed upon an unsullied canvass of frigid colouring, while in the left effloresced an inflorescence perennial blaze, a rose of orange, the same infernal power as Fiamma. The scene was bewitching, ravishing her every sense and skewing all that it serenely tainted. Fiamma's mind failed to comprehend how such a feat was possible. To acquire, neigh evolve such power so different to the former was simply unachievable. Still, she cared not. In fact, her heart only beat more mercurial at the thought. It was her gift that Eros, her beloved, had acquired. This was the substantiation of her love reciprocated.
Steps insecure, precarious and rickety graced the world, yet, they were too buoyant and ethereal to be followed by a thunderclap of sound. Tranquil and reticent Fiamma moved, her brain fragile on the terminus of collapse, sustained solely by the idea of Eros and the forthcoming future they would bear intertwined, her cheeks scorched, her entire body a living organ exclusively dedicated to the ignorant, slumbering youth, eye of pink lay shielded, yet to be seen though ever celestial and transmundane. Pools of sanguine crimson, the carrion offspring of Eros, littered the land, sustenance for the realm that would soon be extinguished. Approaching the beast, bottomless supertemporal wrath befell Fiamma's figure. This was the creature that had brought them such misery, threatened to part the pair through a chasm that could never be overcome, that of macabre cessation and zoetic vivacity. Flames of orange sparked ceaselessly within the beauties palms, though never to gain form, ethereal, a constant miscarriage, Fiamma's ability was depleted, too exhausted to fight despite the overpowering animosity that blanketed her crimson visage stained an ashen white.
She could merely move towards her beloved, the boy sanctified with the title Eros. Listlessly perched atop the troll's departed stomach, he loomed, ignorant and uncaring to the world, a pristine flower yet to be tainted, his breaths supple, short yet potent. Fiamma could have gazed upon the scene for aeons, yet, she forced herself to move, to embrace the youth in a bygone manner, her arms intertwined, locked in a net that supported the boy's vertebrae, his legs descending languidly from her right, while his mask of concurrently above average craft stained in an abhorrent chimeric brew of sanguine and melted brain matter rested fastidiously to her left. A princess carry, Eros bearing the titular role of the maiden while Fiamma obsessively gazed upon his sensuous visage in an antithetical divergent performance of the 'prince'.
Eyes of ruby reluctantly disembarked from a scene of self-stated 'utter elegance' to the cataclysmic residue of a bygone realm, the skyline no longer vivacious nor emerald, merely an ashen wasteland, sunless trunks bearing little sustenance to the former gluttonous sin that ran rampant throughout the realm, their height diminutive incapable of defending Fiamma's obsessive leer, acreage of zoetic sentience slain their carapace the very maimed and dismembered sediment upon which the beauty tread. Still, such wreckage failed to entertain the alluring pulchritudinous visage for long, her seraphic scouring gaze instead an evermoving spectator, searching, anticipating an airborne nihility, a lull of open-air stained a spectral cadaverous shade of morbid blue. A tinted canvass she would soon spy, for not even mere metres away from the couple did it appear, a laceration, scarification of space-time, its appearance akin to a caesarean section upon the empyrean womb of the heavens.
An echoed advance droned sluggishly amidst the empty air, Fiamma's approach borderline defiant, a perpetual indefatigable inferno sweltering behind her scintillating gems of ruby, an exit, that which the pair oh so craved, their rewarded escape, a land of paradise laying in wait with sparse metres separating reality from dream. Ghostly blue light failed to taint the cardinal crimson hue of Fiamma's benevolent silken head, her skin of ivory, however, fell prone to the sultry whispers, stained in the deathly shade, impregnated by the lurid colour. She pressed ever onwards, sparing nought but a fleeting glance at the rift and the greater world soon to dissipate, her emotions tumultuous, a tempest of hate and regalement, despair mixed thankfulness, for it was in this realm of turbulent wrath that she met him, the sole apple of her eye.
