Just about every human had a monster within them. Most of the time, that monster happened to be themselves. This mind, however, proved to be a sufficient home for someone a bit less real and far more inhuman.

She was the one called Desdomena. Named as much by her host, Alvah. As long as she remained in that place, she would remain Desdomena.

The realm of thought was the opposite of a void. A fullness of so many observations and details that it appeared to be nothing except rare moments when there were violent enough shifts for the faintest lining of detail to be seen. It was similar in principle to when many colored paints were mixed together in water and the once translucent liquid turned black.

Yet her domain existed distinctly from the chaos, like a drop of oil upon a body of water. Each mind was a galaxy in a not so empty universe. The galaxy she called home was both a primarily sky blue ocean and storm, a malformed pearl. Imperfect but hers.

Within the storm, his newborn thoughts were of nearly every color except black and violet with light blue winning its conflict against red. Yellow and green were often found clashing but equal in quantity.

There were actually two storms, one that proved quite predictable and one that evaded observation. Just outside, beneath, above, or beside the ocean, depending on one’s point of view, was a crystalline rainbow star.

Everything within the realm of thought moved at the rampant, lightning fast pace of the mind. Every thought was constructed atop of one’s experiences and colored by numerous impulses. To those not able to perceive those energies dancing and weaving together, the thoughts simply seemed to materialize.

The tempo of the of the mind could be felt in nightmares that seemingly lasted forever and daydreams that comprised of entire lifetimes. For those dedicated to thinking, a hundred scenarios might be contemplated before a single action was taken. Ideas were born and discarded with every heartbeat, people not even aware of each one that tried to crawl to the surface.

Fortunately, the occupant, whose origin was tied to such a place and could move at the speed of shadow, found herself quite capable of keeping pace. She existed both within and seperate from the flow. Her body shifted and even vanished at times leaving only a reddened eye, usually with a matching set of blood red hair. The body the eye and hair often belonged to was a lithe form. It was indistinct while within the currents, like a shadow cast upon mist. A blue eye materialized on the right side to accompany the red one.

She could still see out of her injured eye. She did not really need eyes but that was now part of who she was. However, there was a persistent ache in that spot, distracting her. The best way to describe it was her vision was cloudy on that side when she had more than one to look through but really it was more like the pain made it difficult to focus in that direction. It was a matter that she could not describe to someone who had a real body.

Around her floated a stream of black fabric, a massive ribbon. The real ribbon still occupied the material realm, wrapped around Alvah’s wrist. She reimagined the gift as a sash long enough to wrap around her entire body.

Technically, she was everywhere. She was her own existence and could fill his entire head.

The “her” that was in the lair was more akin where her attention was focused on. If she did not give physiology the same lack of respect as she showedthe natural laws, it might be where her “eyes” were pointing.

It was all nonsense she did not care to understand. An athlete did not need to understand the mechanics of one’s muscles to run or flex one’s fingers. She knew that she could this she could.

If she wanted to control the body without interference, she would need to hollow his mind out so she had room to fit. Still, she could see, hear, feel, taste, and smell everything Alvah did as she she was the one experiencing it. Every now and then, she felt him stumble as he made his way up an incline.

Passivity was dangerous for a mental construct. Aberrations in a living mind were akin to ghosts in the material realm. Ghosts required passions and purpose to tether their corpus to reality, aberrations needed to maintain an identity within the mental realm or else be returned to the chaos that birthed them. It came quite naturally but it was not unheard of for an aberration to be disassembled and absorbed into the mind of a victim, though insanity was a common consequence of those mortals that succeeded in reversing the game of predator and prey.

A healthy mind was fluid but seemingly stable like the ocean. It appeared to be unmoving but the waves constantly moved about and the currents beneath the surface meant that it never exactly the same as it was a moment ago while rivers of experience fed into it.

Her hair braided together into a tail and set itself behind her eye like a long slithering optic nerve as she swam to her destination. Her ribbon followed for a time but disappeared as she focused on her destination. There were places safe from the currents where she could simply be. As she made her way through, she lost sight of the rarer colors as she journeyed further, even the sight of blue began to fade as she entered a transparent realm. Beneath such thick transparency, the world seemed gray like a light passing through too many panes of distorted yet clear glass.

Dull white reminiscent of old bones testified to pride while the tint of snow signaled hope. Crimson like blood signified hatred while lighter tints of red suggested something childish like affection. The dark blue one found in the depths of a lake spoke of desire and the seemingly everpresent skyblue represented serenity, patience, and in Alvah’s case rationality.

