《The Tapestry: To Order From Chaos》Chapter Nine: Controlled Chaos.
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The sound of a bloodcurdling screech ripped Lilly back into consciousness and had her out of bed before her mind registered the idea to move. Within the first six seconds she was out of the bedroom, and at the front door within the next six. Ripping it open and drawing her rapier, she was on the front porch before the sound fully finished reverberating through the air. Every instinct in her body was screaming in a way that made the Demon Lord in her snarl as the harsh taste of cold, murky water flooded her sinuses and coated the back of her throat. In front of her, she could see Sour Puss cradling a limp Fuk to his chest, shaking her with increasing panic as he repeated her name.
“It’s a coven,” she bellowed as the others rushed in from the field where they’d been clearing some of the overgrowths.
“She fell asleep after dinner,” Sour Puss was saying, but she wasn’t paying attention to him.
Baring her fangs, she swiped out at the air where the scent of the Abyss was the strongest, catching something in the Ethereal Plane and causing it to scream.
“Show yourselves, you cowardly cunts,” she snarled, her body twitching as the frenzied madness that had taken sixty-nine Demon Lords to quell threatened to break through.
Before she could react, Nook cried out in surprise and pain as hag appeared just long enough to swipe across his chest with her claws before vanishing again. Leax rushed over to him as he dropped to his knees and a second hag appeared behind Sour Puss, hitting him in the back with two orbs of light that made him grunt before standing to face her in cold fury. She blinked out as a third appeared beside Lilly, clutching a hand to her shoulder and casting a spell that unleashed a sickly-green spray in her face. With a manic grin, Lilly clapped her hands around the hag’s gnarled, ugly face and hissed.
“I’m immune to poison, stupid bitch,” she said as cracked laugh crept up her throat before she head-butted the hag, using her horns.
As the hag stumbled back, her body erupted in necrotic sores and she screeched in pain. Her agonized expression turned to shock as she started patting at her chest.
“Looking for this?” Lilly asked, holding the lustrous black gem that served as the hag’s Heartstone up by the rawhide chord she’d been using to suspend it around her neck.
She disengaged from the hag as Leax let out a roar that shattered the air as it warped into that of a bear and he rushed the hag she’d managed to ground. Sour Puss barked an order at Leax to watch over Fuk as he closed the distance between himself and Lilly as she started going for Beldor and his grandmother closer to the house. When they reached the two elves, Sour Puss blinked out of existence, instantly being replaced by an injured Nook. Surprised, Lilly caught him as he stumbled over and she laid him down at Anzora’s feet. As soon as he was down, Lilly looked back to see the giant grizzly savagely attacking the hag as she fired off spells to defend herself.
With a high-pitched whistle in the direction of where Sour Puss stood after magically trading places with Nook, she started running at him as one of the other hags appeared to her left to hit her with a lightning bolt, singeing her skin and setting her shirt on fire. Without breaking stride, she charged for Sour Puss and did her best to ignore the pain as he came towards her.
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“Switch me with Fuk,” she called to him, and just before he reached her, he did.
Lifting Fuk’s limp form from the ground, he used the opening she’d left him to run her path back to Anzora in reverse. Looping around Leax, Lilly thrust her rapier into the hag, dropping her and allowing Leax to join the others.
“Come and get me, you puss-filled twat waffles,” she crowed as she stabbed her rapier into their dead sister’s head and wiggling it around into the dirt.
Answering her challenge, one of the hags appeared before her with eyes as black as the void and Lilly felt her gut twist with nausea. Suddenly, a cloud of green mist burst around her as Beldor called out the spell to activate Cloudkill. The hag before her, and the one that appeared behind her to box her in, coughed and gagged as the familiar, cloying taste of poison coated her tongue. Lilly pulled a small chip of mica from the pouch at her hip and threw it at the feet of the second hag, cursing under her breath as nothing happened. She hadn’t been asleep long enough.
Knowing she didn’t stand a chance with two hags in melee, even with casters nearby for support, with their ability to step into the Ethereal Plane at will, Lilly slipped the elastic band off her wrist to allow the blue glow of the demon sigils scarring her soul to burn through to the Material Plane. She’d hoped to avoid outing herself as a Demon Lord to Beldor as long as possible, but drastic times called for drastic measures. Surprise widened the eyes of the hag she was facing and the female’s, squeaking rasp let out a noise of understanding.
“So that’s how you knew we were here,” she said, her movements becoming more subtle as she reassessed her opponent.
