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Info
Emperor, Defined
Author:FleshMaddAvalon
This piece contains severe gore, murder, Bodily Transformation, body horror, death, dismemberment, surgery, and domestic abuse.
The sound of water drips in my ears. I can feel the pressure building with each drop. It is an oncoming tsunami, waves that impress upon me the impropriety of my uncouth Becoming. The pool that serves as my birthing chamber, my oedipal home.
I feel the ul-gulgath-ultaths, their perilous perimortem examinations bought to bear on one full of life as I am. Their cocoons in the poolbreak open slowly, allowing them to emerge, for a time, and engage in their craft. The deft, minuscule human hands. Eyes seeking, shrunken to pinpoints, farsighted to the extreme. Coated in shriveled, corpulent skin. The monks of the Hiha region dedicate themselves to studying these creatures, their ways, the peculiar grasp of the flesh they possess. Whatever makes them as powerful as they are, they are prized by collectors.
I can sense the slow progression of time with the frightened urges of a painter at the easel. The runes engraved across my bones begin to surge and sputter as the waxing crescent moon, accompanied by the Her, the Many-Eyed-Graceless-One, and Her staring oblivion, gaze down upon me. My Becoming will be one graced by the Gods.
My lover is absent. An illness, a small but petulant one, has bedded him for the night.
He does not, cannot, suspect that I am what caused the illness.
I must be alone tonight.
The pupae begin to shiver, four sacs of flesh and sinew covered in anemone-like structures seeking outwards as the time nears. I place myself between them, my arms spread, legs open. I must give myself over to their whims, fully and completely. The parts have been assembled, and clear delineations at what must be removed and replaced made, my offerings sumptuous and unceasing. The acrid smell of flesh tinges my nose, and the taste of still-flowinng blood plays across my tongue as I lower myself deeper into the pool.
When I first meet the Eye in all her glory, I was but a stripling. She was nothing more than a cornea in the ether, looking at the dark, seeking, keening.
It was I who looked back.
Irregardless of my size, the opening fits me perfectly. I can feel it press snug against my shoulders, the amniotic fluid flowing into my lungs. The heady high of nutrition and begins to rush through me, and I can’t help but smile as I imagine the finished product.
They awaken, and their bodies emerge from the tender wrapping of their shells. They are harrowing, despicable creatures. They operate on instinct and programming. I am their master, their director. What ensures their survival.
They understand that at least.
The moons above me begin to strengthen in influence. I can feel the lunar light diasporate, fluctuate, then solidify, slow sprinkling threads of raw silver through the water. Punctures layer my skin, and I bite my tongue, moan barely suppressed.
The first time I was stabbed was so surprising. The slow snicker-snack of the blade in and out, between my ribs. The shot of blood, fountainous. The way he stared into my eyes. His soft hands cradling my chin. He was found dead the next month.
The shapers begin. They do not use scalpels, or magicks, or the wily tricks of the cretinous philosopher’s guild. They cut with nail and tooth and wit, and I brace myself for their touch.
It comes immediately.
He was fragile for one so aggressive. I broke his arms and legs and saved him in my cellar. I kissed his cheek when I took it, ripped his arteries out with a claw I had fashioned myself, bathed in his spray. When I was preened with magenta, I arose, and saw Her observing through my open cellar window.
When I looked up I saw Her peering through my cellar window. Beckoning. I knew what I had to do.
One wrenches its nails under the muscles in my left shoulder, sharp talons cutting expertly between sinew and flesh and skin. I grit my teeth, eyes shut tight against the cavalcade of miasmic pain that assaults me as the slight fingers tease at my nerves. Another leaches me, leathery fingers stroking my calf, and before I can do anything, it slices the skin apart with sickening speed.
My sacrifices have been accepted. Months of tossing meat and fruit into the pool, watching the salubrious tentacles vociferate and imbibe their sustenance, waiting.
Carrion-crawling beasts descend upon me. I am the eye of the storm, the bringer of hate.
My mouth is opened. I can taste them now, like wrinkled prunes, juggling my offerings, the pieces I wish to exchange, to put inside of me. With a derelict snicker-snack a tooth is ripped out, my jaw attempting to seize in a paroxism of pain. My eyes pop open, and the amniotic flows into them, washing out my tear ducts as I begin to weep uncontrollable, joyous tears.
Half-life flesh and bittenous beings will waste away, but I, in my brilliance, in my shining hope, will survive, to rip and tear at the peons below.
Their hands expand inside of me, making way for the raw nerves and muscles of the parts I have supplied. I was not able to gather as much as I desired—this coalition of power surprised even me. I—
Preposterous powers pretend to perform partisan actions. I am in their midst, and I am their ragdoll, pleading for their gifts. If they grant me their boons instead of killing me, I’ll be lucky.
