Chapter 16: Anteros

{Name: Eros}

{Age: 17}

{Race: Human}

{Sex: Male}

{Title(s): Apostle of Eros (Psyche)}

{Rank: —-----}

{Tier: 2}

{Abilities: (Psyche)}

{Tier 1: Matchmaker}

{Tier 2: Anteros}

{Once the love held for the user surpasses a grade of 80%, the bearer of this ability gains access to such an individual's ability.}

{Ability: Pyrokinesis}

{Origin: Fiamma Adeen}

An erstwhile parchment antecedently known to the boy, one he had been gazing upon for the past decade. Yet, it had changed, an unheralded precedent forced upon his dreary eyes, virgin information clandestine to the world deflowered before him, an occult privilege he bore sovereign. Blank lines the boy believed never to be inscribed possessed a christened title, declarative approval of a deific empyrean dream. Eros was the apostle of a god. If before such signs showed precedent only in his altered appearance that brought sanctified nightmares to mind, now, it was a fact. A notion that only further riddled his overbearing brain with an eerie panic, a macabre sense of foreboding.

Melancholic, lugubrious eyes shimmered amidst a body of billowing water, echoing an image of the alluring youth. 'How? How am I going to explain this?' Eros inwardly commented, his tone mellifluous despite his transparent quandary, 'I've completely changed. My eyes are of different shades, the same as my hair. Using dye as an excuse won't work. It sounds too stupid for me to wake up after who knows how long and immediately rush for a change in hair colour, and what about my skin, my features…I-I can't, I can't do this, nothing I think of makes sense, I have no way to reason with them. They'll examine me. I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back.' Eros continued, his mind a darkened tempest of conditioned self-loathing. A hatred bruised into his body courtesy of myriad years spent isolated from the world.

He had yet to even focus on the gift bearing the title Anteros before he began to wander, his body absentmindedly moving as though in an attempt to replicate the actions of his bleak, doleful and sorrowful brain. 'Wait…even if they examine me, they won't find anything different with my ability. After all, they still believe it to be a partial analysis. The only issue is my appearance…no,' The boy monologued, his eyes falling upon the glistening parchment, whereupon loomed those words, a name, a title of an ability, that which he intrinsically understood, a blessing he held primaeval proficiency over, a comprehension bestowed upon him the moment he heard Psyche's humid breaths.

A flickering fire sparked within the boy's palm, dainty, as though a passing Zephyr would suffice in bringing ruination to the impassioned conflagration, a fleeting dance, a soliloquy of acknowledgement in the form of repressed cries. It was weak, many times that of Fiamma's, for the boy knew no knowledge of how to utilise the flame beyond ignition, like a newbie esper blessed with a power countless degrees his senior. 'It doesn't matter….nothing I say would matter. Fiamma saw it all. If she felt like it, Fiamma could tell the examiners everything. I'm sure they're fervently waiting for answers to the dungeon's endless questions. And then it will be like that all over again….' Eros stated, a quiescent draft pierced by multitudinous voices gracing his ears, all of which erupted not from lungs of human craft but visages bearing a similar anatomy.

Statues, crafted of ornate, ostentatious bronze, their glimmer retained despite the passing of time, immune to the sins of the world, cherubic in stature, they loomed, homogeneously placed amidst the realm upon which Eros gazed, a land governed not by Gaia but by water a tempered, opaque green. They numbered many, and yet, despite such variety in appearance, with few eclipsing the 177cm spectator who gazed listlessly upon their character and many a dwarfish counterpart to their peers relinquished by the earth, Eros failed to observe any features that could be defined as human upon their bodies, faces innumerable yet clandestine, veiled and hooded by drabs of miasmic fog, perspiration that scalded the beautiful features of the reticent youth. From such orifices sealed behind pompous valances of vaporous craft emerged sound, a discordant inharmonious opera akin to myriad billowing waterfalls. The boy stared at the elephantine lake, steam an oppressive curtain upon his heterochromatic eyes, his mind distant, poised amidst a realm of empyrean deific craft, the crashing sound of water the only tether anchoring him to the present, to thoughts of mortal comprehension.

