"YOU LITTLE FIENDLING!!!"
Screeched A.D.
"YOU RUINED MY MASTERPIECE!!!"
A.D. roared in anger, and pointed a trembling finger at Zeine, the movement dragged on the cut in his belly and slid the the wound even wider, letting out more of his slimy intestines.
"You shall be punished! YOU WILL DIE A MOST DISGRACFUL AND UNIMPRESSIVE DEATH!" said A.D. gritting his teeth with venom. Blood spewed out of him, and parts of his body, so meticulously and carefully pieced together were now falling apart, tearing away bits flesh as they did, eventually, amidst furious curses, he collapsed into a heap of scattered flesh and bone, still roaring in venomous anger.
"YOU BETRAYED OUR CAUSE!!! I thought you understood me, but just as the show was going on to its very climax you DESTROYED IT!!! You...YOU YOU FIEND, YOU are like everyone else, DUMB AND MISLEADED!! I believed you were special, but even YOU cannot understand my art..."
Zeine had recovered his senses along with the power to move, he found himself surprisingly calm and level-headed, minutes before he would have lost his mind at the sight of this man peeling away his flesh. But now, he just watched, unsurprised, as the screeching A.D. severed himself into bits and melted into a pool of blood from which he tried to gather his organs and put them together to reassemble himself, while his head swore the dirtiest swearwords at Zeine. In this lucid or, courageous state, Zeine found that he wasn't nearly as overwhelmed as he was before, instead he was rather taken-aback, and the gruesome A.D. looked much less horrifying, even comical, he couldn't even bring himself to understand why he found A.D. terrifying in the first place. But then he sensed it, a wave of exhilarating blood red contamination A.D. was disseminating into the air, he knew somehow that that was what had made the A.D. so imposing to him and had him begging for death sometime ago, that contamination was also what had been torturing him before. Presently, the contamination from A.D. wafted towards him from all directions, but it bounced back as if in pain when it so much as brushed upon the vicinity of his field of golden light.
All these were perceived in his mind's world, and was invisible to the naked eye.
He shut out the noise from A.D. and took the opportunity of its inability to think over the day's events, trying to clarify his mind.
First of all, this was not somewhere around the main road, the government wouldn't allow a street block as ugly as the old factory district anywhere near the magnificent main roads. So something odd, something unearthly, some strange sorcery must have taken him here and shut him up in this dark cage.
Second, there was something strange about the rift in the back and the wall that blocked his return, this space was sorcery, hallucination, or something of the same nature of whatever it was that took him here.
Third, A.D. and the torture, A.D. could pop out from anywhere in this place, give him life-like hallucinations using that contamination omni-present in this space, to torture him, and probably A.D. was the one who lured him in by deceiving Den.
A.D. was a sorcerer who wanted organs to rebuild himself physically, at least, that seemed to be the case. The twelve "friends" before him were his past victims, and he, Zeine had been picked to be the thirteenth donor whether he wanted to or not.
And what was it that dragged him away from that bottomless pit and saved him? His head started to ache as he tried to recall it.
There was fire, people, someone calling his name, could it, might it have been memories of his parents?
He racked his brains for evidence, no good, A.D.'s yelling snapped him back to reality.
First things first, I need to get out of here, thought Zeine.
He observed the writhing A.D. and his surroundings carefully. In neither of his senses could he find an entrance from this dark cage to the world outside, it was just an endless path of darkness, and he could perceive, with his second vision, which he referred to in his thoughts as his "interlink" that the rift from which the light poured in was nothing but a decoy, a bait to give the victim a little bit of hope, so as to diminish it afterwards. And he could tell, as he followed the strands of the fabric of space with interlink that the space in this place only went round and round in circles, not unlike a mobius strip.
A.D.'s raising voice came through to him once again.
"PREPARE TO DIE AN UNDIGNIFIED DEATH." roared A.D.'s head propped on the ground.
And something about the space itself started to change.
Feeling with his interlink as much as with all his other senses, Zeine could feel the walls, the floor and the dome overhead as it changed in quality and texture. There was a pounding, like heart-beat, or the throbbing of veins coming from it, interlink told him that these immobile objects had somehow, gained a life of its own. It must have been the contamination from A.D., it seeped into the walls, the floor, the air and the very fabric of the space itself, and was solidifying, concentrating, visible both in plain sight and in the perception of interlink.
He sensed danger coming.
"Get the hell away!"
he yelled in an attempt to stop the aggregation, to drive it away, and made a pushing motion with his hands, and he "saw", in interlink, a spell of golden shockwave escape his field of clearance and went crashing into the agglomerate contamination, ricocheting in all directions as it hit the boundaries.
As it hit. A.D. screamed in agony, and Zeine could see the contamination that filled the space flicker, like a candle being blown, and extinguish. Roars of anguish came from the walls but soon subsided as the throbbing motion ended abruptly, the danger was temporarily relieved.
Did I do that? Zeine wondered in utter amazement.
