Demonmachy Chapter Three

The Necrodelic's bestial spaceship skimmed the crimson cumulus of Grystiawa's atmosphere, its shadows falling not only upon the clouds, but into the clouds, as though they had mass and weight, or were composed of antimatter. The shadows dwelled inside the clouds like gargantuan parasites, their bodies visible through the layers of mist like ticks nestled in flesh, or spiders gestating in translucent egg sacs.
The nearly tangible nature of the spaceship's shadow was a dark testament to the raw, pure power of the vessel and its master, as well as an ominous sigil which augured the extreme evil of the invader. Like a black hole moon, the writhing spaceship orbited the rim of the planet, dropping its shadows into the clouds, across the scab-like deserts, and onto the maroon mountain ranges. With the deliberate slowness of a predator, the bestial spaceship circled closer and closer to the surface, until the creatures fleeing across the wastelands could make out its sinister features with their naked eyes.
The hideous vessel seemed an amalgamation of every species that had ever lived, joined together by surgery and sorcery. Appropriately named the Omnibeast, the soaring monstrosity was the result of several millennia of conquerment and enslavement, subjugation and domination, breeding and mutation, vivisection and necromancy. Large, triangular dragon scales protruded from the ship's outer skin, vertical and diagonal mountain ranges that often converged to protect the ship's vital parts. Several of these vital parts were the Omnibeast's crimson eyes, which were now blinking open to gaze across the Grystiawan landscape. Humongous, black, open-mouthed nightworms with rings of sabretooth fangs, some of which dripped venom, protruded from the exterior of the mammoth vessel. Hundreds of eyestalks extended from the spaceship as well, ending in swiveling bloodshot spheres that looked about in all directions. If followed into the vessel with X-ray vision, one would see those same nightworms and eyestalks flowing seamlessly into the hundreds of umbilical cords that were ubiquitous throughout the ship. Those umbilical cords controlled the Omnibeast like the multi-tipped whips of a hecatoncheire dominatrix. They looped, mazed, slithered, and burrowed through glands, nerves, organs, oracles, and altars of sacrifice, ultimately converging in the nexus of the vessel. Inside this central cockpit the Necrodelic's body was attached to the umbilical tubes, and through them he controlled the nervous system, circulatory system, digestive system, endocrine system, and every other aspect of the living spaceship, sometimes giving it coordinates for flights across the universe and sometimes commanding it in cataclysmic battles and apocalyptic space-wars. The umbilical cords pumped thousands of drugs and hormones, hypnotic suggestions and Satanic chantings, black electricity and sacrificial blood, into and out of the Omnibeast's consciousness. They were the chains of the dungeonkeeper, the reins of the dragonrider, the whips of the beastmaster. They were lifelines in the grip of the Necrodelic, and through them Chariah possessed the Omnibeast in much the same way he often possessed the minds, the flesh, and the souls of the innocent and the damned. Through the umbilical cords, Chariah was at one with his sentient, intergalactic monstrosity. The bestial spaceship was an extension of the Necrodelic's dark spirit, just like a possessed victim, just like his own physical body.
Extending from the Omnibeast's carapace like turrets were the eight Hydratowers, rearing back on hundred-foot long necks in a circle around the center of the spaceship's roof. Each severed but still-living hydra head faced in a different direction, equidistant from one another, like the points of a compass. The eight legs of a gargantuan spider protruded from the ship's underbelly to form the Arachniotics, the vessel's landing gear. The Omnibeast also possessed four giant, living figureheads: the Overdragon, Scythetooth, War Mantis, and Darkworm. Each behemoth had been embedded in the ship and bonded to its nervous system. The Overdragon was breathing fire from what was currently serving as the front of the spaceship, and it was before his fiery maw that the inhabitants of Grystiawa now fled. Its fanged mouth breathed the very flames of Hell from its interplanal lungs, and was capable of unleashing the fiery tornadoes and hurricanes of the infernal underworld, as well. It could destroy or devour a moon or a small planet within a matter of hours.
The Overdragon's head extended from a long, thick neck, adorned by plates and spikes, that seemed perpetually arisen for battle. Above its crimson eyes and crocodilian snout the horns of Satan crackled with black electricity, sometimes oozing blood from their tips during combat. They were strong enough to trigger supernovas and sharp enough to cut through the very fabric of space and time. The Overdragon's horns had been bestowed upon it by Satan himself, for the Overdragon had once been the high priest of a race of devil-worshipping dragonmen. It had been conquered by the Necrodelic in an ancient, bygone age, and after the Necrodelic had genocided its species, he had made the Overdragon into a living sacrifice. Subjugated to Chariah's necromancy, and bonded by a blood debt, the creature had been used as the basis from which the rest of the bestial spaceship was grown. Its slanted eyes still burned red in their sockets with the wisdom of its eons of existence, but they were enslaved to their demon master, and the Overdragon had very little hope of becoming the Jh'a'vyraa. Its titanic body was now nothing more than a steed and a slave for its possessor.