Contaminated flesh touched the rift. Bearing Eros in her arms, Fiamma and the boy were absorbed, a world of black impermanently affixed itself upon her crystalline eyes. However, its existence was the definition of temporal, and within but a microsecond, it would lift, giving way to an elephantine realm of expansive lurid blue. Dissonant sounds too many to distinguish materialised upon her obscured ears veiled by a cloak of crimson, a cacophony of chaos, countless footsteps, their volume amplified and emboldened by the titanic dimensions of the realm, like that of gods they marched, surrounding the girl, their forms concealed by macabre cloaks dyed in the same deathly hue as the portal. Undistinguished chatter pressed upon her body, innumerable questions that could never be answered, their tone petrified.
"What happened?"
"What took you so long?"
"You've been unresponsive for the past three days."
"Where are the rest you were sent with?"
"It was only an E-rank dungeon."
Discordant queries too many for the beauty to answer, her mind frayed, hanging taught through little more than sheer force of will. Fiamma wanted to rest, a second of respite, yet, she knew such thinking was little more than a fictitious delusion. Instead, she spoke, her words simple, facile and elementary, neither a response to their countless questions nor an elaboration, a mere statement.
"This boy is mine. From this moment forth, he will be staying with me,"
Faces soured, perturbed by the sudden onslaught of demands, yet Fiamma would give the veiled figures little time to interject. Her mind was wary. To stay conscious was a far-gone forsaken demand, listlessly, she collapsed, her dainty form stained with soot and ash colliding with the harsh, frigid surface underfoot that reflected the ghastly light, with Eros instantaneously following.
—
The rift would not last long. After completion, its existence became the very epitome of temporal and fleeting, hours, such little time would be left to sustain the realm, a mere coagulation of stretched minutes given a rudimentary definition, to think of exploring or even surveilling the domain on such time limit was an idea a far cry from holy, a sacrilegious thought bearing little to no use, yet, two humans scoured the land formerly belonging to Eros and Fiamma. As though a delirious replica given form by the earth, they mirrored the pairs gender, a man and a woman, their ages akin to the prior couple bearing little more than months as a chasmic separation.
Obsidian drabs, embroidered with a seraphic halcyon as though string composed of alchemically crafted gold, Enuma Esper academy, they wore such uniforms. However, different to the couple were the changes they made upon such a refined array.
The boy, a youth bearing a height greater than 195 cm and a build rivalling that of the recently departed troll, appeared ill-tempered and barbaric. Sleeves lay torn, shredded, giving way to pure ivory flesh, defined muscles titanic yet compact, lean and emboldened, as though crushed into a highly potent tissue bearing no visible veins, a tie of gilded aurelius loosely bordered a toned neck, the collar of the school uniform bearing no sovereignty over the item that hopped between dominions over skin and textile fabric. A tempestuous face of objective mesmeric handsomeness, a nose of pristine arrogance, its candour akin to that of an arrow, pointing haughtily straight at the world inferior. Eyes bearing a base of sky blue with a mild cobalt tint observed the realm while a luscious ambrosial head of satin crow fell emphatically upon his broad shoulders.
To his right, overshadowed by his domineering presence that exuded utmost ascendant sovereignty, brewed what could only be described as lust gave body. A Russian violet one-shoulder-dress hung low, surreptitiously embroidered with the diminished abbreviated crest of Enuma academy that hung listlessly across the sensuous beauty's voluptuous right breast, bearing an hourglass figure the likes of which even S-rank espers would find hard to accommodate with their natural beauty, E-cup breasts tantalisingly compact braced solely by the narrow fitting drapes that clung tight to her figure. A perfect face of maidenly porcelain shade, the epitome of Mephistophelian demonic sybaritic glamour, her features as though forged in the pits of a sensuous hell of lust, eyes of mesmeric monarch violet coruscated in an absentminded bewitching idiosyncrasy, while silken strands of obsidian draped loosely upon her perky breasts glistening intermittently in a provocative purple under the pseudo sun that loomed listlessly overhead.
Their appearances reflected a world of difference, a chasm that could never be overcome, and yet, they both stared at the same being, the desecrated cadaver of the departed troll.