Rationality according to some was the absence of emotion. More often, she found it to be dull white among those that thought they were above petty feelings. Due to his own magic being rooted in colors and imagery, when he prepared a spell the blue would turn momentarily green. The whole world would seem as though she had been transplanted into a grassy field, what was once green would take on the role of blue and the other colors would appear to her as blooming flowers.

Her understanding of colors was different from his in regards to blue and green. He thought of green as the color of life and when granting those sentiments color in the material, he turns life green. Her view of life was born of the understanding that life came from water. Though a strange mind that saw algae on a lake or visited a beach to see the waves against the sand might think of the ocean as green.

Those clashing ideals made differentiating those two colors difficult when first inside his head. She was tempted to adjust his perception but he already recemented his ideals when he reimagined his image of life to a cedar cone. Now, they were properly attuned to each other and she saw matters as she should except when he used magic.

Desire could also be called lust and lust begot life. Hence, by his logic desire was green. As for the sense of harmony, what gardener did not feel a peace when around green?

She expected to find his mind to be either grey or white when she first entered but he was overjoyed at the time and his mind quickly accepted that it could feel again. He viewed placing matters in order as comforting and peaceful. He found a harmony in understanding.

Yellow akin to discharges around a gangrenous wound came with self-concern and greed while ironically gold could be summarized as magnanimity. Dark green like dried algae matched envy and pettiness while the color of fresh grass and leaves corresponded to selflessness. The orange on the fringes of a celestial maw voiced hunger and bright citrus espoused diligence. The nightly visitor, a deep purple, the shade some might imagine seeing, the false color of shadows when all would be prepared to to be swallowed by the night came with idleness and the last time she saw the violet and amythest of restraint would be the night he awoke to learn she and their new companion, Itxaro, had a less than friendly feud. The color of midnight heralded fear and a brilliant onyx crowned humility.

Black and white often opposed each other as did red and blue, yellow and green, and finally orange and violet. Pride was poison to fear and despair while hunger compelled all but the most slothful to act. Though that was not always the case.

Vices could mix together quite easily into a beautifully disgusting noncolor similar to but quite not black, essentially mud. Hatred and desire made interesting partners and hatred festered in idleness and despair encouraged idleness.

The positive traits and virtues people tried to foster tended to remain separate. Patience ran contrary to valor and courage, courage and charity opposed humility.

Virtues preferred vices to each other. Righteousness found a faithful companion in pride. Valor heroized wrath and charity disguised self-destruction as sacrifice.

Under that understanding, his new thoughts were nearly every color except black and violet with light blue winning its conflict against red. Yellow and green relatively equal in quantity in their clashing.

All oceans had islands. Mental scar tissue, delusions and assumptions one had to hold onto to keep their view of reality steady. Her host, Alvah, however, possessed a continent.

Tides and currents tried to erode away such structures but sometimes deposited sediments of sentiment that only helped reinforce those preconceptions.

The islands were occupied by phantoms drawn from the memories they dwelled upon and constructed their own interpretation of reality. Newer horrors and delusions pulled themselves onto the shores, escaping from the tides like fish venturing from a primordial sea.

She quickly found herself at the landmass, it took up more than a third of his mind. Practically half of his remaining was trapped and forced into that stagnant state, a cyst that failed to capture and close the wound.

A chasm cleaved the continent in two and a mighty river ran through it as the mass splintered and fragmented. She watched that rift form the day she entered his mind. The first cracks were already there, ready to give way. All that was needed was the correct application of pressure once Alvah lowered his defenses.

She patrolled the shores until she caught sight of a crumbling far from the main mass. Watching any fragment sinking back into the sea of thought was akin to witnessing the downfall of a civilization. This fragment broke from the furthest edges of the continent, an aspect far from the heart of his identity as a demigod but still connected somehow.

The island was steep from all sides, sheer cliffs that broke through the surface made it clear all entry was unwelcome. She broke through the receding waves as she leapt out of the flow of thoughts. Her hair unfurled and rebranded themselves into twelve long arachnid legs before she took grasp of the cliff wall and climbed.

Now that she was outside the lively currents, she felt hunger nibble at her with each step. She used the word hunger but that was not the correct word. What she felt was the emptiness that ached in the hearts of every social creature. The only time she did not feel it was when she was feeding. Not that it was ever satiated or filled, she just did not notice it. Though it ached all the more when not filled, it seemed to grow as if opening to devour her. She imagined she could turn inside out and swallow herself up.

