Chapter 6: A world of red

Crimson.

A world of red.

An unearthly degenerate warmth desecrated Eros's body, staining, tainting, breeding with whatever pale flesh lay exposed. He felt irriguous, as though drowned in a repugnant substance, and yet, he knew what coated his form to be not water, but something else, something viscerally profane.

The world once painted green with life, lay shaded red. His view tainted by the crimson shroud that adorned his visage. From the right, he could not see. His chocolate-brown eye failed to work, for it had been painted in such an abhorrent shade of rouge. Instinctually a disheartened limb raised to the boy's face, its appearance the antonym of clandestine, for it hid no secret from its host.

'Crimson.'

Once more, such a word replayed in the dismayed boy's mind. His right hand lay raised, trembled. It shouldn't have looked like this, its carcass of pale white now a perverted shade of sin, dripping, falling, doused in a layer of unwashable paint. Blood. The bile of the human body spread across Eros's visage, impregnating the entire right side with its blasphemous, satanic seed. Obsidian, now maroon, auriferous, now claret, its weight a burden the youth could not shoulder.

The taste of iron pressed upon Eros's sealed bland lips, now blemished in the vile tinge, it begged, beseeched to be graced with entry, to contaminate the unsullied ground that was his soul, and yet, he couldn't deny the crimson liquids plea, for unconsciously his orifice began to clamour, shaking, opening a crevice that could never be sealed. His hair, once stained black by his own egesta, appeared tinged an immoral, nauseating cruor.

Yet, unknown to all, the worst was yet to come. For the moment Eros unconsciously turned his palm, he would be greeted by a sight that would only make his stomach explode. Pale white, a shade that should usually go unnoticed now appeared emboldened within Eros's brain, highlighted through its apparent disparity to the rest of his body. It languished there atop a throne of crimson. A heaping glob of snow, its touch cooling, yet retched. For within such a mound of 'frozen vapour' arose a stain of green, its roots a nauseating maroon. It wasn't snow. It was too warm for such a conundrum. No, Eros knew what pressed against his flesh as clear as day.

'An…an eye,'

Eros apathetically murmured, his brain little more than a paralysed muscle taxed by imminent fear and foreboding. A fleshy organ, which squelched and stuck to one's form, that which should only belong in the realm designated to its rule, now settled slovenly atop Eros's stained monochrome skin. Its tendrils of veins infecting, corrupting, blighting all which crossed its path, whether it be the maroon fabric of Eros's now weighted blazer or the very domain upon which it bred, none was spared from its blasphemous tirade.

Immediately Eros's stomach lurched. His mind, once stagnant, now forced to deal with an incomprehensible scenario. Heat burned the pits of the boy's body as though imitating the inferno that whirled amidst the backdrop. It rose, destroying, raping, molesting all which it could grasp hold of with its acidic perversion, from the boy's oesophagus, which his mucous membrane failed to protect, all the way to the keratin-barred land that was his mouth, such sight of the youth was repugnant, and yet, the boy did not care, for the sickening scent of blood and decay wafted in his half-cleared sinus as though aiding the cause of the maltreatment that waged within his mouth. He couldn't restrain it anymore. His stomach lay bloated, his eyes on the precipice of watering. Still, Eros didn't wish to expunge the contents of his stomach, for he knew what lay in store upon his mouth's imminent opening, the dreaded taste of irreverence, and the profane guilt that would surely rack his form.

Yet the boy's will proved inefficient, and within seconds, polychromatic waste would spill from his stained lips. It scorched, seared, a satanic scent wafted from his orifice, yet, Eros could do little more than focus upon the pool that fell atop his once polished boots and its vile colour, for from what little had made it through the seal, had racked untold havoc upon his body, red, the bile stewed in such colour, more pinkish than the blasphemous demonic shade of blood, yet, it reminded Eros of his absent-minded failure, the attacks he let penetrate, and the siege that continually assailed his now wide open mouth.

An opaque syrup danced atop his tongue, falling listlessly from his stained skin into the open crevice contaminating all with its bastardised form. His teeth, once white, were now painted crimson, while the hemic taste shortly became the sole dehumanising thought he could focus upon. Absentmindedly Eros's quivering gaze, courtesy of his now hollow-brown eyes, lifted as though refusing to accept the reality before him, seeking hope in another world, that which coloured green and remained full of zoetic essence, yet, Eros would never find such escape, for before he could rest his gaze upon the serene tranquillity of the dungeon's expanse, it would fall upon none other than a girl sharing a head of the same hue that now pervertedly wrecked his form.

