Phantom Chained

Chapter 3. Intrusion. Elm.

Insane joy mixed with insane fear that the people would just walk by and I would have neither the power nor the time to make them approach. But it seems like Lady Luck has smiled upon me today with her painted face.

I thank you, She Who Brings, Patroness Of The Unworthy! From this moment on I am forever in your debt, I am your eternal prisoner, and I will do anything that you would desire. Fortuna mia, just don't let the ember fade. Please, have mercy, take pity on me!

And so she did.

There, the woman was standing above me, very close. So close, in fact, that it took an incredible amount of effort to stop myself from ripping into the depths of her being and devouring it, choking and sobbing from the perennial hunger.

But that's what ghouls do. That's how you become a ghoul. I am not a ghoul.

I am mist, flowing above the moonlit canals of Venice; a serenade from a Spanish Caballero underneath his love's balcony; a branch of a flowering cherry tree, covering with pink petals the head of a sleeping beauty, who dreams about her first kiss.

Incubus.

My being pulls toward the woman who glows with the flickering flame of living flesh and delves into the first layer of her ethereal membrane. I'm sinking, drowning... I, an undead being, die for every woman who I manage to enter; how could this not be the greatest reward for a woman's vanity?

The layered void welcomes with a malignant chill, unbearable even for someone that is dead. Eternity and infinity fused together and filled with information that only the chosen and the mad can discover. The vampiric shadows devour the tiniest particles of energy that appear in this kingdom of death. This is not a place for the living. Were I not undead, the darkness would have killed me within a fraction of a second. Killed, sucked dry, scattered and laid to rest in this graveyard of knowledge.

The darkness is parted by bolts of communication channels. A flash, then darkness, cold... another flash. I identify the radian of these bolts and flow towards it. I patiently wait for the void to erupt with a blinding furor, momentarily opening the crimson wormhole which I screw myself into, much like a corkscrew into a cork.

The expanse bursts with a myriad of stars.

Beautiful... this place is infinitely beautiful! I've had countless coalescences with human essences within the last millennium, but I still can't hold back from pausing in marvel at the sight of embodied matter! How are they able to do this? Why? Why only humans, such primitive creatures, were given the gift of forming the celestial ocean of particular energy into objects?

The act of creation, where the creators conceive worlds without being aware of their own creations.

I am surrounded by wonderful illusions. Dangerous, too. There is more energy at this level so I have to be even more careful. The greatest menace awaits me at the Gates but... Curses! They are here!

The stars around me start to flicker in unison. The Panoptes felt my presence and activated a tracking system!

Vacuum horrendum, Argus Panoptes, nihil habeo, nihil curo.*

I repeat the curse a couple of times but the Panoptes continue to flicker. Curious, I don't notice any signs of alarm. So they noticed an intruder, but don't treat it as an enemy? Lucky me, I guess.

I turn into a comet's tail and hide behind the prominences of a green star, looking around in search of the Gates. But around me are only stars and nebulae, whimsically painted in all colours and shades.

I look, but I don't see. It happens sometimes.

The consciousness builds a chain of logical images, rearranging hidden data.