Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Dark Ritual

Orange void light filled the room, emanating in a sickly haze from the dark altar, which pulsed and burned with shadow. Staring into the room, Adam was assaulted with a sudden and uncomfortable sense of familiarity. He had seen this before, or something very like it.

The room was draped in red, red curtains, and red fabrics tacked to the walls and draping downwards in a crimson forest of folds, hanging straight or pinned at diagonals over corners. A central aisle led up to the altar surrounded on all sides by open containers of liquid glittering in the orange void light. Most of the containers were full of water, clear liquid taking in and then refracing the burning orange glow, like a thousand little jars of molten fire.

The altar itself was... difficult to look at, a thing of nightmares. The source of the orange light emanated from somewhere behind the effigy lording over the dark sabbath from where it stood upon the altar. The effigy was difficult to make out, not because he couldn't see it, but because his eyes were having difficulty comprehending a shape from the mass of twisting blackness. It was almost a full five or six seconds before the image slowly began to solidify.

The effigy was roughly man shaped, at least in part. Its legs grew from the altar like the trunk of a tree, roots spreading down over the altar like the roots of a tree. Its torso was vaguely human, but unusually thin and twisted. One shoulder was higher than the other giving the thing a twisted, sideways sort of appearance. It had its hands held out to either side, but its arms were twisted like the limbs of a tree, and it had far too many fingers branching outward at odd and horrid angles. Its head was not at all humanoid, simply a writhing mass of jutting and twisting pieces.

All except for the eyes, which burned orange with malice.

Adam couldn't have said where it came from, but as he looked upon the horrid figure of the dark creature, a name came, falling unbidden to his tongue. He shouldn't have known who this was, but in that moment, he felt as sure of the creature's identity as he was sure of his own, a familiar dead rising its way from the very darkest reaches of his mind to fill his waking consciousness.

It was an old dread, as old and abiding as time itself.

"Apollyon." he whispered, not surprised to find the words passing simultaneously from his companions. Even Sunny, who should have been incapable of pronouncing the name, managed. The word was alien and strange coming from her mouth, and caused an eruption of gooseflesh to erupt along his body. The name tasted.... Wrong in his mouth like ozone, the copper tang of blood, and the metallic aftertaste that comes with sucking on an ice cube.

All of that and more.

Tastes he shouldn't have been able to taste, but still somehow managed.

And before that, bodies twisted in various stages of dark supplication, knelt Everett and his disciples, more creatures than man or Maker. Adam's stomach churned hard inside his boy cavity as he looked upon Everette, who had taken on an old, familiar appearance.

The cannibal from the derelict raised his icy blue eyes to the sky , hands held over his head. Naked from the waist up, his bruised and mottled skin glowed, backlit with the orange light., "Lord and master, the greatest one, the darkest one , we supplicate thee, we pray for thy deliverance. We pray for thy hand of Vengeance!"

At his feet, his followers groaned in agreement,

The ones that were still alive.

Moving bodies writhed over each other, writhed over the dead as the dark prayer took hold upon them.

Everett closed his eyes. As if in ecstasy,

And then stopped, holding out a hand slowly towards them. The backs of his knuckles were bruised, the skin peeled away and glistening gently with a light patina of slime where the skin had been rubbed away.