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Prelude ~ Incubator No. 14
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"Sister Aurora? Sister Aurora?"
"Yes?"
"Where are we…?"
"That's not important now."
"Everything is blurry…"
"You've simply been taking a nap, dear. You've just woken up."
"Aurora, we must begin." A male voice drifted into earshot. "The drug is wearing off."
"Mmh."
The ten-year-old girl's almost-violet eyes deliriously flickered upward to the ceiling of the ceremonial chamber, where a giant Halo of the Sun simmered in an unseen heat. Her dark hair lay sprawled beneath her light frame laid out upon the blood-encrusted altar. Through the haze that obscured her semi-conscious thought, the girl managed to recognize the symbol. Ah, yes, the Halo! She recalled the circular symbol well – it was the crest of God, a manifest of Her supreme divinity …Or, at least that was what she had been taught. The Sisters at Wish House had told her all about it, how the outer rings represented chastity and resurrection, how the inner circles formed past, present, and future. Through the clouds that drifted across her psyche, the girl drew up a memory of one particular lesson at the orphanage – if it could have even been called a lesson in the first place. Three years ago, the orphanage had held a "Colors of Faith" day –
Children in the classrooms hunched over religious coloring books, blackening Saint Alessa's hair and ensanguining God's scarlet robes with each crayon stroke. The little girl, at that time barely seven years old, found herself with a box of crayons and a large, blank Halo of the Sun staring back at her from the crisp white page. The girl's fingers reached into the box of crayons and emerged with a royal blue stick, her color of choice; she had not even touched the crayon to the page when she received a firm and resounding smack to the face. The crayon flew from her hand and clattered to the floor, where it was stamped upon by one severe Sister Aurora, barely a woman herself.
"No! No!" the twenty-year-old priestess spat vehemently, giving the girl another slap. "What do you think you're doing? Do you want to curse God?!"
"N…No…Sister Aurora…I…I love God…" peeped the girl, tears gathering in her eyes as she
glanced around the ceremonial chamber yet again, her consciousness now swirling back into its rightful clarity. Looming above her, silhouetted against the shimmering Halo, the girl saw Aurora and the other nine Officials of the Order. All wore strange masks, and though she knew nearly all of them by name, the girl could not recognize a single Official now. Only Sister Aurora's face was familiar – though, a similar mask rested atop her robed head.
"How do you feel?" said Aurora dimly, her apathetic tone of voice belying her sympathetic question.
"My tummy feels hot…" murmured the girl, who now found herself unable to move her body. Her limbs were numb, as if she'd slept on them for too long and had lost circulation, and the warmth in her stomach was beginning to intensity, almost as if something had begun to writhe within her . This sensation caused a vile chill to form in the pit of her gut - a kind of acidic fear and revulsion no child should ever have to experience.
"Good. We are ready, then," Aurora said coldly, pulling the mask down over her face, her lips pulled into a grim half-smile. This was the eleventh - and hopefully, Aurora had prayed, last - summoning attempt wrought by the Order, a cult dedicated to bringing about the return of their deity. Sister Aurora had revived the squandering cult and returned it to its former glory - well, almost. She was certainly no Dahlia Gillespie in terms of power or influence - but in terms of religious devotion, Aurora was on par with the rather infamous Sister Claudia Wolf. Many of Aurora's underlings would whisper about her psychotic tendencies, and most notoriously, her desperation to bring about the descent of God and the Paradise that would follow. This holy pursuit would eventually lead Aurora to the cult's own orphanage, Wish House, from which she would take girls and use them in freakish, bizarre rituals such as the one that was about to unfold. Disregarding logic in her desperation, Aurora would try to force God into these children, normal children, children who clearly would not be able to 'conceive' God as Saint Alessa had nearly half a century ago. Nevertheless --
"Begin the invocation," Aurora commanded a woman to her right. The woman nodded, and a string of foreign, sinister words escaped her lips, muffled somewhat by the demonlike mask she wore. As soon as the last of the ancient words left her lips, a great flash of light momentarily blinded the room. This was accompanied by a horrid, animalistic shriek from the girl on the altar – her stomach was afire with agony. Unable to move her body in response to the pain, the girl merely was able to wriggle her body uselessly upon the altar, shrieking all the while as some thing within devoured her.
"Do not scream! You're going to be the Mother of God!" urged Aurora to the writhing girl on the altar, an insane glint dancing in her eyes underneath her demonic mask. Perhaps this girl was the one...!
"Everyone, don't touch her!" warned an Official, a man.
"I don't believe it... Is it working?" quietly stammered the woman beside him in disbelief.
"SISTER AURORAAAA…!" screamed the girl, able to raise a quaking arm to reach out to the masked woman looming above her.
She had known nothing about this ceremony – only that it would make God happy...according to the Sisters. Naively, she had agreed to it out of devotion to her faith, to please the temperamental Sister Aurora, and above all else, to please God like a good little girl should. Sister Aurora had told her this would make everyone happy...Sister Aurora had...told her...this was happiness...? No...Sister Aurora had...lied...
"The conception is nearing completion," eagerly noted another woman. Above, the Halo of the Sun gleamed and rippled violently.
"AAAAAUUUUUUGGHHHHH…!" yowled the girl, her eyes shut tightly against the darkness that now began to writhe within her stomach, almost as if her muscles were contracting, desperately attempting to push something out, to rid the body of some horrid parasite. A terrible shrieking began to build – whether it was in her mind or an actual sound, the girl did not know. The noise came to an awful climax, and the girl cried out once more…and then, everything dimmed to silence. The shrieking noise had ceased - as did the contractions that had wracked the girl's body.
"Huh?" gasped another Order woman, throwing her gloved hand to her mask in shock.
"God is..."
"She's vanished!"
"She's… She's gone…"
"What happened?!" demanded Aurora furiously of her religious kin, her voice muffled behind her mask. "Where is God?! What has happened to Her?!
"The same thing that's happened eleven times before, Aurora. The girl couldn't contain Her," explained a man, leaning across the altar to make his point to the cult's leader. "And now we've lost Her. God's escaped us --"
"Whuh... N-No…" Aurora murmured, interrupting the man. Her voice then rose into a shriek, "NO! GOD! GOD!" She staggered backwards from the altar, clutching at her chest – then lunged forward a moment later at the half-unconscious girl.
"God's no longer here. Stop the ritual! The girl will die!" urged a male Official, tearing the mask off of his face and throwing himself at Aurora as another Official began injecting a clear substance into the girl's arm.
"Help me! Hold her back!" cried the man, pinning Aurora's arms behind her back as she writhed in his grasp, savage fury blazing in her eyes as she attempted to reach the girl. The mask flew from her face and clattered to the floor, loosened by her religious fury. Two other Officials abandoned the girl on the altar and hurried to restrain Aurora. A moment later, the giant Halo of the Sun blazing overhead began to slowly fade.
"You…" Aurora seethed, thrashing about in the Officials' arms as they began to drag her from the room. "Child of sin! I see it now. It has become clear. God has fled from us because of your filthy, impure soul! You shall never see Paradise! She will ensure that you rot in hell!" She then broke down into hysterical sobs – the last the girl would hear of Sister Aurora before the raging woman was escorted from the chamber. Through her agony-and-drug-induced stupor, the girl managed to glimpse the fading Halo of the Sun looming above. The symbol flickered once, twice, three times, as a dying light bulb would, before dissipating into the air, and it was then that she lost consciousness.