The Overdragon breathed tsunamis of flame across the badlands, searing the flesh off of various monsters and demons in less than a nanosecond, and leaving mushroom clouds and billowing smoke in its wake. Charred skeletons stood amidst the conflagrations for several moments before collapsing to the singed and smoking ground. Deserts of maroon sand transformed into plains of black glass as the Overdragon scorched the planet's surface with Hellfire.
Deep inside the Omnibeast, Chariah watched the devastation through telescopic umbilical cords. The smell of roasted flesh wafted into the cockpit in sooty clouds of oily smoke, transported to the chamber directly from the killing fields and exhaled by the various umbilical cords which dangled and swayed from the floor, walls, and ceiling. The Necrodelic breathed in the smoked flesh and was soon suffused with the pleasant sensation of necrodelia. Though far less powerful than smoking flesh from the Bloodbong, it nonetheless heightened his senses, sharpened his instincts, and created a feeling of tranquility. The umbilical cords exhaled puffs of smoke like mouths, and the cockpit soon grew murky and became covered with a fine silt of ashes.
Rhythmically breathing in and out, as though deep in meditation, Chariah telepathically flew the Omnibeast across Grystiawa, spreading genocide and coming a little closer to becoming the Jh'a'vyraa with every murder. With umbilical cords attached to his eyelids, he searched for Morpheus Rex. The ground and sky blurred past at supersonic speeds. Far below, the little creatures ran and died, and even the tallest anakim and largest nephilim seemed like insects as the flames struck them. He caught a few winged spiders in mid-air with fireballs as well. Some of the spiders exploded, while others crashed like flaming meteors to the ground. Others the Omnibeast swallowed whole. Mountaintops whizzed by and the Overdragon assailed them with barrages of Hellfire. Giant black tentacles reached out from the Omnibeast and snatched organisms from caves and peaks and valleys, to be absorbed into the vessel through one of its myriad orifices and borne through its veins and arteries into Chariah's dungeons.
Once past the mountain range, Chariah directed the spaceship east, and momentarily glimpsed the flashing colors of Morpheus Rex's Prismsword. Chariah could smell the dreams of his enemy from afar, and as he breathed in their mixture of perfume and decay, the Oneirophage's dreams from the previous night played like reveries in his brain. His mind's eye watched the Oneirophage metamorphose into Satan and swim through an ocean of blood where mermaids played and a beating heart the size of a planet churned the waters with a hypnotic rhythm. Chariah hissed as he observed the Oneirophage divining from the oracle of his own exposed brain, with a sensation that was like being in an interdimensional labyrinth of broken mirrors. He snarled and flexed his claws as he observed the Oneirophage's desire for Mother Chaos, and the wet dreams wherein the dream-eater raped Chariah's soulmate.
Detaching himself from the umbilical cords as the Omnibeast landed, Chariah left the cockpit and made his way through the labyrinth of his vessel. A few minutes later, the jaws of the Overdragon opened, its fangs raised like a portcullis, and the Necrodelic emerged from its corridor-like throat to stand within its dripping maw, his long, black hair streaming behind him, surrounded by clouds of sulfurous smoke.
"Drakhus," he spoke. The dragon's tongue elongated and lowered its master to the ground several hundred feet below.
The Necrodelic stood as dark, as silent, and as still as outer space, making his descent with stoic evil. His black mane billowed behind him, fluttering and floating on the downward breezes. As he stepped onto the surface of Grystiawa, the soul of the planet shuddered like a submissive bitch. With Hell in his eyes, Chariah gazed across the blood-red badlands, his enlightened demonsight drinking in every detail of the new battlefield for thousands of miles around.
The Necrodelic focused his crimson eyes upon his prey. His demonsight isolated Morpheus Rex several miles in the distance, hunting beyond the horizon, stalking the badlands adjacent to a mountain range. Chariah watched as Morpheus Rex battled, subdued, and captured a Grystiawan demon. He observed the Dreaming Predator's strengths and weaknesses, his fighting techniques and tendencies, his massive muscles and psychedelic tattoos. For one eternal moment, the Necrodelic spied upon Morpheus Rex the same way Satan spied upon the universe: from beyond. Then, in one timeless instant, from miles away, the Necrodelic gazed directly into Morpheus Rex's eyes.