Fiamma, the only form that resonated in the youth's far-gone gaze, yet, she appeared different, despite having no apparent alterations to her visage, no blood stained her state, the sole layer of crimson originating from her silky fibrous expanse, nor was she riddled with guts of origin Eros wished not to know. Instead, something was off about her. Fiamma's once defiant ruby-red eyes appeared to match the nugatory that dominated Eros's, as though gazing at a distant realm, which could solely be spied upon by her, a land of fantasy and escapism. Her domineering stature, her fiery personality, destroyed, broken by the sight upon which Eros was yet to gaze. She merely shivered in place, as though victim to a Siberian wind she could not combat, paralysed, without either strength to run or fight.

Eros didn't want to turn. He wished his body, neigh prayed to it to remain placid atop Fiamma's figure, and yet, it still moved, unresponsive to his call, as though guided by another force, one with which he lacked power over. His lack, coated in a layer of crimson paint, swivelled apathetically to the right, in the direction where he had once bore witness to a tortuous sight of vindictive glee, an image the boy now deemed picturesque, one which he beseeched to befall.

Hurried, aghast breaths left Eros's lips, their tune sporadic and without apparent rhythm. His eyes shrunk, his pupils becoming little more than pinholes upon which he would be forced to gaze. He didn't want to look, though his mind compelled him, as though adamant in its refusal to his call, to his plea to remain innocent, a virgin to the world's sins.

Red, as though compared to the breaking of a hymen, Eros's gaze would be deflowered to such repugnant colour. A sea of blood and destruction, one the boy could scantily have fantasied in his most bloodcurdling nightmares, the world of verdant life appeared drab and monochrome, though not in shades of black and grey, but pure, demonic, crimson. The blood that once loomed behind his cheeks, running fresh in his veins, halted. It froze, draining from every orifice and limb it spread to until what remained of the boy's form was little more than a sheet of white interbred with impure scarlet. His stomach lurched, though there would be no resistance from the youth this time. Its contents would spill without a battle. However, its consistency was no longer syrupy, merely froth-coloured blood that fell languidly upon his virgin cloth.

Crimson-tipped verdure swayed in the passing wind, their colour illuminated by the burning world set by the second sun. Singed carcasses littered the earth, stacked high atop one another, their bile broiled, pouring from the precipice like myriad waterfalls. Though finite, they pooled at the bottom, creating lakes of blood which remained sizzling and bubbling, their fever never to exhaust. In a dream world, Eros's gaze would have then drifted to the sinister smiles of his peers, their useless abilities on full display in a vain attempt to perhaps catch the eye of their dominant master. However, the reality portrayed before the boy was the very antonym of such perfection.

In place of the first esper was something that couldn't even be described as a body, nor a corpse, merely red, a pool of blood and bile, entrails paving the pasture of crimson endlessly, as what remained of his origin sunk abhorrently into the earth, destined to feed the creatures of which he culled, to continue the cycle of life in the hellscape that put an end to his. Random heaps of flesh lay splattered listlessly across the land, their position heterogeneous, with some falling little more than metres away from the assumed initial place from which even Eros couldn't locate, to the very surface of the ground beyond the boy, a fact that made his body, once forced into scorching heat, deathly cold, for an outline of crimson lingered to his left, though its ancestry now appeared known, the blood that painted his body possessing a father, no longer a bastard.

Though such revelation did not bring joy to Eros's mind, instead only absolute enmity and detestation, before this moment, he could have lied, tricked himself into believing that such stains were merely that of a destroyed monster, a goblin gave a horrific death. Though now, now he couldn't run, Eros couldn't distort, the tales he spun were merely that of absolute truth, the blood he drank, that which poisoned his lips now stained his soul, it was the vital fluid, the life essence of his peer.

*GAGH* Immediately, another torrent of gastric fluid erupted from the youth's stomach. It mangled his throat, cutting the soft tissue into hundreds of minute threads that lay patched and forcibly sewn. It hurt. Eros wanted to cry, to repent, but his mind appeared to stop working, propelled only by thoughts of self-loathing and disgust. He didn't want to think, to hate, to curse. His mind was too far gone to care, merely a puppet, broken and dishevelled. His gaze absentmindedly moved to the rest of the expanse, hoping to find solace in another form, hopes he knew would only be ravaged and replaced by primal fear.

