Zozobra

Zozobra
Chapter Six

Notes of the Authress: Okay, as soon as this is BETAed it will be replaced. I just got a new BETA reader and didn't want to keep anyone waiting another month. Sink your teeth into this! ~Suten Net

Saijuro-san’s room was never bright enough. Especially not for reading, but that was what she was doing. She sat straight on a tall stool before a podium. Turning the pages of an ancient tome, the paper at once crisp and velum-like under her fingers, she gazed at the illustrations. The book was filled with words she could not read, but it seemed somehow she had glimpsed them before.

She turned the page and it made a rasping sound – the sound of sputtering candles and Saijuro-san’s robes sweeping across the cold stone floor. It took her a moment to realize Saijuro-san was talking to her,

“Filia, do you believe in the Truth?” She glanced up from the pictographs of lesser gods and demons locked in grappling mortal combat and swallowed hard. Saijuro-san was standing somewhere behind her; she felt his gaze mirrored in the tapestry before her. It was a mural of the Fire Dragon Lord in all his raging glory, piercing gaze holding hers. The fine hairs on her body stood at attention and a bead of sweat rolled down between her breasts.

“Yes, Saijuro-san,” Filia answered and then turned a page. With the rasp of the paper he came a step closer.

“Do you believe in the Truth I tell you, Filia?” She let out a breath through her mouth and stared down unblinking at the page. Weapons from right to left. She could feel her heart beating strong. It throbbed red blood in the crimson darkness.

“Yes, Saijuro-san,” Filia answered with a breath. She found her lungs hitching when she tried to inhale. She did not want to turn the page. It would only bring him closer. Already she could see him in her minds eye -- tearing her secrets from her. She turned the page.

Some of the candles had puttered their flames out of existence. Filia clenched her legs together. Sweat was breaking out on her forehead. He was no more than a foot behind her now. The page before her was taken up entirely in text and the words swam discontent on the page. Her unease grew ten-fold.

“And do you, Filia, do you tell me the Truth?” She jerked her head up and met the accusing eyes of the Fire Dragon Lord. His eyes were burning like the rest of him.

“Of course, Saijuro-san,” Filia demurred. Every instinct warned her not to turn the next page. She did not wish to know. She cried out in her own mind as her fingers rose. She could not keep herself from turning the page.

Filia could feel the heat of his body behind her. He was burning; burning like the Fire Dragon King. She would not look down at the page. Saijuro-san’s breath was hot and fetid against her cheek.

“Filia,” he whispered, “do you want to know the Truth?” Her heart slammed in her chest and her whole body quivered.

“No,” she whispered back. She looked down and froze. It was another picture of the cosmic, universal battle. Only something was not right. The tapestry of the Fire Dragon Lord burst into flames. They licked up the wall, and the vermillion shadows threw the illustration into sharp relief.

The God and the Dark Lord pictured were not writhing in mortal combat – they were coupling. Her white skin was tantalizing against his darkness. Filia pressed her thighs together. She was slick with sweat. Saijuro-san laughed openmouthed behind her. Beyond all caution, she turned and faced him.

Great and terrible eyes stared out from Saijuro-san’s face. She tried to scream. An evil thing was pushing its way out of his skin. It squirmed darkly and ripped its way through.

Filia shot up, stool in hand, and threw it at the black thing. It smiled when the wooden stool bounced off Saijuro-san’s body leaving a rupture. It bubbled unctuously up from deep inside. The dark creature kept coming as the flesh of its puppet body was rent in twain.

Her skin was cold as the grave. Her blood was boiling. Filia ran past the thing and crashed out the large wooden door. She ran through the corridor. The creature followed close behind. She realized the corridor was a cavern. She looked over her shoulder.

This time she did scream.

It was huge and horrible; swirling blackness and the screaming –- a noise so terrible. A screech and a groan it was; a long, drawn out scraping of sound against a raw and bleeding throat. She panted and whimpered as she ran in the darkness. Ahead and behind her, only darkness. She looked back and the sight of that undulating darkness filing the corridor behind her made Filia mindless with fear.

She was not surprised when she reached the end of the cavern. Filia somehow knew it would end this way. It was there, behind her now. There was nothing she could do, save face it. She turned and fear curdled the courage in her belly. She pressed her back against the cave’s wall which was cold and moist. Everything around her glistened, even the monster shone darkly. Filia was sure she was screaming.

It tore at her with its claws. She arched up into it. She hoped for a quick death. The assault seemed to stretch on into eternity and she stopped screaming. There was no pain. She stopped moving and studied the hideous thing above her. Filia found she was no longer afraid. She was entranced, only vaguely aware that she was naked beneath the heaving behemoth.

It was then she felt that she understood. All she need do was surrender. That was what it wanted of her. That was all. There would be no pain as long as she did not resist. Filia reached up with her white arms and touched it. She found it surprisingly solid under her palms. When she slid a hand up to what she assumed was its face she swore it smiled beatifically at her.

She watched as the creature seemed to split open. Something was emerging from it, Filia watched in total serenity. Until He came out.

