Explication:
Part Two: The Color of Blood
Trapped in purgatory
A lifeless object, alive
Awaiting reprisal
Death will be their acquisition
The sky is turning red
Return to power draws near
Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears
Abolish the rules made of stone
Pierced from below, souls of my treacherous past
Betrayed by many, now ornaments dripping above
Awaiting the hour of reprisal
Your time slips away
Raining blood
From a lacerated sky
Bleeding its horror
Creating my structure
Now I shall reign in blood
Tori Amos, Raining Blood
1.1 These days it seemed to him more than ever that he was the one on the rack. Even if he didn't feel the ropes burning into his wrists, the worn lacerations with their red sore mouths over the pure skin there, tearing his arms out of their sockets with slow finality as his body was stretched past its limits. Even if he didn't feel the roller of spikes laid across the Portuguese rack, tearing the skin of his back and the countless needful array of muscles beneath to pieces like frayed hemp as she was pushed and pulled back and forth along the spikes in a psychotic game of tug-of-war. If it was she who was broken, screams muffled by the long ugly wagging tongue of the scold's bridle that stopped her mouth, it was he who felt truly tortured. As he watched, the beautiful crimson flow of the blood had ended its power to take all the endless suffering and ennui inside him away. It was a mechanical game.
Even the taste, slippery over his fingers, the biting copper taste which had always held such power for sadistic pleasure meant nothing. He growled quietly, a deep dreadful sound carried up under his breath and trickling though parted lips slightly colored reddish, like the brick-red fall of his superfluous hair. With that growl, something broke, and wordlessly Duke Astaroth stalked out of his torture chamber.
Why did nothing seem right or usual now that she was gone?
His steps whispered on the stones- vinyl boots loosely laced up his long legs creaked a little. It was a curious collection of soft sounds that heralded his presence, when there were any at all. Previously, the hissing of a snake… but that was now over, wasn't it? He looked in the mirror, and the arcane mark of Lucifer's seal on his forehead had disappeared, giving the truth out to everyone like poisoned candy. Astaroth was alone in his own body.
And if he had waited for this moment for centuries, millenia? If he had forced himself to despise her, when it was difficult and when it was easy? If he had tortured her in the only way it was possible for him to torture the twin sister trapped as he was himself in this pathetic body? If he had killed her chances for motherhood (such as they were or might have been) and denied her any contact with other beings?
He hadn't ever really hated her. There was in his heart, only one 'her' and she had been the one. If there was love there, he wasn't aware. He didn't understand love himself, or care to understand it. If he had ever received love or felt it that was an unknown mystery among the countless unknown mysteries. In the experience of Astaroth, Duke of Terror, love was just another method of torture.
He did the same things, in the same way, since she died- but it bored him. He had an inkling of this during Belial's distastrous "wedding party" when that tender little girl who he had let slip from him was rescued so messily by the Messiah and the Emperor of Hell's own monstrous son.
Once, the only thing necessary for Astaroth's enjoyment of an event- and here we refer to the mad, spiteful enjoyment of the Furies of Hell,- was the sight of blood flowing. Blood had flown- even the hated Belial was laid momentarily low. But all the yelling, the theatrical mess, the uncontrolled frenzy- all of it had meant nothing to him. Less than nothing, it had bored him. He had left early, only to hear later the full account of events from Asmodeus. Needless to say, the Duke of Terror's interest in those events could have filled a thimble.
Perhaps out of fear of losing one of his most potent allies, Asmodeus had begun sending tribute shortly after. Boys, girls, beings of great beauty and certain talent. Astaroth put them to the torture with as much real enthusiasm as a man attacking the same tasteless gruel he has been forced to eat for months in a row. He thought it helped a little- at first he always believed the blood flow, the beautiful crimson tide, and the methodical destruction of another living being would have the power to imbue him with ecstasy once more. But it was never enough. The great aching, empty hole that had been worn painfully into his spirit long ago now yawned open wider, able to be filled with nothing and healed by nothing.