"Quite the oddity, isn't it?" The girl teased, her tone half-hearted, jovial yet perpetually heated, uncaring to the world nor the unconventionally varied creature, whose muscles clenched in a violent display of rigour mortis, as though a spasming epileptic, skin fractured, gaudy lacerations rupturing at the seams in an inhumane array, as though the vessel lay unfit for the power that emanated from within. A mucous membrane of melted pink stuck tight to sea-weed green, falling listlessly from innumerable orifices. In place of eyes existed two indented excavated caverns of abyss black, charcoal bile brought to a low simmer as though retaining a heat that had long since departed. The pair of optic organs scoured the corpse, inquisitive to any damage that mangled the creature's visage, whether it be the maimed sockets or charred flesh that polluted the painted empyrean realm above in a darkened miasma.
They observed all, and yet, they failed to survey the tendrils of darkness that formerly enamoured the beast, sultry strokes the antagonist of reason, a spectral effluvium too dense to be fallaciously misinterpreted as the vaporous offspring of an inferno. "That's quite a boorish gaze you've got there. Is this some new type of play? I'm sorry to break this to you, but I'm not really into being the submissive one…."The girl jested, her every utterance a tantalising spectacle so arousing any normal esper would have long since lost their mind, yet, the boy with hair as sombre and nebulous as a crow, cared not, his eyes of sky blue trembled, not out of apprehension nor carnal desire, but forcefully destitute and manacled acrimony, ill-tempered wrath the likes of which his reason staunchly contested in a vail war of attrition.
"Can you remind me of the espers that were sent here? I believe my ears might have been playing tricks on me?!" The boy seethed, his pearly white canines plunged into rose-tinted flesh, a carrion body of sanguine life-essence spilling slovenly from his pair of twin-bedded muscles. His form crouched, hung low, borderline eye level with the departed creature, as though hoping that such a lurid monster could take his mind off of the words plaguing his visage before his departure to the derelict and desecrated land.
"Hmmm? Is it really that difficult to remember the names of two people? It was Fiamma Ad-"
"I don't care about her!! The other one! What was the name of the other survivor!" The handsome primitive adolescent smouldered, his eyes sky blue, a tempestuous storm of hateful impassioned malignity. Still, no matter how much the youth raged, the sensuous beauty's visage failed to release even a shiver. Instead, an attentive, fascinated, ardent smile fractured upon her lips stained a beautiful, sovereign purple.
"I believe it was the former prodigy, the boy named…Eros,"
*BANNNNNGGGGGGG*
An ear-splitting, bloodcurdling cataclysmic rupture emanated within the domain formerly bearing a tyrannical rule, the sound of impact of flesh colliding with muscle, its intensity innumerable orders of magnitude higher than what any human could be deemed capable of. The boy had merely moved a finger, the forceful evacuation of air from his path, he had flicked came into contact with the conjoined mask of the troll, yet, all that remained in its place was sanguine onyx bile, the broad circumference of the herculean stalwart protrusion bearing the epithet neck and its geminated mask ridden from the beast's charred carcass, the severance an abrupt and barbaric display of mind-boggling potency, bloodied vapour steamed before the crow haired boy akin to a miasma, heated by the sudden departure. There was no collision. The cadaver encased in carrion had still yet to land.
"Why…Why is it always him! Aren't I good enough? That fucking Eros, why didn't he die?! Why couldn't he die? He's been forsaken!! The academy's given up on him! His achievement means nought! I'm…I'm special! He means nothing!!" Resentment, distilled by innumerable years of agony, like a waterfall it spilt forth, the boy's pure eyes a tumultuous cacophony of unconditional, unadulterated abhorrence for the anathema bearing the simple name of "Eros". "Let's go. I can't stand this place!" The boy yelled, his gargantuan visage little more than a silhouette lit solely by lurid blue.
"To earn the animosity of an apostle…Eros, ahhh~ he just sounds so amusing." The girl monologued before her visage, too, was consumed by the macabre light of the portal.