Chereads / Divina Commedia: The Architect of Ain Soph / Chapter 14 - In The Depths of a Surreal Abyss 1

Chapter 14 - In The Depths of a Surreal Abyss 1

Jezebel's kiss was pure, undiluted venom - a malicious toxin flowing directly into Genesis's vein, a virulent contagion blurring the boundaries between reality and his darkest nightmares.

One moment he was sitting in the confines of her chambers, the next violently drifting, expelled from the mortal plane.

He tumbled through an eldritch vortex of fractured perception, transfixed by impressions of howling, distorted faces keeping pace alongside him.

Staring, malformed skulls trapped in perpetual, silent growls emitted after images that wormed their way into the deepest castles of his psyche like parasites.

Just as Genesis felt his sanity beginning to fade, he was abruptly expelled from the maddening black hole- ejected from the void and sent crashing into a hellscape that seemed to have been sculpted directly from Dante's inferno.

Emerging malignantly before him, Genesis saw the unmistakable silhouette of Jezebel materialize from thin air.

But this was no mere mirroring of the tormented soul he'd been counseling.

No, no, no, whatever foul witchcraft was at play had twisted and deformed her form into something far more grotesque - a deviant huge chimera of disassociated flesh together in disharmony, a true abomination.

From Jezebel's back erupted decaying leathery wings – bestial muscles stretched over the ragged bones extending from their frame, greasy shackles spasming as if possessed of their own watchful sentience.

Her arms ended not in fingers but huge, black, and sharp talons - ebon scythes weeping fluidic, acidic matters from pores inside those pitted blades.

But it was Jezebel's face that constituted the most butchered aspect of her malformed grotesquery.

The flesh was peeled back in loose, decayed skin drapes.

Row upon row of demonic fangs followed by a convulsing throat from whence issued a sound that seemed like a multilayered requiem.

"Welcome, Padre..." That atrocious wheeze echoed from every gap in reverberating inharmoniousness.

"To my domain – a realm where the seven sins manifest..."

Genesis opened his mouth, desperate to invoke the Lord's name and His words, only to gag and puke acidic matter from his mouth.

"Your virtue shall be...assessed." She purred

"A carnival of iniquities to sample at your...discretion."

With a fluting whistle between her ruined lips.

A clawed digit gestured to the twisting horizon, where formless panoramas gave issue to the first leader of corruption.

First came Gluttony itself - a skyscraper rendered in glistening meat, balconies of dripping sausages and steaks that vented the most savory smoke.

A parade of naked, morbidly formed humans swayed in sick swelling, mouths gaping in endless, silent lamentations.

"Even Christ hungered in the desert, lamb.

What makes your cravings more divine than His?"

Her malignant words spilled like venom, but Genesis's mind remained rooted in the steadfastness of the Holy Scripture.

"Do not be among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat," he paraphrased the Proverbs, letting the holy words fall like purified silver between them.

Jezebel's laughter emerged as a phlegmy rasp, flecking her upturned face with toxic saliva.

"Ever the God-fearing man, I see..." She mocked as the meatscape dissolved into a nothingness. "Then let's plumb new shallows for you to squat within..."

The second sin took shape - a golden-crafted hellscape of wealth and grandeur given filthy, atavistic life.

Figures that radiated power and privilege walked the boulevards, crushing the worthless underclasses with each step.

"Nobody believes anymore that anyone wants to be a millionaire..." Her talons hooked under Genesis's lolling jaw, forcing eye contact. "But deep down, don't we all ache to wear the velvet ropes of exclusion around our throats?"

"For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice." Genesis's retort lashed her like a scourge of sun-scorched twine.

Her lips peeled back over compound fangs in a death's-head smirk of disgust.

With a contemptuous flick of her scalloped wings, the cityscape of gold and fortune faded away in flurries of dissolving ash.

The next depravity took the form of a Nuremberg Rally, with Genesis standing amidst enraptured extremists screaming his name in frenzied exaltation.

"The world itself would lay itself at your feet, Genesis..." Jezebel pressed against him, dry husks of labia parting in lewd invitation. "All you'd need to provide is your reversionist humility..."

In answer, Genesis summoned the Scripture's wise words.

"When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom."

With an infuriated scream, Jezebel threw him into the howling vortex, his body dashed against the immaterial fury of her displeasure.

When he reemerged, her bony mouth was inches from his own.

"How many pettish banalities must I endure until your tongue ceases dispensing empty sanctities?" She raged, acidic saliva spotting his cheeks like glycerine blisters. "Brace yourself for the next wickedness."

The proceeding dissolution of time and topography brought Genesis to his knees.

The next trial manifested as a sort of anti-cathedral raised in Sloth's ignominious honor.

A gargantuan rose window of shattered stained glass depicted a group of corpulent sluggards wallowing in their own drool and excreta.

Row upon endless row of lazy humans lay scattered across the reeking expanse like strewn laundry soaked in rancid drool.

"Behold," she extolled in a parody of cathedral gravitas. "The honored flocks who gave themselves wholly unto stillborn idleness.

What poetry in their surrender, yes?

What ecstasy of inactivity await those with neither aspiration nor perspiration to sap their vital slacknesses!"

Genesis trembled but rallied with the lethal verses from Proverbs.

"A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man."

Whatever rejoinder Jezebel had queued withered on her lolling tongue.

With an obscene rippling of corrupted flesh, the tableau dissolved into ash that sanded Genesis's eyes until they leaked bloody rheum down his cheeks.

Wrath was the subsequent degradation borne into solidity. He found himself once more the still point around which a universe of aggression orbited with fury.

Blows rained down as faceless entities erupted from every shadowed periphery.

Teeth clashed and rended, gouging flesh in frantic ecstasies of unrestrained violence.

Each fresh tide of assault was overlapped by thunderheads of verbal insults - shrieks of slander to lacerate any intervals of pained silence.

Wading amid the feverish berserkers, Jezebel spread her wings to direct the storm's hostility his way.

With each flap, gales of spittle-flecked imprecation blasted Genesis's form.

"Go on, little shepherd...unleash your wrath upon the flock as they have unto you!" Her laughter was a banshee's shriek scraped over rusted kalimbas.

"Vent your fury in one purifying surge!

Let its lethal balm soothe the agonies they've inflicted!"

Genesis remained composed, clutching the tattered remnants of his ripped clothes like a homeless shield against the battering storm.

"Know this, my beloved brothers..." he began, "Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God."

With a bestial roar, Jezebel's claws raked osseous furrows down his cheeks, flaying ribbons of flesh that smoldered against the pus dripping from those blackened talons.

Her malediction was a demonic dialect that transcribed itself in sigils across his torso.

The wrath realm dissolved, like a clogged bathtub belching its discharge.

Genesis barely had time to wipe the streaks from his eyes before the landscape re-congealed into the next debasement...