Discordant, chaotic loathing appeared to dissipate momentarily upon Eros's prior notion. His fate lay in wait, apathetic, callous, blasé to his perfervid beseechment, Fiamma's figure, head of crimson, a visage of beauty, a tyrannical spectacle that occupied every working millimetre of the boy's newly woken mind. However, because of such sovereign, matriarchal rule, Eros lay free, forsaken of chains that otherwise enslaved his existence to a pilgrimage of wretched disheartenment. There was no point lamenting over a destined forthcoming ultimatum. Eros had to focus on the now, the realm he found himself presiding, for the adolescent knew not of his current haunt.

'This isn't the hospital wing,' Eros remarked, a void, desolate of denizens, of zoetic humanity, an alabaster casket. It was too different, a sight he had never traced. No espers occupied the land aside from himself, the flickering of distant flames and innumerable fictitious corpus cast in bodies of bronze a constant companion amidst the realm. The oceanic body of green effervesced ceaselessly before the youth, an effluvium of aromatic ambrosia the conceived progeny between the meeting of aqua and the heavens. A broth of fabled legend, a bath, gargantuan and inviting, yet, Eros failed to be seduced by such deific temptations; instead, his gaze merely wandered, its point of convergence fixated upon an item, a body of obsidian embroidered with heavenly threads of gilded gold, foregone drabs the boy expected not amidst the foreign land he walked, his uniform.

Hurried steps echoed languidly against the sequestered walls of the domain, bouncing ceaselessly upon the arched ceiling painted with murals whose significance remained unperceived and undistinguished, placed impassionately by the realm of calescent water brewing amidst odiferous perfumes of multitudinous herbs lay the item, the apple of Eros's polychromatic eyes. Cloth, he thought long since desecrated and ruinous, hands of snow contrasted with the sunless body of ebony, his eyes scrutinising every inch of the surface of the creation, patches of dreary maroon, a carrion offspring of blood intertwined with threads of black, stained and profane, a discrepant pigmentation to that of his peers. Maimed gashes appeared sewn, virulent strings of crimson ineptly woven in a reverent display of passion as though unwilling to discard the clearly tattered mantle. Fresh drops of sanguine pooled beside the uniform, minute and inconsequential, a feature many would merely gloss over, yet one Eros's eyes refused to leave. He knew where he was now. Such a simple display cleared his mind of smothering murkiness, impending dread replaced by a subconscious smile, fear of the future a mere afterthought to the youth.

'So this is Fiamma's room,' Eros grinned, stripping himself of the sparse fabric that concealed his unvarying torso, still frail, without bulk, yet brimming with untamed, inherent power, that of an apostle. Ripples disseminated ceaselessly from his encroaching descent, the overwhelming heat an apathetic notion against Eros's skin of snow, serenity, a staggering quietude, as though sound infinite as it may be vacated the land, a godforsaken space where boisterous pandemonium failed to penetrate. The boy fermented, his flesh unsullied and virgin, washed by unknown hands, now rid of the anterior perspiration that tormented his person, soundless water discharged from a raised palm falling in a muted notion. The world lay deaf, eros, a victim to its soliloquy.

However, that did not mean his mind lay still, for in tandem with a thought, scarlet erupted, decrepit, unsubstantial and ethereal, it flickered, a flame, Fiamma's ability utilised by none other than a boy, a manifestation of her love.

'Love,' Eros inwardly murmured, his mind forced upon a constant state of replay, Psyche's words, neigh, her order echoing with a paradisiacal peerless tangibility.

"Claim their love. Make them fall. Whether they be divine or mortal. That is the only path for you, my darling. To reap the affection of all the beauties who walk the world."

With such remembrance, the flame within Eros's palm faltered, suppressed by the arid humidity of the steam. Eros knew what he had to do. The path forwards lay clear to him, to seduce those he deemed fit, to utilise their abilities as his, Anteros at the forefront of his potential, a longing glint flashing within eyes bearing polychromatic luminosity, he had attained the love of Fiamma, he should have been satiated, the adolescent already held an achievement multitudinous men coveted, yet, voracious intemperate mania, a sovereign yearning directed to such simple fondness reigned supreme.

"I need to make them fall, not just for me, but for Psyche. This is my way forwards, the power she blessed me with," Eros impassionately mumbled; still, the boy knew the laborious adversity such a quest carried with it. After all, he was a male, the dregs of society, an encumbrance upon the world.

To make Fiamma fall for him required a monstrous scenario of macabre foreboding, a situation he believed was destined never to happen again.