A horn ripped its way through the flesh of the dark beast and His face floated before hers. That scarred and sneering face was coming towards her and she shrieked out of her languid torpor. Her fingers formed into claws and she futility tried to shove the horrid thing off her. Then she felt the crushing force of the monster above her.

His hands shot out from the misty black and gripped Filia’s wrists, pinning them above her head. The rest of his body dropped from the belly of the beast and yet there were still tendrils of black that connected him with the behemoth. She wanted to get away from him! She could not move: his hands held hers and his knees were between her thighs. She could not buck him off of her. Filia screamed in his face, filled with impotent rage. He was impassive and determined above her; unflinching in his resolve. All the while, the maelstrom of the dark creature moved around them.

There was a great disturbance of air as his wings disentangled themselves from the mien of the darkness and descended around her; great black iridescent wings that stretched over her and swept down to touch her with their svelte filaments. The cadence of their movement had a muting effect to the roar of the creature above them and soon all she could feel was the feathery touch against her skin. She trembled beneath him and all she could feel were the beat of his wings and all she could see were his golden eyes. Stilling beneath him, hearing the flutter of the air as his wing displaced it; all she could feel were his feathers and all she could see were his eyes.

* * *

Filia jerked awake on the verge of crying out. At first the adrenalin rush left her cold and numb. She found herself sitting up in bed for a split second filled with inconsolable panic. When she realized she was safe in her bed at the Toad and Shoe, she fell back boneless onto the mattress; her strength failing her. Her lungs heaved as the terror of the dream faded away to unpleasantness. As the freezing rush faded from her limbs, warmth seeped back into her.

Filia suddenly found herself feverish with the occasional pulse of ice spreading out from her gut with the force of a heartbeat. Her upper lip was moist and her feet were sweaty. Throwing the blankets off of her with more force than necessary, she breathed a sigh of relief as the heat left her. Filia lifted her arms overhead and parted her sweaty legs. As the heat rolled off her she studied the shifting and shifting embers behind the decorative grate. It had not been placed before the fire that morning, nor did she remember placing it before the fire herself.

From beyond the door and behind the hall, Filia heard the furtive footsteps of a man and grew quiet and still. Her breath clenched within her belly as the footsteps stopped at the landing. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention and a lashing of panic hit her until she realized the footsteps did not come towards her room, but traveled down the hall.

Eyes rolling back into her head with the sudden limpness of her body as she melted into the bed, Filia felt her stomach relax. She could breathe again. Sitting up, her hair sticking to her temples, Filia eased her legs over the side of the bed and smoothed down her rucked up night dress. Rising on unsteady legs, gangly as a fawn, she stepped towards her door. With halting, stumbling steps from legs so tired of sleeping, Filia reached the door and leaned against the frame. Her body was racked with trembling from too much sleep as she fumbled with a sweaty hand on the door handle.

With nerves as brittle as snowflakes, the door creaked open under her hand and she peeked outside of her room. There wad nothing but a patch of moonlight in the darkness. When she pushed the door wider, all Filia saw was the darkened end of the hallway.

Wincing, she closed the door with a solid “click” that she hoped no one else had heard. Briefly, Filia considered locking the door, but there were no monsters here to terrify her. She was in a safe place; an old, country inn in a building full of people. She wondered if she would ever really feel safe again, but with a determination manifesting in her squared shoulders, she lifted away from the doorframe and made towards her bed.

The bed creaked as she kneeled onto it and crawled her way to its soft center. While she slid under the blankets a flash of darkness by the chair caught her eye, but when she looked there was nothing there to suggest it had not been her imagination.

“There is nothing there,” Filia said to herself and she tucked herself in, “you are just seeing things because of a silly dream that tomorrow you will not ever have the slightest recollection of.” Rather, she turned her attention to the fire behind the grate and wished she had stirred it before climbing back in bed. Admiring the yukiwa snowflake pattern of the grate from the cozy bed was preferable to getting up again.

As Filia drifted off to sleep she was snapped awake by heavy, furtive footsteps in the hall. For a time she though she was caught in a nightmare again and imagined that thing coming down the hallway towards her, breathing down the door to her room, and tearing her apart from the inside. But, no, she already knew what it was, it had already revealed itself to her, it had no purpose in hiding in the flesh of another. Or did it? Fingers clenched in her coverings, Filia waited for her door to come fling off its hinges and come crashing onto the floor, followed by that horrid creature with Him in its womb, squeezing its massive girth through the frame, filling the room and displacing the air, and she could not breath, and berating herself for not locking the door, why, why, why didn’t she lock the door?

Filia flinched when something solid hit the door, followed twice by similar sounds. Shocked by quiet and cadence of the sounds, she wondered wildly who was knocking on her door. A great weight atop nimble feet creeping about in the night could only be one person. Only one person who would rap thrice lightly and politely on her door:

“Zelgadiss?” Filia queried.

“Yes,” his voice came muffled through the door, “Am I disturbing you?”

“No,” she answered and then asked, “Do you need something?”

“Can I come in?” Silence deafened Filia as she briefly contemplated Zelgadiss’ request, there was fear, yes, but also curiosity, and perhaps a yearning for companionship in her loneliness. She answered,

“Come in, please.” And he did.

(End of Chapter Six)