TWIN-ORE I
Chapter five
Lady Dane
They joined hands.
The black powder and the sacred tincture sparked and smoldered as they met. Ghendra felt a rush of euphoria as the hallucinogenic cocktail mixed and entered her bloodstream through her gashed palms. She allowed herself the briefest of moments to feel the excitement and exhilaration of it all. Genuinely, in all but name, Lojin Dane was everything Ghendra could have desired in a man. She loved him and lusted for him. She took an instant to revel in her surging pulse and the thin tinge of panic that accompanies any such act of gross defiance.
My sweet love. My rebellion, she thought, staring at Lojin. A poisoned core all of mine own.
She ravenously raked in the rapture then, and her mind and body bathed in delight. Ghenny could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She could hear it. And through the sparking mash of drugs and blood, she unmistakably perceived Lojin’s entirely separate pulse flowing from his hand wounds into hers. In another moment, she found that their adjusted pulses had become one. Then, Ghendra watched as small ripples, in perfectly timed intervals with their joined heartbeats, seemed to run up their arms from their bleeding palms. At some point the waves detached from flesh and made skyward, rippling and blurring the air itself like the ghosts of long-dead falcons and eagles. Ghendra watched them rise in euphoric amazement.
But this false elation quickly turned to horror as Ghenny saw the Lance Lord suddenly throw off his mask and thrust the remaining sacred mixture onto the couple’s interlocked hands. The next spark birthed a wild inferno, but Ghendra and Lojin gave no reaction. They moved not an inch as the fire spread from their hands to their wrists. The priest's unmasked visage was frenetic and deranged as he flailed about, cursing the poisoned lineage of Dane and all the Forsaken Blood. Sir Draxyn and El Thomas both immediately sprung into action, apprehending the mad vicar when he finally revealed this foul duplicity. Yet, neither could provide any aid to the burning couple as a white-hot flame bespelled their grip. The spectators shielded their eyes from the runaway blaze as a catatonic Lojin and Ghendra stood frozen, staring directly into the brilliant fire. Their flaring fingers dug into each other’s with an impossible hold; relentless like a rabid wolf’s lockjaw. Overdosed and unmoved, they next bore witness to indescribable psychedelic horrors and hallucinations.
It all occurred so fast that Ghenny, at first, was quite confused. She was in something of a shock as she noticed the thin skin on her knuckles blacken and begin to wilt away. In a moment of comprehension, she tried to pull her searing hands back, but without luck. Lojin’s fiery grip, true to his word, would not let her go. She could smell their flesh cooking in the sacred flame as she turned and glanced blearily at the mad priest cackling and cursing beside them. Squinting back at the fire, Ghendra saw she was now holding onto Lojin with skeletal fingers, alone. At once, Ghenny became fully entranced by the vulgar sight and the white-hot inferno she seemed to clutch in her fleshless hands. In a delayed terror, unspeakable depression came crashing upon her as any remaining will to fight waned. Visual stimuli, dreadful and chilling, faded in and out of the flames dancing before her. At one point, Ghenny saw the ghostly figure of a man with a spinning blue crystal in place of his left eye. He concealed his repellent optical instrument under a dark eyepatch—black as a supermassive black hole—but Ghendra could still see it; could still hear the crystal’s hypnotic hum. She could still sense it…
Spinning. Droning. Calling to her…
Ghendra was immediately repulsed by this odd man and the revolving glass eyeball he tried so desperately hard to hide. Still, she could not look away, only growing more and more enigmatically enraptured. She thought to herself…
The mere shape of the man is just unpleasant.
But some part of her must not have agreed, because Ghendra suddenly felt her juices dripping from between her legs and trickling down her thighs. Recoiling from her mounting fear, Ghenny momentarily indulged in the perverse captivation. She leaned into this vision, catching a better glimpse of the man’s face; she swore it was her Lojin. Astounded, she called out, “Lojin! My love!” But when the shrouded wraith looked up and saw her, Ghendra instantly knew she had been mistaken. This wasn’t Lojin. Staring back at her, Ghendra saw a figure that was truly monstrous. His prying crystal eye shone forth with malice as icy blood swept through his veins. The creature’s features were scaley and alien; repugnance made flesh. Ghenny’s bowels turned to water as her stomach roiled at the sight of his reptilian face! And his... ITS... VILE... HIDEOUS... EYE! Its most loathsome organ of vision; hard as tempered glass and blue as the cloudless Aidenn. Ghendra immediately felt the difference between her merely observing this monster’s gruesome eye, and having it fixed upon her...
It sees me; she thought.
Then, in the next breath, the shrouded figure’s dark form—along with everything else within Ghendra’s field of vision—instantly dissolved to black. Only the Crystal There Remained.
Clamorous. Thrumming. Thirsting for her...