More and more he reminded himself of the witch in the fable, thought of finding some boy or girl with the power and will to torture him on his own devices. That would be a fitting end, like the punishment of Lucifer he had courted not long earlier. It would put an end to the pain he had always felt, the boredom he had always felt… which now was assuaged by nothing.
But would Astaroth, cruelest and bloodiest warrior of the Seven Satans, truly let some powerless child best him so? The man in question, the jewel of fire veiled in silken hair the color of fresh blood, bent slightly over in the hallway and laughed the mad laugh of one who is not losing his mind quite fast enough.
Falling through blackness, that sense of nausea and weightlessness, was beginning to seem commonplace to Vincent. He felt psychic- he knew exactly when he would hit bottom, but it did him little good. His feet caught, but slid on uneven ground littered with something and sent him sprawling to his back. Muscles pulled, and the sharp twinge in his ankle warned him he might have turned it under something. When eyes finally blinked free of irritating reactive watering, he could turn his head to look around.
And feel a chill slide its way down his spine that had nothing at all to do with the icy air. This pit was filled with bones. The floor was covered with them- darkish from rot and in various states of decay. Some looked as though they had been gnawed by little teeth: Rats, his mind said and Vincent welcomed the thought. Getting to his feet, he thought with a hint of a smile that if this wasn't his subconscious mind's work, at least it belonged to a person with similar tastes in literature.
I think we are in rat's alley, where the dead men lost their bones.
His lips moved. He realized he was repeating the lines of the poem out loud, with a whisper of his normal voice, as he moved over the carpet of rather salt-stinking bones. That and the careful exactness of footwork, trying not to stumble again and perhaps more badly injure himself, were the only things keeping Vincent so calm, and he knew it. Even for a man used to dealing with dangerous men, even for a man who had seen other men killed at a very young age, such things as this were not normal or desirable. He didn't even think a man who had killed another could have stood this dark, rotting blanket of death.
"What is that? What is the wind doing? Nothing again nothing."
There were no exits to this place, and for a moment Vincent was stifled with the fear that he had dropped into a crevice from which he would never escape. He would starve to death, an ugly cruel death, and his flesh and bones would feed the damned rats.
Then he saw something like a little crevice, no different from many except there was light behind it. He made his slow way over the skeletons and squeezed his way through it, rough and jagged abutments in the stone face scraping his bare skin.
"Do you know nothing? Do you feel nothing? I know… those are pearls that were his eyes."
The crevice was a long stretch like that, stifling and claustrophobic. The light only served to highlight the grotesque striped surface of rock, dripped with black lines that were probably mineral deposits left by the water line but looked like dried blood. The passage was certainly scraping up Vincent nicely, and tearing his robe. His feet had been torn so many times he kept wanting to pick them up and check for blood flow, but never quite did. Onward, onward.
"I'm beginning to see what escargot feels like," he muttered to himself, a pathetic rich-man's homage to Die Hard. He had no idea how long this narrow fissure went on, but he did know there was light behind it, and so continued, pulling his torn robe off knobs of rock more and more every second. At last the fissure widened into a sort of antechamber, and that led off into a wide, broad hallway. The first signs of living beings he'd seen in this place were in that hall, in the form of tall braziers spilling out eerie red light and larger quantities of white smoke. The scent of the smoke was similar to incense, but of a type that choked and brought tears to the eyes like… pepper.
He was facing away, staring at the braziers, and so he didn't see the other being in that long hallway until it was too late.
Astaroth's head came up suddenly, with the finality of a striking snake. Under the straight fall of brick-red strands of hair, his dark eyes shimmered. The life force of another beat in this place, filling the braziers' smoke with the stranger pulses of his power. It didn't seem quite demonic, or yet quite human, but it held enough power to rouse the paranoia of one of the Satan's.
When those amber ouroboros eyes found this creature- instantly, the starlight-blond hair and white chiton stood out in stark relief against the anguish-grey of the rock walls, Astaroth simply shot a blast of pure energy at his back. The young demon-human creature crumpled instantly, and stretched on the cold stone floor.