And Zin--
a spear flew at Zeine, he couldn't dodge, but he reacted instantaneously, he was carrying his guitar with him, so he grabbed the bag, and swung it at the spear just on time, the spear glanced off the bag and missed his head by inches.
"Arghhhh!"A.D.'s head roared in anger as it missed.
But then A.D. suddenly stopped, and seemed to reflect for a while, then let out a fit of knowing laughter, his body emerged calmly and gracefully from the pool of blood on the ground, hands, picked up his head and fixed it back onto his neck.
"I misunderstood you, my genius friend!"
A.D. cried: "I just never expected a human to have such sublime appreciation for the fine arts."
"I KNOW!!! NOW DO YOUR BEST!!! THE REAL SHOW BEGINS NOW!!! STRUGGLE! STRUGGLE! AND DIE OF HUNGER AND DESPAIR TRAPPED IN THIS WONDERFUL HAVEAN OF ILLUSION."
A.D. threw open his arms wide and faced the heavens with enlightenment in his glistening eyes and blurted out in French.
"Mourir de faim et desespere, toujours emprisonne dans la cadre de peinture, tu as talent, tu m'en inspirer! Mon jeune compagnon!"
While A.D. went on, Zeine calculated. He knew A.D. was right, he would die one way or the other if he didn't escape, his throat was already burning with thirst. Zeine tried a few times to command the golden shock wave again as A.D. rattled on praising his aesthetics and willingness to sacrafice for "the fine arts", but it just didn't work.
It didn't obey his will, rather, as he recalled, it obeyed his emotions.
Then, Zeine laid his eyes on his guitar "shockwave".
An idea came to him, but he tried to shake it off, it just won't work, don't be silly, Zeine told himself. But then again, extreme circumstances heralded extreme measures. Imagination, and a little inspiration might do the trick.
A.D. continued to talk.
"ENLIGHTEN ME--your humble disciple A.D. WITH your PERFORMANCCCCE!!!" said A.D. bowing again, intestines dragging on the ground as he did.
"That's sick." said Zeine "Do everyone from France district talk in this way?"
He met A.D.'s expectant eyes and knew A.D. wasn't going to do anything for the moment, which meant he was safe. He inhaled, and said to himself, " OK, I must be mad. Now let the performance begin!"
He took out the guitar and held it, the steady weight of the instrument in his lap gave him confidence.
He tried a scale, and as his fingers trimmed the strings, he could feel the golden light in his interlink respond in rhythm to it miraculously.
It might really work, his thoughts brightened.
A.D. was still gazing at him with genuine reverence in his eyes.
Zeine's eyes met his, and he said loudly, "Sorry, A.D., but I will not die here today!"
And he hammered on, in his minds eye he could see spotlights on him, a crowd watching him, only, in reality, he was fighting for dear life.
The prelude of Stargazer, the best-known piece of the Rolling Fire Band, pounded out from under his fingers, he could feel, invoked in his mind the grand and epic prelude, the other instruments, drums, electric guitars, and chants piecing together rhythmically. They resounded in his head, true to life, every detail spotless and impeccable.
He listened intently, counting under his breath to catch the tempo.
And he realized something.
These sounds, they weren't coming from inside his head, but from all around him, they were there, physically there. Zeine withheld his surprise and continued playing. The rich layers of the composition declared its existence in a shower of bright shining notes, reverberating loud and clear, carrying through the endless path of darkness, bouncing off walls, gaining in strength, building up potential.
The golden field of clearance reacted in accordance to his emotions. it rumbled and crackled like muffled thunder bolts, but was still restrained as if waiting to pounce.
And then the cymbals sounded, relieving the full impact of the crashing, thundering song, coercing the eardrums, and with it, the unmitigated might of his golden shockwaves struck, it broke free of all constraint, lashed out in every direction, taking on the same propensity as the song that provoked it, and delivered a shattering--BANG!!!
Like a sonic boom, it shattered the space, and swept A.D.'s broken body, carrying the destructive power of the song with it as it went. Like glass shattering, the world in both his vision broke into smithereens.
Suddenly he could see moonlight, the crowd, the sound, the moving people, patrolling security bots, cars, buildings and lights cramped themselves into his vision. The sounds of bustling crowds, cars, usual sounds of metropolis, so noisy and disturbing once, now so welcome to his ears, inundated him. While the existence of people and objects, presented in different sizes, shapes and colors suddenly swarmed into his interlink, dazzling his senses.
I'm back, I'm alive, he thought.
Those were the last things he knew, before his vision darkened, succumbed to lassitude and blacked out.
As he fell, the golden charm on his right hand blazed for a moment.
Somewhere miles away, in the city center, Helina Phoenix experienced a burning sensation on her forehead. Her masked face gazed up at the heavens. It was her charms, and she knew what that meant.
A new clearance wielder has risen.
"Friend, or foe." asked the metallic voice.
The moon appeared from behind the clouds, casting down its silvery glitter.