Ghendra was no longer standing in the Northwood of the Fatherland, no longer among the groves of majestic Lucanian sequoia. She was no longer holding onto her sweet Lojin. She now found herself totally alone, floating in the starless black void that the universe had only just become. Ghenny’s heart sank into her stomach as she noticed that the moisture now soaking her legs had since turned to globs of fleshy black blood. Then, in an instant, her manic and muddled mind was violently arrested. Ghendra’s unblinking gaze became locked on the cobalt orb, which groaned and wheeled before her. She could feel it…
Throbbing. Pulsating. Laying claim to her...
It then emitted a blinding audio wave that infinitely swelled and reverberated. The squealing feedback met Ghendra’s humanoid ear on some uncharted auditory plane...
“It knows my name,” she muttered, spellbound…
She felt then a sinister darkness come upon her and rush down her throat, tainting and infesting the depths of her precious ore. In a heartbeat, Ghendra felt paralyzed, totally overrun. She was entirely out of control. But there was no pain, only numbness and a trance-like hyper-focus on the brilliant crystal coiling in the otherwise pitch blackness. She felt it slowly and audaciously invade her...
Lecherous. Defiling. Screeching and summoning her by name…
It shamelessly sampled the sweetest flavors and purest notes of her innocent ore. When it was through, Ghendra felt nothing at all, but she knew the crystal had left its mark on her. She eyed the grating crystal with revulsion. Then, with a deafening boom, the orb suddenly cracked, almost as if her mind had made it so. Ghenny watched in panic as thick blood and yellow bile spewed out from within the core. Terrified, she desperately dreamt of being safe, back in Lojin’s arms. She wanted nothing more than to flee. Yet, Ghendra could not move as the crystal’s putrid red ejecta quickly filled the entire universe and enveloped her. This must be death, she lamented while drowned in the thick bile. But deep in her still-beating heart, Ghenny somehow knew this was something worse than death.
The villainous priest was firmly within the sure grip of the cyborg, Thomas, and Sir Draxyn. But no one could get near the flames as Lojin and Ghenny’s minds were being flung through all the horrors of the fractal realms and the cosmos. The disgraced Lance Lord yelled out in a stupor, “Yes. YES! Burn these heathens to ash, my Lord. Dost Thou not see? Wholly, I am Thy holy man. Thou wilt forgive me now! Thou must! For Thee alone I breathe, Father.”
Sir Draxyn finally quieted the rambling Lance Lord, thumping him about the temple with the pommel of his sword and sending him crashing to the ground. After a moment, the cyborg El Thomas effortlessly yanked the priest back to his feet. With cold intensity, the young warrior said, “Best hold thy tongue, my lord. There will be no further warning.”
The scene was quite bleak, and the couple was sure to burn up in the sacred firestorm but for the sudden appearance of Pythoness Paige, out from the shadows. She threw a dark cloak over the brilliant flames emanating from the joined hands of Lojin and Ghendra. The Pythoness closed her eyes and murmured the words of an arcane spell, finally ceasing the blaze. When it was out and the smoke cleared, Ghendra and Lojin stood there like statues in something of a hypnotic state. Their still-clasped hands were badly scorched, blistered, and blackened. There was absolutely no color to be seen in either of their eyes. They shone forth with a black luster, as their pupils had usurped every inch. It was dead silent for a moment until the mad priest spoke up once more, his booming voice finally jerking the newly wedded couple out of their sedation. He shook himself free from the grip of El Thomas and, in a warped mockery Baethylic matrimony’s closing prayer, pronounced, “Now behold, my lords! LADY DANE! Whore to an abomination and foul stain upon her line. May the Stone Immortal show no mercy upon thee.”
El Thomas grimaced and, with only a gloved hand, abruptly tore out the sick priest’s throat through the back of the neck with unbelievable ease. It was a mere flash of violence, after which the cleric’s body stayed upright, hanging there for an impossibly long moment amid pure silence. Ghendra watched the moment life was extinguished within the priests’ eyes and she could see right through the grisly fist-sized cavity in his mangled neck. Mercifully, gravity took hold of him at last and he slumped to the blood-soaked ground. Thomas’ cyborg hand released a ghastly pulp of flesh, neck bones, and torn windpipe as he muttered, “By death, we dress thy tomb” (the ultimate line of a traditional Baethylic funeral prayer called “The Lord’s Requiem”). The brutal act spared Ghenny any of the priest’s further vile words, but the sudden bloodshed and gore also jolted her right back into the depths of her horrors and fears. Again, she could hear the wicked din of the spiraling crystal swelling in her brain...
Roaring. Crushing. Shrieking her name…
Then, in the next moment, her dilated eyes rolled over white. Ghenny never heard the thump, never felt her head hit the forest floor.
