Disclaimer: Slayers belongs to Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi, not me. I'm not making any profit off of this, too.
Warning: This chapter contains violence, as does a later one. All violence is described, since my Language Arts teachers always told me to describe things. If you have any complaints, well, complain to them. I did. Oh, and there's surrealism everywhere, which my teachers complained about to me. (But they never did say, "This has to be realistic," when giving an assignment, even when I asked them if it did.)
Gates of Ivory and Horn
Part 0 * Chapter 0
Dream a Little Dream
Xelloss opened his eyes slowly, not quite sure if he was awake because he was certain that under normal circumstances he'd not be feeling his non-existence pulse in his head. His ears slowly started working, and he could hear...screams...
That voice sounded familiar.
His eyes finally focused, and he saw... A blood-stained stone floor below his feet by at least a yard. A low stone altar, with grooves on it so that blood spilled upon it would flow down into a floral vase that simply didn't match the whole dungeon decor of the room.
The current occupant of the altar was Filia. Two figures, wrapped in cloths in such a way to blur their features to the point where Xelloss couldn't begin to guess their gender, no less their species, were leaning over her bare chest. One of them was holding a bloody-edged scalpel, and it looked like they were silently talking over where next to cut the woman on the altar.
Slowly, his mind put together the pieces and he realized that Filia was naked, though her blood formed on her a sick parody of a body stocking, like a thick coat of paint that had been applied to her skin.
He watched, feeling sickened yet fascinated and wondering why he found this sickening.
The two figures talked to each other without making any sounds that Xelloss could hear, and one of them produced, from nowhere, a long knife, the scalpel vanishing. Its blade gleamed darkness, a sharp and jagged black tear in the foggy dimness of the room and the bright spotlights on the altar. The one holding the blade lifted it and turned the blade, and lifted it like a priest about to perform a sacrifice.
If that figure's face had been uncovered, Xelloss was sure from its pose and movements, there would have been engraved upon it a gigantic evil grin.
The show, the silent gloating, over, the figure turned back and plunged the knife into Filia's stomach, just deep enough to cut through the upper layers of tissue and leisurely pulled the blade to her collarbone. A second leisurely cut from shoulder to shoulder of the same depth crossed the top of the first.
The knife-holding figure stepped back to allow its partner -- assistant? -- to pull back to two flaps of flesh, revealing Filia's ribcage. The blade-holder still standing back, a pair of pruning shears, or what looked very much like pruning shears, were gotten from the same place as the knife by the assistant.
The sound of Filia's ribs getting cut was a sharp snap of breaking bone.
The shears were returned to where they had come from, and the one who had cut her ribs gingerly pushed the cut open so her still-beating heart and her lungs, struggling to pull enough air in, were revealed.
The rib-cutter stepped back, and the blade wielder stepped forward.
There was a grace in this macabre dance, one only gotten from having danced it hundred, thousands, millions of times.
The knife deftly cut the cords of flesh holding the heart in, and, blood now pouring everywhere, her heart was lifted out and held up on display to the universe.
As what passed at least for reality faded into the mists of unconsciousness, Xelloss wondered how she could still be screaming.
Okay, people. Time for the ground rules to get laid out:
I can be bribed to get more of this done sooner with the application of comments and reviews. (Fanart based off of this works, too.) I can also be bribed to explain some of the references to more obscure sections of mythology and the like with the same techniques.
So, please review and / or comment! (If you are a fellow author on fanfiction.net, please sign your reviews so I can take a look at your own work and at least try to return the favor.)