She could eat until her entire being burst like a squeezed tick but still hunger. Matters of the mental realm came quickly and vanished just as swiftly.

When the currents of thoughts flowed through her, she felt content. Technically she was feeding but she let it all pass through her. The experience was quite euphoric, not exactly the same as when she tried to store it all inside herself in a rampant feast like when she chewed away at the minds of previous victims. It was comforting, relaxing. However, the place she entered was still and stagnant.

Once she reached the top, she was greeted by the sight of a mountain on the horizon. Or rather a temple the size of a mountain. It followed the ancient design akin to a pyramid but clearly segmented as if a set of flat blocks had been set one upon the other, each layer growing smaller in width. Whoever designed it failed to appreciate the convenience of simply having some steps running down the middle except on the very first layer. After that there were twin stairs on the sides, zigzagging paths that started on one end of each floor that stretched to the opposite end of the floor above and repeated that pattern until the next to last layer and where they wrapped around the front to converge at the top to make an upwards facing arrowhead.

At the end of the stairs laid an altar. Beyond the altar, at the very top of the structure was a grand pavilion for the gods to occupy. The site was large enough that such details could be observed at a glance.

What required further observation were the tiny things, almost like specks, at the bottom of her vision. She lowered her gaze and saw beneath her feet what looked at first like wayward ants but were the shadows of shepherds tending to just as senselessly small, grey sheep.

This place like all such splinters she encountered had been drained of its colors long ago, casting everything in shadow and shades of grey. She listened and heard nothing, no words from the shepherd or braying from the sheep.

She grew a mouth where an lower eyelid should be and flicked out a long tongue to catch a shepherd like she was a lizard and appraised the lack of flavor while the smacking of her mouth while she ate at least broke the annoying silence.

Unfortunately, this place in particular was akin to a silent shadowplay. There were only sights, no sounds, nor were there scents and the taste and texture of everything was bland. She might as well feast on clay, at least clay would taste better.

The taste was the norm. This place was essentially a scab. The silence was unique though. His memories at least played out the words he once thought he heard.

She observed the rest of the world. To compliment the temple was a quietly bustling city. The temple sat on a “hill” overlooking the “city.” Most temples would be at the highest point of elevation. The temple and its hill was off scale, the hill was also mountain, the steps were undoubtedly taller than herself in her normal guise and the shadowy inhabitants she could see within were titans.

The further one was away from the temple, the smaller things were. The structures on the edge of the city on the side opposite from the temple were like toys.

The sun and moon shared the same sky, distant enough from each other that the moon could be seen without the daystar forcing onlookers to look away if light was something that truly existed in that realm. The moon overhead was the moon he saw in recent times, he forgot the sight of the moon from his youth. The moon possessed its share of blemishes. Craters and scars, some from before history, some from wars when the Lunar gods fought each other. At least one could be attributed to Amirit's last migration.

She headed towards the temple. It obviously would grant her the best view to overlook the oncoming ruin. The only question was how she should get there. She could grow wings and fly there if she pleased.

However, it was not everyday she saw a thought of his that was so clearly twisted. If he was blessed with madness, it was in his values in priorities. Normally he would chide for something in his mind to be so out of proportion. He would compare it to reality, calculate, and correct.

So, she skittered her way there, watching the world around her grow as she passed. Her entire existence ached by the time she climbed up the hill. She did not bother with the steps and ascended vertically along the walls like the malformed spider she still appeared to be.

Titanic shadows sat upon the steps of the first layer and accepted colorless coins from visitors before returning with them to the city, shrinking as they went further from their place of occupation. Visitors with more regel outlines might get invited into one of the rooms in the lowest floors.

A benefit to staying there was she did not have to worry about the currents and the force of Alvah’s subconscious. It would make a decent nest if she was willing to swallow dirt. However, she had a strict palette, it was better to her to be hungry and enjoy a treat later than to stain her tongue with something rotten to ruin her next meal.

She had nothing in particular against temples. Just those that lived in it. Clerics tended to preach dogma. There was a sense of ritual to their actions when really such things might require no reason and still be meaningful.

There was no god that would have been willing to take credit for Desdomena’s existence but she was blessed with the freedom most could only dream of. She could express herself without needing to be herself. She could make herself a better, worse, or different aspect of herself because she was unbound to social norms. She could be what she wanted to be rather than what she really was.