Part Two: The Color of Blood
Trapped in purgatory
A lifeless object, alive
Awaiting reprisal
Death will be their acquisition
The sky is turning red
Return to power draws near
Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears
Abolish the rules made of stone
Pierced from below, souls of my treacherous past
Betrayed by many, now ornaments dripping above
Awaiting the hour of reprisal
Your time slips away
Raining blood
From a lacerated sky
Bleeding its horror
Creating my structure
Now I shall reign in blood
Tori Amos, Raining Blood
1.1 These days it seemed to him more than ever that he was the one on the rack. Even if he didn't feel the ropes burning into his wrists, the worn lacerations with their red sore mouths over the pure skin there, tearing his arms out of their sockets with slow finality as his body was stretched past its limits. Even if he didn't feel the roller of spikes laid across the Portuguese rack, tearing the skin of his back and the countless needful array of muscles beneath to pieces like frayed hemp as she was pushed and pulled back and forth along the spikes in a psychotic game of tug-of-war. If it was she who was broken, screams muffled by the long ugly wagging tongue of the scold's bridle that stopped her mouth, it was he who felt truly tortured. As he watched, the beautiful crimson flow of the blood had ended its power to take all the endless suffering and ennui inside him away. It was a mechanical game.
Even the taste, slippery over his fingers, the biting copper taste which had always held such power for sadistic pleasure meant nothing. He growled quietly, a deep dreadful sound carried up under his breath and trickling though parted lips slightly colored reddish, like the brick-red fall of his superfluous hair. With that growl, something broke, and wordlessly Duke Astaroth stalked out of his torture chamber.
Why did nothing seem right or usual now that she was gone?
His steps whispered on the stones- vinyl boots loosely laced up his long legs creaked a little. It was a curious collection of soft sounds that heralded his presence, when there were any at all. Previously, the hissing of a snake… but that was now over, wasn't it? He looked in the mirror, and the arcane mark of Lucifer's seal on his forehead had disappeared, giving the truth out to everyone like poisoned candy. Astaroth was alone in his own body.
And if he had waited for this moment for centuries, millenia? If he had forced himself to despise her, when it was difficult and when it was easy? If he had tortured her in the only way it was possible for him to torture the twin sister trapped as he was himself in this pathetic body? If he had killed her chances for motherhood (such as they were or might have been) and denied her any contact with other beings?
He hadn't ever really hated her. There was in his heart, only one 'her' and she had been the one. If there was love there, he wasn't aware. He didn't understand love himself, or care to understand it. If he had ever received love or felt it that was an unknown mystery among the countless unknown mysteries. In the experience of Astaroth, Duke of Terror, love was just another method of torture.
He did the same things, in the same way, since she died- but it bored him. He had an inkling of this during Belial's distastrous "wedding party" when that tender little girl who he had let slip from him was rescued so messily by the Messiah and the Emperor of Hell's own monstrous son.
Once, the only thing necessary for Astaroth's enjoyment of an event- and here we refer to the mad, spiteful enjoyment of the Furies of Hell,- was the sight of blood flowing. Blood had flown- even the hated Belial was laid momentarily low. But all the yelling, the theatrical mess, the uncontrolled frenzy- all of it had meant nothing to him. Less than nothing, it had bored him. He had left early, only to hear later the full account of events from Asmodeus. Needless to say, the Duke of Terror's interest in those events could have filled a thimble.
Perhaps out of fear of losing one of his most potent allies, Asmodeus had begun sending tribute shortly after. Boys, girls, beings of great beauty and certain talent. Astaroth put them to the torture with as much real enthusiasm as a man attacking the same tasteless gruel he has been forced to eat for months in a row. He thought it helped a little- at first he always believed the blood flow, the beautiful crimson tide, and the methodical destruction of another living being would have the power to imbue him with ecstasy once more. But it was never enough. The great aching, empty hole that had been worn painfully into his spirit long ago now yawned open wider, able to be filled with nothing and healed by nothing.