The Dreaming Predator felt the Necrodelic's flaming eye contact before he saw it. It was like being telepathically abacinated. When he raised his eyes to meet the Necrodelic's, two infrared beams formed across the wastelands, locking the warriors together with eye contact as tangible as fire, eye contact that pierced like branding irons, the eye contact of bellipotent demons destined to do battle since the beginning of time.
The infrared eye contact drew the Necrodelic across the vast expanses of desert to combat Morpheus Rex. Chariah could no more unlock his gaze than he could gouge his own eyeballs out. Morpheus Rex's eyes had likewise been impaled, as surely as if incandescent spikes had been driven through them and then drilled through his entire brain, emerging from the back of his skull and pinning his head to a wall of brimstone. With hot blood running down his face, he watched the Necrodelic come. The infrared beams grew shorter as the Necrodelic approached. Chariah strode with the purpose of a panther, then came to a catlike stop a mere foot from his prey. His black claws glinted, his dark muscles rippled. They were his only weapons, but they were among the deadliest in the universe. His only armor was his skin, his chiseled physique, his healing powers, and his immense capacity for physical damage. The Necrodelic fought naked, for he was practically immortal, and his threshold for pain was nearly indomitable. His sorceries were as deadly as his claws, and as cruel as Satan himself. An infinity of necromantic spells were stored within his charred brain and scorched soul. The flesh-smoking demon palpably radiated death.
Morpheus Rex raised his Prismsword and Spectrumhammer, reflecting the infrared eye contact across the badlands like the veins and arteries of Grystiawa's sunsets. Morpheus Rex gazed upon the Necrodelic with bloody-rimmed eyes, thousands of colors flashing inside them every second, like prisms spinning beneath a solar flare.
"I've been dreaming of you," hissed Morpheus Rex, his voice the susurrus of a serpent, his three forked tongues flickering in and out of his mouth. "I've been dreaming of you every night. I've been dreaming of you making love to Mother Chaos. Dreaming of your extinctions of entire species, your genocides of entire races, your detonations of entire solar systems. I've been dreaming of your Bloodbong, your Omnibeast, your necromancies. Soon, I will be eating your dreams and drinking your blood. Soon, I will be haunted by your ghost in my bedchambers. When I sleep, I will dream your dreams, grow wet with your fantasies, and scream from your nightmares. After tonight, Necrodelic, you shall dream nevermore."
Chariah watched Morpheus Rex's three forked tongues slither back and forth. They darted in and out of his rainbow lips while he spoke in the sibilant language of serpentkind. Morpheus Rex rose up and swayed like a cobra while he talked of dreams and threatened death. Like a cobra he paused, and then, like a cobra, he struck, Prismsword curving through the air in a rainbow arch aimed for the Necrodelic's neck.
Sparks flew as Chariah deflected the blow, and then, with razor-sharp claws pressed against razor-sharp blade, Chariah leaned in close to Morpheus Rex's face, bared his fangs, and snarled, "You'll be dreaming in Hell tonight."
Their eye contact materialized again, redder and hotter than before. Morpheus Rex's eyes were welded to the Necrodelic's stare like cauterized flesh. His eyelids were immoveable, adhered like roasted skin to lenses and sockets alike. Sparks filled the air between the two demons, and then the fires of Hell came roaring through Chariah's soul, through his incandescent eyes which had been forged in those very fires, and the space between Morpheus Rex and him exploded.
Flames reached a thousand feet into the skies, thunder shook the ground and air, and the explosion of Hellfire threw the Dreaming Predator a mile into the distance. Chariah stood peacefully amidst the roaring fire and black smoke, calm and serene in his natural habitat, a pleasant rush of pyromania flowing through his body.
The same glowing eyes which had brought Hellfire to Grystiawa watched Morpheus Rex blow backwards through the red-hot air and into the distant wastelands. Seconds later, Morpheus Rex landed on his feet in a battle stance, holding the Prismsword at a diagonal angle and the Spectrumhammer over his head. Chariah did not hesitate, but charged at once from the wall of fire. One demonic leap landed him nearly atop the stunned Morpheus Rex, but he came down with the Rainbowspear firmly driven through his thigh. The Necrodelic had barely twisted enough, at the apex of his flight, to avoid being castrated in mid-air by the ensorcelled projectile.
Four sable claws slashed four lines of scarlet across Morpheus Rex's face as the Necrodelic dropped from the skies like a bird of prey. The wounds gushed immediately, leaving Morpheus Rex awash in his own blood. The Necrodelic pulled the Rainbowspear out of his thigh and hurled it over the horizon.
