The Monster Within

Paradise Lost

Present Day

Hollis sagged against the chains that held her to the stone wall. She was starved, exhausted, and knew not which day or what hour it was. Time ceased to matter as she awaited her new fate. Had some similar creature won her at the auction? What other being would have such red, evil eyes?

And then her despair led her thoughts to Oberon. It was hopeless, now. Their time to reunite had passed liked a ship in the night. Tears leaked from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks like unrelenting rain battering the landscape they'd endured to get here. She shivered in the dimly lit room, feeling something ancient lurking in the shadows of her cell.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She had to let go of him, in her mind. It would be easier if she could close her heart off to feeling anything. Especially Oberon. Her problem, however, was the face that grinned in the darkness of her mind every time she let her guard down. She hissed, lurching back against the wall as her new set of chains rattled, but her eyes refused her demands. She began to panic, losing whatever tenuous control over her own body she thought she'd had.

Her bare toes scraped along the sooty floor as she turned her head side to side, blinded still. Her chest heaved, the chains pulling her arms taut, spreading her wide as those blood red eyes swirled in her mind. She felt her control slipping further and further, sucked into a relentless and insatiable blackness from which nothing returned. Voices chanted in her mind, deep, dark, jumbled together into a incoherent mess.

She was screaming, thrashing against her chains as Tiberius grinned, showing his teeth. She lurched away from him, but he was only in her mind, right? The voices grew louder and more sinister, but their words became clearer. Repetitive sounds chanted in every tongue known to man and angels alike. Chills erupted over her naked body as crimson coated her vision.

She became still, her movements slow and cumbersome. Only her chest heaved. She could see herself, still chained, in a vast wasteland. Mountains spewed their toxic plumes in a landscape that had been ravaged by flames. The voices varied in pitch, some whispering in her ear, gleeful, and beyond Tiberius, figures danced silhouetted against flames and ruin. Figures that were not human.

And then, he approached. Behind Tiberius he glided like a phantom, cloaked in billowing black robes, his face just as hawklike as his counterpart's, but he was as devastatingly beautiful as Oberon. He wore no grin, only a simple look of deep interest as he passed Tiberius.

He paused in front of Hollis, and the chanting ceased, only long enough for him to open his mouth and speak, his voice deep and rumbling and carrying out over the wasteland. The words were familiar, for he was repeating the sinister verses that the creatures had been hissing in her ear.

There to dwell

In adamantine chains and penal fire

Who durst defy the omnipotent to arms

Nine times the space that measures day and night

Rolling in the fiery gulf

Confounded though immortal, but his doom

Reserved him to more wrath, for now the thought

Both of lost happiness and lasting pain

Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes

That witnessed huge affliction and dismay

Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate

At once as far as angels ken he views

The dismal situation waste and wild

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round

Regions of sorrow

Doleful shades, where peace and rest can never dwell

Hope never comes that comes to all

Here, he paused, reaching a steadfast hand with long, knobby fingers forward. Hollis was transfixed, eyes stuck wide on his beauty, on his allure. His voice...it was calling to her, calling something deep within her to life. A type of desire more fiery, more potent than anything she'd ever felt before. It wasn't real, was it? How could this strange man make her feel so powerful, so much like a goddess that she was certain the earth would soon bow to her feet in worship of her? She craved it with fervency.

She'd been powerless for far too long. And despite the small part of her brain that was warning her this was dangerous, she knew she was too deeply intwined into this darkness now. It was part of her, and it always would be. Her chains fell away, disappearing without a sound. Her hands skimmed over her body, her breasts, between her legs. She was hungry—starved for this powerful being before her.

He reached her, cupping her chin with such gentleness, his eyes swirling like a hurricane, and in their depths she could see every soul he'd claimed as his own since the beginning of time. They shifted from a pale silver, to a sanguine red, before finally settling on something much more familiar.

Golden.

She smirked at him, and he answered her with a malevolent grin before he spoke the last of his damning words.

But torture without end still urges

As one great furnace flamed

Yet from those flames, no light

But rather, darkness visible

Her smile slipped from her face as she sank to her knees before her master, her lord, her entire world. She belonged to him—every part of her. He cupped her cheeks, his hands so large they ran from her jaw past her temple, and they were fiery, so hot they burned into her skin. She turned her pleading eyes to Tiberius, the power she had felt just moments before ripped from her, a simple taste of a promise. But she knew such promises came with a hefty price.

He stared down his long nose at her, still smirking as she trembled in his hands. His cloak fluttered before it caught fire, burning away slowly, and on his head rose a crown of black horns. He trembled as he held her, seeming excited.

He released her, but she stayed frozen in place as he backed away, giving her a clear view of his impeccable nude body, smooth and pale and strong. Evil oozed from every pore. The veil of his world lifted with a flick of his wrist, and all around her the screams of the damned clawed at her ears.

The scent of sulfur was so thick in her throat and lungs that she began to gag and choke, but the two simply stared at her with disinterested eyes. She was a means to an end. The epitome, the pinnacle of thousands of years of struggle over such immense power. And the Angel of Light's time had finally come.

He sneered down at her. She tried to make any noise, to beg for help, to beg for God, but she was bound now to the darkness until their use for her ended. She pressed her eyes closed again, fighting against his power over her, until his undulating voice spoke life into her once more.

"Bring him to me, my son. I desire him to witness what his treachery will cost him."