More and more he reminded himself of the witch in the fable, thought of finding some boy or girl with the power and will to torture him on his own devices. That would be a fitting end, like the punishment of Lucifer he had courted not long earlier. It would put an end to the pain he had always felt, the boredom he had always felt… which now was assuaged by nothing.
But would Astaroth, cruelest and bloodiest warrior of the Seven Satans, truly let some powerless child best him so? The man in question, the jewel of fire veiled in silken hair the color of fresh blood, bent slightly over in the hallway and laughed the mad laugh of one who is not losing his mind quite fast enough.
Falling through blackness, that sense of nausea and weightlessness, was beginning to seem commonplace to Vincent. He felt psychic- he knew exactly when he would hit bottom, but it did him little good. His feet caught, but slid on uneven ground littered with something and sent him sprawling to his back. Muscles pulled, and the sharp twinge in his ankle warned him he might have turned it under something. When eyes finally blinked free of irritating reactive watering, he could turn his head to look around.
And feel a chill slide its way down his spine that had nothing at all to do with the icy air. This pit was filled with bones. The floor was covered with them- darkish from rot and in various states of decay. Some looked as though they had been gnawed by little teeth: Rats, his mind said and Vincent welcomed the thought. Getting to his feet, he thought with a hint of a smile that if this wasn't his subconscious mind's work, at least it belonged to a person with similar tastes in literature.
I think we are in rat's alley, where the dead men lost their bones.
His lips moved. He realized he was repeating the lines of the poem out loud, with a whisper of his normal voice, as he moved over the carpet of rather salt-stinking bones. That and the careful exactness of footwork, trying not to stumble again and perhaps more badly injure himself, were the only things keeping Vincent so calm, and he knew it. Even for a man used to dealing with dangerous men, even for a man who had seen other men killed at a very young age, such things as this were not normal or desirable. He didn't even think a man who had killed another could have stood this dark, rotting blanket of death.
"What is that? What is the wind doing? Nothing again nothing."
There were no exits to this place, and for a moment Vincent was stifled with the fear that he had dropped into a crevice from which he would never escape. He would starve to death, an ugly cruel death, and his flesh and bones would feed the damned rats.
Then he saw something like a little crevice, no different from many except there was light behind it. He made his slow way over the skeletons and squeezed his way through it, rough and jagged abutments in the stone face scraping his bare skin.
"Do you know nothing? Do you feel nothing? I know… those are pearls that were his eyes."
The crevice was a long stretch like that, stifling and claustrophobic. The light only served to highlight the grotesque striped surface of rock, dripped with black lines that were probably mineral deposits left by the water line but looked like dried blood. The passage was certainly scraping up Vincent nicely, and tearing his robe. His feet had been torn so many times he kept wanting to pick them up and check for blood flow, but never quite did. Onward, onward.
"I'm beginning to see what escargot feels like," he muttered to himself, a pathetic rich-man's homage to Die Hard. He had no idea how long this narrow fissure went on, but he did know there was light behind it, and so continued, pulling his torn robe off knobs of rock more and more every second. At last the fissure widened into a sort of antechamber, and that led off into a wide, broad hallway. The first signs of living beings he'd seen in this place were in that hall, in the form of tall braziers spilling out eerie red light and larger quantities of white smoke. The scent of the smoke was similar to incense, but of a type that choked and brought tears to the eyes like… pepper.
He was facing away, staring at the braziers, and so he didn't see the other being in that long hallway until it was too late.
Astaroth's head came up suddenly, with the finality of a striking snake. Under the straight fall of brick-red strands of hair, his dark eyes shimmered. The life force of another beat in this place, filling the braziers' smoke with the stranger pulses of his power. It didn't seem quite demonic, or yet quite human, but it held enough power to rouse the paranoia of one of the Satan's.
When those amber ouroboros eyes found this creature- instantly, the starlight-blond hair and white chiton stood out in stark relief against the anguish-grey of the rock walls, Astaroth simply shot a blast of pure energy at his back. The young demon-human creature crumpled instantly, and stretched on the cold stone floor.