Morpheus Rex licked the blood matting in his prism-plaited beard with his three tongues. As he moved his mouth, Chariah peered through the hole that had been torn in the Dreaming Predator's cheek. Just before it was once again obscured by dripping ichor and hanging flaps of skin, the opening briefly revealed the inside of Morpheus Rex's mouth. Within, the Necrodelic glimpsed the glistening of just-summoned venom on the tips of his fangs, like dripping hypodermic needles connected to syringes of liquid cyanide.
Even though Chariah saw the poison drip from Morpheus Rex's fangs before he opened his mouth, he was barely able to avoid the supersonic cobra strike. Morpheus Rex's fangs closed upon air as Chariah sidestepped his attack. Droplets of venom spattered the sands like raindrops, where they would continue to sizzle for hours afterward.
Chariah backslashed his claws across Morpheus Rex's exposed throat. One claw severed his jugular vein, the other his carotid artery. The third clove his esophagus in half. The fourth ruptured his larynx. The blow would have decapitated a lesser demon. It would have decapitated ten lesser demons, standing in an executioner's row. Morpheus Rex, however, was a highly evolved and enlightened demon, and could not be destroyed so easily.
As Morpheus Rex staggered backwards, blood pouring down his chest from his ruined throat, and jetting outward in streams from his mutilated jugular vein and carotid artery, the Necrodelic leaped towards him, his right arm extended over his head to deliver another blow. Morpheus Rex raised the Prismsword, tilting it towards the sun so that it reflected a multitude of colored beams at the Necrodelic. The strings of color tangled with the demon's long talons, stopping them in mid-air. A second later, Morpheus Rex pulled Chariah towards him with a jerk of the blade. A swinging overhand blow with the Spectrumhammer met the Necrodelic halfway, smashing him in the chest, crushing his sternum, shattering his ribcage, and slamming him to the ground.
Chariah rose with black ribs protruding jaggedly from his side, their ebony edges tipped with crimson. The claws of his right hand were still caught in the rainbow webbing of the Prismsword. He countered by sinking his fangs into the side of Morpheus Rex's skull.
The Dreaming Predator tried to swing the Spectrumhammer again, but their close quarters prevented it. Morpheus Rex unleashed his serpentine powers of hypnosis instead, his prism eyes transforming into kaleidoscopic mandalas that paralyzed Chariah's eyeballs within their very sockets and momentarily halted his every thought process. Within that instant, Morpheus Rex struck, burying his fangs in the Necrodelic's neck, even as the Necrodelic's fangs remained lodged in his own skull.
Venom coursed into the Necrodelic's carotid artery. The poison burned, but the Necrodelic seemed immune to the pain. Its paralyzing chemicals seemed ineffective, as well. Enraged, Morpheus Rex drove his fangs even deeper into the side of Chariah's neck, into his throat, injecting yet more venom into his bloodstream. Chariah swung his right hand, claws still entangled with the Prismsword, in a sweeping arc through the air, forcefully unsheathing Morpheus Rex's fangs from his throat, breaking the rainbow strands of color around his talons, and flinging the Dreaming Predator far into the distance, to land with bonebreaking force amidst the now flickering-out fires of Chariah's pyromancy.
Chariah caught his breath and refocused upon his enemy, prepared to attack again, but Morpheus Rex was already halfway across the desert, and an instant later, had completely disappeared. He raked his demonsight across the planet, but could find no trace of the Dreaming Predator. Neither his sense of smell, his echolocation, nor his psychic powers could determine where Morpheus Rex had gone. He had obviously cast some sort of warding spell with his oneiromancy to prevent the Necrodelic from tracking him.
The Necrodelic's sculpted pectoral muscles heaved up and down as he struggled to breathe with broken ribs. A winged spider briefly attacked him. Chariah slashed his claws in a glittering black blur through the air, and the flying arachnid fell to the ground in four oozing, spasming pieces. Silently, Chariah turned and walked back to his ship. Directly behind him, the crimson sun Tyterviax was setting in a brilliant bloodbath to rival the one it had just witnessed, and Chariah's imposing silhouette stood black as night and deepest outer space before its sanguinary corona. Casting long obsidian shadows which were not quite as dark as his flesh, the Necrodelic strode away from the setting sun, his silhouette growing larger while the red sun behind it grew smaller.
He returned to the Omnibeast, whispered "Drakhus," and rode the Overdragon's tongue back into his lair. Minutes later, the Omnibeast rose into the sky and soared away. The night, which was another of Chariah's natural habitats, had just begun, and so too had his battle with Morpheus Rex, the Oneirophage.