I feel the seeking-creaking hands inside of me. I groan, for my organs have been spread apart, strewn among the fluid. They float outside of my body, dully reflecting the light of the mirrors. I can see my body as I never have before, as a display, as a true work, one I have sheltered and protected and nurtured and fed. I keep myself still, keep myself in the pool. To leave now would destroy my body even further.
And thus they begin to add. I feel runes engraved upon my bones, power added to my skin. My body acts as canvas for their scripture, their worship of the Overeyer. The wolf-monks of Yaldabaoth go through this every month when my Mistress arises, to glare upon the world in her glory. I can go through it once, and be made anew forever. The wingtips slide home, muscle meeting muscle, sewn and burnt and hewn together. My jaw is split and cracked, torn apart from my upper palate with a crunch and a gleeful giggle.
When I first met him he was a bleeding wreck on the edge of a gutter. His eyes were crossed and his mouth was filled with vitreous fluids. Even then he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
My lover sits at home. He is unaware of these happenings, his mind clouded by the potent inebriate I caused him to ingest. When he awakens, how will he feel about me in my new form?
When he sees my designs, how will he react?
To have control of one’s flesh is the highest honor. And mine has been under keen and knife and whetstone, bought to peak. I can feel the dorsus latinai being knitted together again, with the wings and bones and —
I picked him up, tender bag of flesh and bone. I stroked his hair, cooed to him, kissed his wounds. I bought him to my home, healed him slowly, with tender care. I was growing a seed. A fecund bloom of flesh and pleasure.
He has borne fruit.
— awareness slams through my bones and feet and hands and toes and teeth, I can feel the new bite and point and screw of every piece of my jaw, every filament, every wiry muscle bought to bear. The shapers rescind back into their pods, and I am left to my own devices. My mind fully aware, of so much, of everything. The drip-drop of water off a stalactite yards away, the rush of air into my lungs, the powerful frittering of the jet-black wings behind me. The tap of too-long claws against the stone rim of the bowl.
I feel the rain of the Over-empress skitter upon my skin.
I feel my body. I feel the tender leathery wings, the supple musculature, the pointed fangs, the claws, the chest made larger for heart and lungs to fill, heaving ever so slightly.
I have Become.
Flight is pure bliss, in its way. I can view the entirety of the city bordering the reserves of woods I live upon, my hunting grounds, my home. The last human I imbibed was sourced from these woods, a youth who often walked among the border to my holdings. Blood and bear tracks will be found at his abduction site. The grieving mother will receive a stipend from my coffers, of course.
Then I had control.
Now, the overwhelming need has taken me. I am soaring, simmering across air currents, a spark from a bonfire ready to met out a wildfire. My Over-empress has fallen, to rest and to return in another time— the perfect opportunity to hunt.
I flit across the sky. I glaze through air currents, what I was apprehensive of being nothing more than a quickly learnt skill. Thermals give me upward thrust as I wander the heady skies, seeking. The time between the setting of my Mistress and sunrise is a sophist’s dream, the chaos of the night interposed with the art and beauty of the violence.
Now I can smell every ounce of flesh, every drop of blood. Salty and metallic, ferrous. I lean forward, carefully adjusting the ailerons of my wings, to glide towards the forest floor.
I find prey immediately. Young, sandy-blonde hair. Broad shoulders, still exiting the purile form of adolescence.
No thoughts. No need.
The wings flap, air receding and billowing downward. I flicker leaves and branches above him. His head whips behind him, my silent approach giving me the benefit of surprise.
I am feet away. My hands snake out, gripping his neck with fervor. I can feel him squirm, try to shimmy away from my grasp.
My jaw unleashes, unlocks. Four prongs of bone and teeth and muscle spring out with unquenched desire and tear, rip, fornicate the flesh. His neck is annihilated, ground into meat and retracted down my gullet. A gasp leaves my throat as his body weakens in my grasp.
I drop him to the ground and take to the sky, seeking my home.
———
What was a long, arduous walk now becomes an easy and simple flight. I land at the door of my cottage, buffeting woodsmoke and crabgrass, throwing the dry dirt of the walking path. My jaws open and shut, my tongues seeking across the needle-like teeth.
My lover arrives at the door, eyes wide with terror.
My mouth shapes words and sucks in air, his name a musical rendition of fricatives and vocatives.
With hesitant stance he leaves our home, baby blue blanket wrapped around his body.
With a swipe, he is in my grasp.
He is as delicious as I knew he would be.
———