It was the liberty of wearing a mask. Though in her case, she was the mask. By choosing what people saw, she could be her genuine self.

What was her genuine self? That was both simple and complicated. One could both say the face she chose to wear was and was not her own as she was conceived without such things. Her existence was comprised of endlessly contradicting desires born from the world’s many passions. Within her dwelled the repressed sadistic glee of countless souls and the hidden masochism of others.

She would be satisfied with anything, be it pain or pleasure for herself or others. As long as someone was laughing or crying by the time the sun rose and fell.

That was how it should have been. However, in the era she dwelled in now, everything born of the human psyche had been contaminated by the atmosphere of fear and dread. Even the most docile of aberations have become predatory. She who already killed humans found her affinity for torment amplified. She became more “monstrous”.

She was impacted less than most. She continued her routines even as the world crumbled. She would not say she had more choice over the matter of whether she was ready to sprout extra teeth and migrate to a volcano or swamp was not because she was more intelligent than most other aberrations, but because she was more self aware.

Awareness was a rare quality among aberrations. Even some of the Great Ones lacked what humans would call sentience from what she had seen. Aberrations acted in the way monsters were expected to behave. But once they gained awareness, they at least had the choice of doing as they wanted and doing what they were expected to. Desdomena happened to enjoy what she was expected to do. There was a pleasure in destructive acts, a catharsis.

So, she was happy to have the balance tilted towards sadism. Sadism was more selfish. Masochism at its furthest extreme accepted all and her pallette disagreed with universal acceptance. Alvah as he currently existed was by her definition a masochist.

To those that viewed sadism as improper, masochism might seem more acceptable. People had the tendency to glorify heroic sacrifices but it had the same potential to be poisonous. The selfdestruction was one of the more apparent conclusions but accepting something rather than confronting it might allow those around that individual to run rampant.

She desired intensity. Something lukewarm should be spat out. Yet, she accepted the company of someone as cold as Alvah. The way he cut her down with words while still denying his own heart and abandoning a whole village to its doom. She sensed the seeds of sadism within him.

And now, she dwelled in the place of his origin. A place he knew of but did not remember, rooted in fact and detailed by musings. He refused to legitimize it but he had to accept it once existed. To deny it would deny the fact he was born.

His land honored a tradition of sacred prosituation. It was primarily within the temple of fertility but there existed other practices. One such practice led to his parent’s union. He sent it to the back of his mind but he was conceived of magic, however indirectly, much like Desdomena herself.

What was marriage except an agreement, a binding contract little different between the exchange between a prostitute and their client? Marriage just happened to be a longer lasting union in most cases. What was the ritual of marriage but one of the oldest of all binding ceremonies?

The affair Alvah was familiar with was the usually loveless ceremony to bind the good graces of the gods to the lands of the mortals they coupled with. As with Alvah’s case, it was normally a king or queen as who else was worthy of a deity, by their measure?

Alvah did not need to explain those traditions to her. As an allu, parts of his culture was interwoven into her existence. In the most ancient of legends, the great heroes ate and made merry, a central tenant to her very way of life. Hopefully the positive aspects of those ideals were widely accepted enough to not be discarded and contaminate the mass of ideas that would become her. Though she had outside influence as well, ideas did not exist in a vacuum and a shadow creature was a common fantasy.

She sensed some lingering sentiment and climbed to the top. She cursed as she saw a familiar figure underneath the pavilion that crowned the structure. Dressed in a sleeved raiment of white feathers and adorned with jewels that had the faintest trace of lingering color and golden hair sat the image of beauty.

It was odd that Alvah remembered at all that Nana could have gold hair. Her hair was actually platinum blonde, like the moon’s surface. It only appeared gold when she walked upon the land beneath the sun. Then again, he first met her beneath the sun. It was not as if he was to sail to the moon before being permitted by her.

Desdomena bore witness to Nana, the goddess had been observed. It was too late now. The process had already begun as the sun and moon approached each other.

What came first gods or monsters? The answer could not be more obvious. Monsters, humans created the gods after all.

But if one removed humanity from the count, what came first? The stuff of nightmares like herself or the abhorrent things humans saw fit to worship? Which ones crossed into reality first?

