(Warning(s]: Graphic body horror]

It had begun as a black and vile substance that seethes from the pith of his chest, tar that blackened his teeth and tightened his esophagus with a caulk that could not remove itself no matter how much he'd coughed, hacked, sagged beneath the outcome of potions and pultuces and spells of which had little effect. Wong was beguiled into believing it was but a skirmish in the beyond, within realms nightmarish and monstrous that had rendered him to but a momentary semblance of weakness. A lapse that would pass in transpiration like all the others. Scar-stained hands revealed only in the intimacy of friendship would be offered in placation, Wong unable to do aught else but comply skeptically.

His body was committing reason against him. The Sorcerer Supreme brimmed with a supernatural malevolence in the depths of him, of something that had started but could not be stopped. For humanity he'd sold his soul. For humanity he'd relinquished a former life to facilitate its absolute protection. He, the buffer between worlds and monstrous divinity that might seek to wreak havoc upon the Earth–was this something even the Eye of Agamotto could not have foreseen.

In the train of thought was it derailed in a hurdling violence, the Sorcerer Supreme keeled over from his place within the bowels of his chambers, plummeting from the anchor of a bed once shared and now emptied of occupation save for himself, feet pedaling for purchase as he leaned and roiled like the eternal chaos of the turmoil of the stormy sea. Hands shaken gripped the wooden threshold leading into the bathroom, a heaviness clinging to his chest that sundered his balance.

"What's–what's going on?" Stephen's voice stumbled, staggering from a parched throat as the man felt gooseflesh boil upon his skin, growing gnarled, flesh discoloring a sickening pallor. Something writhed beneath, as though serpents and insects that elicited a squelch of skin rippling and coiling. As though his very veins were alive and creating a stream within. But he couldn't let Wong see, he couldn't–

A cry broke from his throat this time, doubling over in a sublimity of pain and agony, bones crackling from the hearth of his chest and his spine snapping and distorting beneath its fleshed housing. A crippling wave of it surged throughout him, he wanting nothing more than to retract into the deepest parts of his being whilst–NOTHING COULD COMPARE TO THIS!

AGONY, ALL HE COULD
PERCEIVE WAS A WAKELESS,
TEARING FROM HIS BODY,
RECALLING HIM, RECANTING HIM–

It burst from his arched back, flesh swimming sickly as it parted before tearing in grotesque recoil, blood spurting as bloodied vertebrae spiked and gored from his skin, menacing from his back as his robe tore seams and stains. He was blinded, Strange unable to cope as it was as his sight was robbed. His cranium boiled and Stephen's hands flew to mask his eyes from the sun that was erupting from them. He screams with as much as is left of his voice, a cacophonous and despairing sound that reverberated with the horror that was befalling him.

The man cannot gouge his eyes from his skull, cannot deafen himself, cannot tear tongue and vocal chords enough to cease the resplendence of such a terrible agony. Yet, his nails claw into his flesh and he begins to frantically shred it from his abdomen, ribbons and welts forming where it falls from his body like hot wax, Stephen agape and frozen in horror. He blanked even as his eyes were afire, skin shedding from the shell of his being as a wrinkled and gnarled hide flourished, pores wide and breathing. It falls, it peels, and he stands blearily, stands to run from it, a demon's voice murkily cloaking his erudite tonality, a human's voice morphing into a brusque and bestial mockery of it.

He falls calamitously and with such a great dissonance that he almost believes he falls into another unreality, scrambling upon the floor even as another labored seizure of paralysis takes him, eyes and posture wheeling as he claws and grapples with the floor and reality as it slips from his fingers, talons– His body heaves as he vomits and gurgles with the black tar from before, overflowing his mouth to pool thickly at his chin, continuously heaving and hacking until his body runs dry from it.

But, he cannot handle so much anymore. The Sorcerer Supreme collapses in such an impartial transformation, to awaken to what awaited.

A long and bleary haze awoke to him, rays of slatted sunlight filtering into his vision, spectral orbs of unholy fire snapping open to meet it in kind. A shuddering gasp started as his body uncoiled, nocturnal and bare awareness believing it to be serpents come to poison him with a deeper delirium. Lips parted to reveal deadly and bloodied serrations, a tongue that could only be described as an appendage snaking from his maw, unblinking eyes cracking upon it before closing as it furled back within his mouth.

His head felt heavier, the swoosh of wind breaking past jagged horns, the Sorcerer snarling uncertainly at their manifestation. The third eye upon his forehead and at their crux was forever affixed to the heavens where They watched, Stephen shutting them out as realization curdled miserably in his veins. What he was was awesomely and fearfully made, even as the human and the monster slowly experienced a dissonance of severance, words slopping from his fangs like blood and as incoherent as dribbling rainfall.

Something built in the back of his throat, rage trembling in his heart and blood boiling blacker than what thickened in his veins. Nostrils flared and tongue flicked for a summation of what diffused in the air, lowering his head once more as his tentacles and unruly appendages furled into him in a single, heaving motion. Was he losing himself? Strange bit his tongue bitterly, a man in conscience for but a moment.

You are the Alazarine King now.

A scream that could deafen the whole of the cosmos tore from his throat.

Last Thoughts: And here we have Stephen beginning his terrible transformation into the Alizarine King. While the first chapter set the stage for the overall premise of the Alizarine King, here we have him in his gruesome and terrible transformation. Pretty hardcore stuff, isn't it? Ah, if only you all knew...

More to come soon.~

~Peace, G.