Velvet was a bullseye in plush red window dressing. Even with all of her brutal chain attacks and her elegant acrobatics, she was outnumbered by Odette's phantom disciples and couldn't keep up. Graveryl was knocked out of her hands as makeshift ropes made from tattered death linens wrapped around her wrists. Her arms were yanked outward in a crucifix as her back was drawn taught against one of the giant Phozon formations sticking out of the cavern floor. More linens wound around her ankles at the base of the crystal stalagmite, limiting her struggles to angry shoulder squirming and hip jerking. An elaborate headdress made of raven feathers was set on top of her red hood.
Frustration burned in Velvet's eyes hotter than the icy blue hell surrounding her. Her face was silent but defiant as she stared up into her enemy's dead eyes.
Odette reclined on her throne of skulls and shot an ambiguous smirk back at the reckless mortal. Her small phantom underlings gathered around Velvet's red skirt drapery and began to season her naked belly with a solution nightshade and embalming herbs. Her skin gleamed pale violet in the eternal haze of the Underworld. Her stomach was a lightly toned valley with a stark black pit sunken in the middle. Droplets of sweat trickled past the rising and falling dot. This battle between matriarchs representing the worlds of life and death left her body tired and out of breath.
The skulls stacked in front of her black slippers rumbled before a hunched over ghoul no more than three feet tall climbed out of the ground. He locked his withered hands on the sides of her hips and extended his long reptilian tongue as the rest of the servants were kneading and stretching her belly. He slipped his soft tongue into the black dot in the center of her abdomen, licking in tiny spirals to make it clean and ready for the queen's royal graces. There was no telling how often these wandering gypsies bathed, even the pretty and nicely-perfumed ones, so certain precautions had to be made. Velvet's face reacted to the special treatment by wincing in repulse. Her stomach reacted by twitching in narrow waves as the tongue flicked in circles.
The bottom of Odette's laced skirt rustled as the ghouls backed away from Velvet's waist. Hints of arachnid claws and a pair of red compound eyes peeked from underneath Odette's dress while a long tendril uncoiled outward like a black snake. It slowly extended across one end of the Underworld cavern to the other and arrived at the top of Velvet's skirt sash.
The tip of Odette's tail slid easily into Velvet's exposed and relaxed navel. The mortal princess reacted with a little gasp as her whole body froze. Her pupils shrank into two tiny black dots like the one on her waist. Odette looked more than comfortable as she sighed and grinned.
Regaining her composure, Odette skittered across the hills of skulls on her hidden spider legs and leaned closed to her mortal enemy. The points of her skeletal fingers pet the long black stalk all the way up to where it rooted into Velvet. Her lips quietly cooed with anticipation now that they were connected.
"Just as Princess Ariel gave you life, so Queen Odette shall take it away," she chuckled in a low threatening tone. She was determined to give this horrid mortal trespasser the death she had long avoided and so rightfully deserved.
Odette sank backward again and let the pulsating black vine stretch the distance between them. The tendril quivered with more intensity as the ceremony began. All of Velvet's senses and vitality focused on the tiny dot in the center of her bare waist, while all of the terrible powers of the Underworld were focused into Odette's tentacle. The black feathers rustled on Velvet's headdress as she felt herself losing the magic tug-o-war and she rolled her head back against the crystal pillar. The gloomy cavern echoed with two women groaning together in shared turmoil.
Velvet's hips violently jerked forward once, and then her body became lifeless on the crystal. A small glowing sphere representing her entire spiritual essence escaped her navel and slowly made its way through the tendril leading underneath Odette's skirt. The beady eyes and empty sockets of the queen's dead subjects watched the orb being siphoned with horrible greedy delight. It twinkled out of sight behind the violet laces covering her spider abdomen as she smirked.
The warmth of Velvet's body instantly faded. Her skin withered and her head drooped forward. Her curvaceous vitality evaporated until she looked like dried out leather stretched over brittle bones. Her shimmering sequined blouse and her draping ruby skirt were decorating a corpse.
One of the tiny servants returned to her waist and snapped the black appendage several inches out from where it was still rooted firmly in her navel. She was left with a dangling black stem that dripped dark green blood and hung down the front of her skirt sash to mark her demise.
The rest of the tendril slithered back under Odette's gown where Velvet's life force had disappeared. The queened brush her bony palm over the spider portions of her waist as the forest witch's essence cooled down in her cauldron. The orb could barely be seen flickering through Odette's purple laces and chitin, where it changed into the shape of Velvet's bare outline struggling in vacant space. Her fight against Odette continued in spirit form before she was finally overwhelmed by Odette's inner power and went completely dark.
Odette shifted back into her mound of skulls to relax herself. She sat and waited while her cursed and monstrous body's involuntary functions completed her plans.
A moment later, a creaking and sloshing sound could be heard coming from under Odette's spider regions. Her long skirt flapped like purple suede curtains before a dark silhouette staggered out with a posture between crawling and walking.
Velvet was brought back as a demon carved out of amethyst flesh. Her deathly pale skin camouflaged well against the skulls littered around her naked feet. Her body was a confused mixture of allure and decay. Her bust and her hips were full and vibrant, but a little too much of her rib cage was showing in between for her to be mistaken as a living creature. Her hair was made of long tangled white wisps that loomed in front of her eyes. She stopped and stood up as the small ghoulish servants swarmed around her.
They hurriedly circled around her and draped her in her new garments. Her short blouse was lined with pearls styled as hundreds of spider eggs. Her waist was tied in a gypsy sash with extra hip width and strands of claw bones for tassels. The macabre skirt made her silhouette look like she had a bulbous arachnid abdomen with eight dangling legs for a waistline. Cobweb stockings were woven up to her thighs and topped with chitin slippers with pointed soles. A long black hood was drawn over her hair and tied around her neck. Its deep satin brim sat over the upper third of her face, so all she left visible was the dainty bridge of her nose and her wicked smiling blue lips.
The harrowing journey of rebirth had left Velvet hungry. Her hidden eyes fixed on the withered dancer's corpse crucified on the Phozon pillar in front of her, a rare and exquisite dinner wrapped in red lining. She slowly sauntered forward with her arms hanging at her sides and crouched over the abandoned body with her mouth gaping open.
Velvet claimed her sustenance in a concert of ripping fresh and snapping bones. Odette calmly watched her as she devoured her own remains, speaking in a dark and sinister voice.
"Now your suffering is over, little one. An entire era of barbarism and scandal destroyed the kingdom of Valentine. A tiny poke is all it took to destroy its princess."
Author's note: What is this midriff madness?
Author's note 2: I thought about naming this after the song "Point of No Return" by Exposé.