Aberrations were accidents. Beings that were never meant to be born. However, when humanity saw fit to conceive deities, detris, failures and stillbirths were inevitable. Were aberations born first, failed experiments of a new craft, or were all existences such as here simply the debris? She preferred to think her kind were the byproduct and only the byproduct. She found the idea that her kind were the steps to the stairway to divinity to be unfathomably insulting. It would be to be the refuse left behind, the discarded cocoon rather than the caterpillar to such an awful butterfly.

If she bothered to study history like Alvah, mages had imaginary familiars before the time of living idols. One could argue those and other conjurations were the predecessors of her kind or the gods. Records stated aberrations only began to appear once the gods began to walk. History had a way of contradicting itself though based on who told it.

Just as history could be rewritten, memories became twisted. The greatest of all monsters could be made even worse if given time to grow.

An white shadow was cast across the entire horizon. Of course, wherever there was Nana, there was Amirit. All that began with Nana concluded with her destroyer.

The sun and moon turned mossy green.

The giantess was even larger than the “real” Amirit. Amirit could leap from the world to the moon but this exaggerated version called the sun and moon its eyes.

Amirit was humanoid in shape but there were subtle differences between it and the gods it devoured. One minor detail that Alvah’s mind seemed so fixated on was that its pinky finger was set in place so it was of nigh equal length with the rest of its fingers. Its thumb was pretty long too along with its limbs, not to the point of being grotesque but there was an uncanny beauty to it. Though it was not like deities that were idealizations of the human form but more some faintly remembered image of a vast figure. She likely looked to her quarry as an adult appeared to a baby.

Nana stood still as a statue as fate saw fit to repeat itself. The Great One’s marble hand reached down from the sky at the deceptive speed of a tidal wave. Such a catastrophe could travel across the ocean in a single day, this monstrosity mocked the stretches of the universe. When something was so vast, one might find difficulty measuring the distance of an arm that spanned the stars.

In that time, Desdomena sprung up and stretched and knitted her legs together into a pair of wings to glide. She latched onto the back of the goddess’s neck. Her hair stretched into a tendril and slivered to the goddess’s left eyes. The hair crept through the apparition’s tearduct as the back of Desdomena’s reddened eye grew teeth.

The tendril pulled the rest of Desdomena to Nana’s face. The newly grown teeth bit into Nana’s left eye as Desdomena’s body grew with each bite to fill the vacated socket.

Except for something very small floating in torsoe, her hair found the goddess to be hollow inside, just a shell and merged with it. Desdomena reshaped the body to her liking, her features sharpened, the once regal face became something predatory and her teeth aligned into fangs while her limbs stretched and her body became more sleek like a serpent. The golden hair lengthened as it took on a proper hue of red.

She backflipped as the hand came to claim her. She dropped down a layer as the pavilion was knocked down with a simple brushing of the massive fingers.

She landed on one hand and balanced herself as she unfastened her sandals with the other. The giantess’s fingers probed around the edge of the temple for her.

“Are you born from the part of him that lacks manners?” she inquired. “Give me a moment to rid myself of this accursed footwear.”

She made a small hop and kicked off the sandals before landing on her feet. She gathered her earrings, necklace, and other jewelry and clumped them together in a single hand. She tossed the rubbish into the air and caught it in her mouth. The stuff crunched as she quickly chewed through it all and swallowed.

There was some flavor to be found in the relics, a faint taste of regret and dead filial piety. But those emotions were old and rotten, far removed from the font.

She felt something familiar in her belly. It sat in her like a pebble as her being worked to disassemble it along with the discarded decorations. She pushed it up to her throat and with a heave, spat it into her palm.

What came out looked like a misshapen crescent moon, barely the size of a grain of rice, at least in comparison to her still titanic self. At her current size she could crush the smaller parts of the city unknowingly beneath her hand. At the top of one end was a bulge there was an additional lump beneath it.

It was Alvah or at least a version of him. Normally, Alvah did not exist in his own memories. Events played out as he saw them and he could not observe himself. However, this place existed before memory, back when he was just an embryo.

The giantess’s hand retreated and Desdomena peaked watched it be drawn back into the distance to form a fist. Desdomena’s lips stretched in a smile so wide they went past her ears, wrapped around her skull and met at the back of her head.

Then the fist came plummeting down. Its very presence damaging the world as Alvah’s senses tried to comprehend the force and magnitude of such a thing, the sky and world distorting in places.

Desdomena tucked the embryo behind her ear and made a leap. She ripped her sleeves off and threw them in the air. The twin pieces blackened as they merged together to form a delicate sash.