Laying squarely in his view appeared a figure, one that, from the bottom, looked undamaged, almost holy, pristine, without even a drop of blood to stain the obsidian drapes he wore. However, with but a disheartened glance upon his boots, Eros would unintentionally break the illusion the land beneath the waist presented, for staining the gaudy monster hide creation, spattered little more than fetid red, painted in drops that fell listlessly to the earth like a mid-summer rain. He was dead, Eros knew as such, yet his gaze still moved ever upwards, as if in the hope that he would suddenly revive and send a jeer at the boy, to claim that it was all but a prank and that no one could have died in such a supposedly low-ranking dungeon.

Yet, Eros's view would rise little past the waist, for that was where the visage ended, with no torso, neck, nor head to be seen, little more than a pair of abandoned legs. As though a piece of paper torn by a nascent toddler, flecks of flesh and stretched skin unevenly rounded the waist, the left being significantly higher than the right, it was horrid, and yet, Eros couldn't even gag at the noxious, mephitic sight, his stomach had run out of bile, left only to simmer in protest, a feat the standing half-corpse couldn't even accomplish. Amidst crimson, however, loomed a tower of ivory, a bone that deflected at a twenty-degree angle, supported only by skewered flesh which littered the serrated ossein, marrow disgorged ceaselessly from every opening the spine possessed, coating the tip of the obsidian garment in putrescent pink. Bubbles, courtesy of the boy's ability, freely popped atop his flesh, their low cry a final ballad and testimony to his existence.

Flecks of silver stained the world gouged into the earth at non-sensical aspects and distances. The weapon, once a brilliant yet plain spear, now little more than cartilage to deceptively fertilise the land. Whatever had done such feats was clearly stronger than the boss of an E rank dungeon, a fact Eros would come to realise soon enough, for even though his brain lay paralysed, apathetic to all, it would quickly resume existence courtesy of what next mirrored within his hollow-brown gaze.

Two bodies, two corpses that is what the youth had prophesied, those possessing hollowed eyes with neither the light that came with life nor a breath of which to live. Yet, he would be proven wrong, though not in his initial judgement, for in the midst of Eros's gaze loomed but one more figure to be added, a third visage, one not human, but that of a beast more akin to a goblin. It stood there, with a height encroaching upon four metres, its skin a nidorous seaweed-green, while its muscles appeared to ripple with untamed power. To say that its appearance was ugly would be the overstatement of a century, with bulging, beady black eyes that seemed to desire little more than freedom from the confines of a squashed skull and a pointed nose that seemed capable of puncturing holes in stone, not even the creator of such a beast would find even an ounce of love to spare it.

Eros knew of the creature's name, or at least he assumed he did, for what lay before him differed. It should have been a troll, the boss of goblins, an entity possessing a height of little over two metres and the same olive skin and face as its peers, not…not this…thing, this beast, whose body appeared burly and obese with strength, and that was when something caught the youths eye, for from the very feet of the creature, exuded an aura of overwhelming despair and darkness, that which froze every thought Eros may have been able to conjure, there was something off about this entity as if the size and strength weren't more than enough, a dark miasma flowed underfoot, stretching, contorting and embracing the troll in an almost sensual nature.

And that was when Eros caught sight of two foretold deaths, for resting in each one of the grotesque entity's ballooned hands sat the lifeless form of his peers, their heads of black and brown swaying listlessly with the creature's volatile movements. However, their eyes were nowhere to be found, or at least, they couldn't be observed in their rightful place. Having popped from their sockets under the overwhelming pressure, they swayed in a manner akin to a passing breeze, connected solely to the skull by the optic nerves that had neared their breaking point. Their weapons lay discarded, punctured and shattered, strewn on the ground glistening in thousands of argent fragments, while the spilling of blood went unheard, for though Eros couldn't spy it, their bodies had been crushed to the point where little remained but flattened skin and disintegrated muscle turned blood that fed the creatures palms, sinking into every blocked pore the monster possessed.

'Ah…' Eros absentmindedly thought, 'So this is the thing that killed them, this monster that emerged from the forest unscathed, unbranded by the flames, ignorant to all damage…what bullshit.'