Chapter 29: Lies

Minutes passed amidst the eternal embrace of the noiseless realm, Gabriella's steps falling deaf upon the youth's eternally palpitating mind, Eros's ears lay inundated by myriad carrion creeks, his mind stammering, paranoid, delirious upon even the mildest of motions. 'What was that? Who was that? Why? Why do I feel so scared, so afraid, if I could just find the source…no, the origin has long since evaded my prying.' Eros inwardly stammered, his eyes of heterochromatic craft corybantic in their surveillance upon the variegated plain, notions of fear commanding every conviction the youth possessed, for such terror was primal, paramount, an abhorrent reverence akin to his encounter with that heartrending beast.

Yet, such fear would appear temporal, constrained to the subconscious substratum of the youth's trepid brain. Eros's steps, antecedently pusillanimous cowled by an apocryphal bravado, lay butchered, desecrated, bearing nought but carcass of sovereign soundlessness. Halcyon strands anteriorly forestalling Gabriella's perpetually migrating visage swirled, decreed by a spasmodic tempest of motion. The girl turned, her antagonistic eyes of virulent emerald dementedly placed atop the boy's mellow figure. "This is the library," Gabriella apathetically murmured, her tone nought but a resonance of utmost indifference, a hand of pristine pellucid porcelain dispassionately pronged towards the countenance of the stygian aperture.

Ornate, meretricious and elegant, bearing body of baroque styling it brewed, obfuscate amidst the polychromatic plague that putrescently vitiated the sanctified realm, face of atramentous lightlessness luridly leered upon Eros's caliginous cowering form, evermore inseminated by seed of gilded gold, blossoming forth amidst the darkened realm with silhouettes of inflorescence roses. Stem of platinum, scintillated with a laureate epicene courtliness, magnetic to all who befell such ephemeral sight. Still, it wasn't such temporal effulgence that enraptured the inwardly apprehensive boy's mind but a sign, an auspicious emblem bearing christened title, or rather, the scant absence of such momentous appellation. 'Gabriella wouldn't lie to me, would she?' Eros inwardly queried, yet, before the inquest beget vindication, sound would reclaim the land of which it had been deprived.

Hushed, it moved, progenitor to nought, but a coagulated zephyr, banished wind dislodged from its stagnant bassinet of stygian sunlessness. The monument did not cry nor release so much as an innocuous throe of animus indignation. It simply turned, forebearer to a temporal plain of ascendant dust, an effluvium of discoloured, mephitic air. Malodorous was its scent, a repugnant conflagration that vainly assaulted the enchanting boy's respiring lungs, beckoning, nay, seducing nought but an acute afflicted cough.

Water perspired atop pupils of heterochromatic colouration, vexatious towards such sudden rapine despoilment. Eros instinctually blinked, his world momentarily cowled by a shawl of obfuscate murkiness, an eternal atramentous somberness he would find himself rid of not by his own efforts but that of his singular peer, Gabriella, for calloused porcelain hands, hyperborean, phlegmatic, indifferent to the world embraced Eros's amaranthine plain of snow, her right-hand twain upon his wrist, animated in a perpetual bout of motion, a pull, akin to a monarchical shepherd the girl directed the faltering boy, luring him, setting Eros forth upon a journey that would imminently destroy all which the adolescent believed gospel.

Lightlessness, a land shawled by a cowl of supertemporal smut. Few candles intermittently flickered, everpresent, yet eternally unseen, their dances atop exiguous candelabras embossed by scintillations of metallic halcyon jaded, weary, fatigued by the stagnant air into but feeble dreary incandescence. A claustrophobic coffin, ill-lit, the very definition of drab, myriad mantles, towering, altitudinous, spasmodically littered the sombre land, painted a twin nebulous stygian, solely visible courtesy of the innumerable books whose spines smouldered amidst the quivering candlelight. But a singular rug appeared in such a land of morbose macabre cheerlessness, its colour a petulant shade of sullied brown, tainted by the stagnant sky.

Every step brought forth nought but decay, an uprising of jubilant anarchy, the rug, that which should have eternally remained noiseless, creaked, fibrous strands encased by multitudinous layers of opaque dust shattering with every motion the twain youths performed. That was until new stimuli joined the bleak realm's dying soliloquy, a voice, hoarse, noxiously impregnated by the land's foetid seed.