The fist crashed down upon the temple with the force of pure catastrophe. No fire, just pure might tossing everything up like dust. The ground rumbled all nearby structures collapsed, throwing the neighboring city in disarray only for a dust cloud to sweep over them with a force greater than any known storm. The temple and the hill it was once upon was gone, not even worthy of rubble, only a crater.

Desdomena’s sash wrapped around her as the shockwave washed over her. The fabric caught the air like a sail and took her even higher into the nonexistent heavens.

The giantess retracted her and the crater Amirit left behind formed cracks and those cracks violently transformed into chasms and spread across the realm. The world quaked as everything shifted.

Desdomena watched the world beneath her shrinking to match the furthest edges. She had nothing to compare to but she herself was likely diminishing in size as well. All had become “normal,” uniform in scale. Only Amirit remained as it was. All was equally infinitesimal to the grand delusion. Desdomena remained as a tiny creature over a small world, facing a cosmic titaness. Amirit’s being covered the entire horizon.

At the rearrangement of dimensions, by the logic of the realm, while she remained in midair and the fields around the once mountainous hill shrank, it meant the height of her descent grew as the ground retreated.

With some maneuvering, she found a way to seat herself upon her sash as she stretched it enough to be comfortable, the air rushing past her the entire time.

Ignoring the raging winds, Desdomena formed half a frame with the fingers of her right hand and pressed it to her blue eye. Her index finger rested over the crown of Amirit’s head while her thumb seemed to bisect the titan at the waist.

“How small you are,” Desdomena observed. She drew her hand away and Amirit shrank with the distance, the titan caught between her fingers. “I can almost fit you into a single hand.”

She hooked her legs to the ribbon and arched her back. She let herself hang upside down so she could see the rest of the Great One hidden below the edge of the world.

She reached out with her left hand and pinched the giantess’s legs between her fingers and pulled the limbs away to match the half in her right hand.

The titaness pieces writhed in her hands futilely as Desdomena pressed them together with a clap of her hands. Without any further ceremony, she threw the minuscule thing into her mouth and swallowed it in one gulp.

She reveled in the intoxication as the delusion digested within her and circulated through her being. She barely noticed as she hit the ground with a not so gentle thud. Her entire body reverberated with the impact complimented with multiple wet snaps and crunches.

She laid in the epicenter of the crater to let everything settle within nicely. She flexed her fingers tensely for a moment as Alvah’s trauma fully saturated her and the boundary between herself and the false Amirit blurred.

The instant stretched itself far within the mental realm. She felt the woven pattern attributed to the giantess imprinted onto her own impulses. What she would do to kill a god. But there were no gods left. She thought to leap to the landmass where there might be lingering traces or even into the pit where his divinity used to reside. However, there was something closer.

Aberrations could resort to cannibalism. Though the one that was eaten was not necessarily the one that won. Whichever one that had the firmest sense of identity overwhelmed the other.

Lesser aberrations could even leech from a Great One but one had to be careful. Siphoning power from a Great One was not the same as absorbing the full self and Great Ones were so vast they barely noticed the way a human fails to notice a flea at first. However, if one did take too much and found themselves filled completely with the same impulses, then they become part of the Great One.

She used that trick to evade the attention of many Great Ones as Alvah and her made their way down the mountain after he invited so many. He was too injured to run so they slipped by, cloaked in the “scent” of the Great Ones whose power she borrowed. It helped there were many at the time, their conflicting impulses formed a fine cocktail that drowned each other out. By the time their confrontation with a certain village occurred, she found herself quite accustomed.

However, this was a construct created by Alvah that resisted even his will. It was quite determined, She regained her senses to find herself standing and holding the embryo from earlier between her thumb and index finger, ready to crush it.

“I am the one that made him cry,” she reminded herself who she was as she drowned intrusive desire beneath a thousand sadistic pleasures.

She respected the Great Ones but the only authorities she yielded to was pleasure and pain. The Great Ones spread their terrors because that was what they were. She did what she did because it was entertaining.

Just like a real Great One, the false Amirit would emerge again. A harvest for Desdomena to claim at a later time. Desdomena was Alvah’s world. All terrors he witnessed, all joy he derived became a part of her in time. There was no illusion that could best her in this place, not even his deepest despairs.

She looked up to the sky to find nothing but a grey canvas. She swallowed the sun and the moon along with Amirit, leaving a boring sight behind.