“You have no right to attack these people,” she said, standing her ground, tracking her movements as she backed away and to the side to get eyes on both of the hags. Once she was fifteen feet away, allowing them to instinctually move closer to each other, she stopped.
“We don’t care,” the second hags said. “False Demon Lord,” she added with a sneer.
Once they reached the point where she could do it, Lilly dropped her rapier and held her arms out to her sides and instant before she spoke the name of one of the Demon Lords. With a searing burn through her right wrist, the sigil representing Ganga-Gramma cracked, causing her other sigils to turn red and injuring her further as a fifteen-foot sphere of chaotic energy slammed against her hands.
Inside the sphere, the hags screeched in horror as the interior of her prison was filled with a fragment of the Chaos Storms causing every type of damage one could take from something that wasn’t a melee attack, all at once, in six seconds. It hurt like hell to try and hold the sphere in a contained shape, but it hurt the hags ten-times as much getting caught inside it. When the sphere fell, the hags flagging from the damage, but they were still on their feet. Over her shoulder, a fireball narrowly missed her head as it flew into the same space the sphere had occupied, plus an extra five feet. Unfortunately, Lilly was not a real Tiefling and couldn’t get out of the way as the explosion. The last thing she remembered before succumbing to her injuries was the sound of Sour Puss roaring for someone to stop and the death cries of the hags as the fire finished them off.
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“Why isn’t she waking up?” Sour Puss roared as Lilly blinked her eyes open to see the bedroom in the farmhouse filtered into shades of grey.
“Breathe, old friend,” Anzora said and Lilly looked over to see them standing on the other side of the open door, gesturing to the room next door. “Sometimes the spell takes time to work. The spirit must find its way back to the body.”
A cold knot of dread pooled in Lilly’s belly as she realized the "she" in question was Fuk.
“Don’t tell me to fucking breathe,” he snapped at the elder elf.
Looking over at the bed, Lilly saw her physical body lying under the sheet, her injuries healed although her shirt was a tattered rag on the floor. Taking a deep breath, she looked down at her spiritual body to see her form had returned to its natural shape, as did her physical one, and the demon sigils on both were still glowing red.
“Shit,” she cussed, darting through the wall into the bedroom where Fuk laid motionless on a bed just large enough to make her look like a child. “Fuk?” she called out.
Lilly had no issues being in the Ethereal Plane, she’d been there before on several occasions. It was there that she underwent her Demon Trials. Each life-lesson needed a lifetime to teach. Only then, when she stood before the Demon Lords overseeing the Endless Maze to repeat their life-lesson and submit to their sigil, could her soul be branded. The residual glow leaked through to the physical world but was hidden by the glamor charm attached to the elastic band she wore on her wrist. So simple and unassuming, yet powerful enough to hide a Demon Lord in the presence of Asmodeus.
But, Fuk was an innocent soul taken before her time. If she was there and not responding to any kind of resurrection magic, her soul might have gotten lost in the timeless disorientation of the world in between. Lost souls could be taken by the predators that wandered the Ethereal Plane, just as any physical person could be hunted by monstrosities in the material world. Ethereal Marauders with their trigonal jaw, black teeth, and a triple set of beady eyes sprung to mind instantly as she remembered them chasing her on their two, tri-clawed feet. The idea of a terrified Fuk running from them had her passing through Sour Puss to get to her Bag of Holding near the table.
“What the fuck?” she heard him say under his breath as his footsteps followed her path.
Using one of her daggers to interact with the material world, she knocked her bag over and open to reach into it to take out the only other ghost-touched item she carried. Pulling the small lantern out of her bag, she opened the glass door and blew on the dry wick. A burst of blue flame appeared with a spark from the wick, lighting the darkening room as Sour Puss reached through her to grab the lantern out of her hand.
“It’s a ghost lantern,” he said in amazement as Lilly snatched it back and ran outside as fast her legs would carry her, fear warring with a purpose as she began calling Fuk’s name.
“Over here,” a familiar voice called from the field and heart nearly stopped with relief.
“Ganga-Gramma,” she breathed, making her way quickly towards the source of the voice.
Holding the lantern high above her head, she caught the pale reflection of the Demon Lord she’d called upon in her time of need. Cracking the sigil had weakened the barrier keeping the chaos energy inside her contained. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to control the effect she’d used against the hags. Jareth was being literal when he called her a chaos bomb. If she blew all seventy sigils, including her own, it would unleash a wave of chaos energy tantamount to an Old One appearing in full form on the material plane of existence. Undergoing the Demon Trials had been her way of protecting everyone around her from herself. Unfortunately, it was held together with soul-deep scar tissue and faith.