"What is a boy doing here? Leave! Leave this very instant and never return," The shrill vociferation murmured, bearing progenitor from behind the anteriorly cowering boy. Instantly Eros turned, his every motion rapid, paranoid. Quivering eyes of contrasting colour shimmered luridly amidst the ambient, innocuous light of the library, focused upon the path he antecedently tread and the aged occupant who emerged from his wake. Haggard, emancipated, with a beak akin to a raven, did she brew, a lady possessing an age the youth dared not attempt to identify, skin of leather appeared gaunt, as though perpetually pulled by a spectral being, bearing makeup of the opaque dredge of the world, her eyes of blackened onyx hatefully leered at the immobile boy, cursing him, as though attempting to banish his taboo existence through nought but the use of her mind.

Yet, her words would receive nought but an incredulous look from the enchanting boy, his position remaining deathless, amaranthine in his place. "Why?" Eros started, his demeanour bearing neither flaw of faintheartedness nor impassioned animosity. He was merely apathetic, quizzical to the aged woman's odium rancour. "I'm here with my master, isn't that fine? Can't you see I'm this girl's attendant," The boy continued, pulling upon the precipice of Gabriella's unexpecting form, breeding a reddened glow upon cheeks of porcelain, a cardinal incandescence perpetually unseen. Eros spouted nought but lies with an indifferent frivolity, a childish whimsicality the antediluvian woman could vainly dispute.

{+5% Affection (Gabriella Ebba)}

"*Scoff*" The elderly woman venomously spat, her twain eyes of onyx repugnantly extracted from Eros's palpably virginal presence, forced upon a shelf bearing neither book nor even parchment. 'I'll be fine. She's been partially placated,' The boy internally commented, the discordant throe of the unpetrified carpet once more crying out in a bloodcurdling crack. A monotonous verbose maze, a sarcophagus of scantily clad craft, where once innumerable books inundated the apostle's every thought, now they merely appeared fictitious, perpetual titles, an echo of a progenitor droning in a banausic recurrent manner. Still, Eros found solitude amidst such unvarying hell, a common title he sought, a desire made manifest in a carapace of leather.

'The great calamity,' Upon vertebrae of maroon appeared those argent words, etched beguilingly akin to a seductive whisper they tempted, beckoning the variegated youth, absentminded hands instinctively embraced the tepid plain of concealed parchment. Sovereign did they turn, uncaring of either title or place. Eros unpremeditatedly moved, his mind annexed by myriad impulses, an ardent yet unrecognised melodramatic desire.

Pages turned, a tempestuous flurry of anarchic whim, that was until the boy appeared inert, his hands paralysed upon the depraved corpse, while his eyes of heterochromatic hue lay droll, lifeless, languorously placed atop Gemini pages. 'It was a lie. Everything, every word they've ever spouted. It was nothing but fiction. We aren't alone,' The youth apathetically monologued, his eyes fervently studying the contents that lay before him.

A map, the earth painted upon canvas. A singular supercontinent, with neither sea to separate nor apparent border to alienate, that was what the boy believed. That was what he had been told. The whispers recounted to him over myriad years, innocuously sermonised via his examiners, the singular point of contact Eros possessed for a decade. The land of Enuma, the exclusive bastion of humanity amidst which the sole survivors of the great calamity dwelled…was nought but a lie, the neighbouring land the adolescent believed ruinous, a calamitous plain of oblivion had innumerable titles, factions that chaotically claimed the earth.

'Norse, Arthurian, Hindu, Celtic, Greek, What does any of this mean, why…why…everything…what did they get out of it, why didn't they tell me,' Eros continuously stammered, yet, his question appeared rhetoric, having already been answered innumerable times before. 'Ah…I see. It's because I'm a male. They didn't need a reason. There was no point other than to prove they could, and yet, I can't even be mad. After all, is there any reason it should have been different? I had no use for such knowledge. I was useless, a failed prodigy,' The boy continued, his eyes hollow a nugatory of tempestuous languidly shifting to his singular peer, his apparent 'Master' to all who beheld such an enchanting pair.

"Gabriella, what's an apostle?"