She returned her attention to the embryo. Interacting with this illusion would be barely any different from picking at a scab that had already been removed. It was going to sink into the rest of his mind where it would make little or no difference. So, she might as well make use of it.

She let Alvah’s impression of himself rest in her palm and placed her free hand under the other. She splayed all her fingers, her middle fingers aligning perfectly while her ring and index fingers overshadowed each other. However, she never quite could get her pinkies and thumb to line up, making it look like she had seven fingers. That was the outline of two holding hands, seven fingers.

Her fingers stretched to the edge of the world where she drank deeply from the ocean beyond.

“I am the one that danced as all came crashing down.” She sang of a thousand atrocities to distract herself from the flavorlessness of the nearby currents. The grey filtered through her to become like tar with faint specks of color surviving within the dark mix.

Her left eye opened into a maw that vomited the still living thoughts onto the fake Alvah. She poured upon it until it was stained a lustrous black.

Satisfied, she retracted her fingers and her eye returned to to its ordinary state. She placed the thing between her digits and planted it in the sky opposite to how she recently removed the titaness from the world.

Most of the new crescent moon’s dark rays broke apart as they reached the ground, granting color to the world once more. The fresh thoughts gave sound to the wind and the ruckus of the surviving people in the distance.

However, there was some pure blackness that remained concentrated and streamed down into the world like ink. She overdid it a little. It was a steady and straight flow like honey dripping from a utensil.

Where the liquid met the grey world, the land turned to mud. She stayed as the liquid collected in the crater. She kicked the mud playfully and spun about before dipping her feet deep into the slick substance. She wiggled her toes and enjoyed the gooey sensation. Soon enough it was enough for her to swim in and she laid on her back as a lake formed around her.

The overflowing liquid escaped into the chasms as if they were canals. The sides of the chasms collapsed as they lost consistency, mixing with the liquid to form rivers of mud. The little world was beginning to slowly melt from the top down.

She raised herself to her feet and stood upon the sludge as if it were solid. She watched as the surviving shadow people, now clothed in flesh and colorful attire panicked to their eroding world.

It was not every day she got to watch Alvah’s perceptions come crashing down but something was missing. That in itself was a treat but the temptation was too great. The world outside might quietly fade away into a whisper but the confusion of the shadows failed to belay the full sensation of something precious being lost. No wailing, no crying, no screaming in anguish. She would not have that.

Her hair lengthened and dipped into the sludge. Strands of her hair swam through it like sharks and dug into the feet of phantoms near the rivers. The hair worked their way up to where the heart should be and began disgorging the muck inside them.

She turned a third of the populace into creatures of nightmare. She would have chosen half but everything would have been over far too fast. She danced and sang as screams tickled her ears.

The monstrosities were her instruments. They played the music of terror. Not pain, terror. They set upon the unchanged and did what both a pillaging army and a horde of beast might be expected to do. They defiled and devoured.

But all good things come to an end. The storm approached, a colorful of blue energy and other colors. The activity must have drawn his attention. She did draw from the surface after all when she siphoned thoughts into her false moon.

Soon enough the vortex overtook the island. Without a proper foundation, the island was uprooted and lifted along with her into a flurry of thoughts.

“There you are, Desdomena,” Alvah’s voice rang clearly from all directions. It was his mind, so oddly it was easier for for her to be aware of his actions than for him to be aware of hers. When they were merged properly where they overlapped, they shared no secrets but doing so limited such adventures.

“Did you have to interrupt now of all times?” she asked casually as she soared upside down, carried by the vibrant winds as the ground underneath her gave way. “I was enjoying myself.”

The air around her flashed a bright green with a tinge of red along the edges. “My apologies,” he stated as his mind began dissecting the remaining landmass. The delusion could no longer survive such close examination and was broken apart in the vortex, he could not spare such a flimsy structure even if he wanted to.

The moon lasted long enough for onyx to grace the storm as he examined himself. He slowly unraveled it, using it as an opportunity to learn something but failing to derive meaning in an altered perspective.

“I will leave you be then,” he declared.

“No, my fun has already been spoiled,” she asserted. “Take me to my lair.”

They were always together and actions more often than not spoke louder than words and actions performed in the mind could not be easily ignored. If they wanted to speak, they could do so if her lair rather than this storm of reason and order that was his center of focus.

The storm travelled to the font of his mind where his newborn experiences and thoughts met and were processed. She let herself fall as she dived back into the ocean.