Slowly leaking chaos energy into the surrounding environment could be catastrophic if Ganga-Grama didn’t replace his sigil on her soul. Unfortunately, that meant she had to submit to the process once again. Thankfully, the Demon Lord had answered her call when she’d cracked his sigil.
Towering over her by almost ten feet, Ganga-Gramma presented himself as a round-bellied male with short, black hair slicked back into a small knot at the base of his skull. Two of his four arms were resting on his hips as the top two on either side waved to get Lilly’s attention. His watery black eyes danced in the blue glow of her lantern as he watched her approach over his bulbous nose. As she got closer, she caught sight of a small, frail figure shivering under an overturned plow that had been abandoned to time and decay in the middle of the field.
“She won’t come out,” Ganga-Gramma said.
“I’m not surprised,” Lilly said as she carefully approached and bent down to get eye level with the ghostly figure. “Hey, kiddo,” she said gently, startling the figure into looking at her with wide, round eyes in a haunted face. “You’re a Changeling,” Lilly said in surprise.
“Lilly?” she said in Fuk’s voice.
“Yeah, kid, it’s me,” she said. “Guess we have more in common than you thought, huh?”
Fuk blinked at her before launching herself at Lilly’s midsection, latching onto her like she was a lifeline and bawling in relief. Lilly fell back on her ass with a grunt, but held Fuk tightly, surprised by just how slight she was in her natural form. Although she looked like a young adult as an elf, she was barely old enough to be called mature by Changeling standards. Thirteen, maybe fourteen tops.
Lilly set her lantern down and did what she could to calm Fuk’s sobs, letting her get it all out of her system as she smoothed her fine, silver hair with her hand.
“I’m afraid I’m the reason she wasn’t responding to the resurrection spell,” Ganga-Gramma said. “I came as soon as you called, but my presence was enough to scare her into hiding.”
“It’s ok,” she told him and then tipped Fuk’s head up to look at her. “I’m proud of you for finding a hiding spot when you felt his presence,” she told her. “Shows good instincts.”
Fuk looked at her in confusion before she sat up and started backing up.
“Why do you feel like him,” she asked barely above a whisper.
“Because I am like him,” she said honestly. “I come from a dark place, kiddo. I deal with a lot of dark shit regularly and being around it has become a part of who I am. I’m still the same person you spent the day with and I’m still the same person who considers you a friend. You remember what I said about the difference between being harmless and peaceful,” she asked and Fuk nodded. “To you, I’m harmless. No matter what,” she said with a promise in her voice.
A few seconds later, Lilly heard the heavy charging footsteps of Sour Puss closing the distance between them through the field, following the light of her lantern as he called for them.
“Here,” Lilly said, handing it to Fuk. “Your brother will follow the light back to the farmhouse and keep you safe from any nasty things lurking in the shadows. It’ll stay lit until I put out the light, so I need you to keep it safe for me, ok?”
“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, panic coloring her voice.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she said, “but I need to speak with Ganga-Gramma first. And I need you to give everyone inside a message for me.”
“What?” she asked, standing with the lantern held up as Sour Puss broke through the overgrowth and approached it.
“Tell them, no matter what they hear, I’m fine,” she said. “What comes next for me is going to hurt. A lot. And my body may reflect that pain. But it’s temporary. And worth it to know you and the others are safe. Ok?”
“Ok,” she agreed and then looked up at her brother briefly before heading back in the direction he’d come from. Thankfully, he didn’t hesitate to follow the lantern.
“I hadn’t expected to see that lantern again for a long time, Stormwalker,” her fellow Demon Lord said once Fuk was out of earshot. “And to see you allow another being to touch it while it was lit shows a fair amount of trust from you.”
“Are you being judgmental?” she asked him.
“Not at all,” he said. “Merely surprised. And a little proud,” he admitted off-handedly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You’re learning to trust again,” Ganga-Gramma said. “Though I am a bit disappointed in you for rushing in to combat so low on strength that you needed to call on me in the first place, I can see why you did so. That creature’s soul is so pure it's saccharine,” he added with a gag.
“I thought you liked the sweet ones,” she said with a chuckle.
“You’ve ruined the taste of purity for me,” he admitted and then waved a hand to dismiss the thought. “My question, Stormwalker, is why did you feel it necessary to kill the hags in the first place?”
“I feel protective of this place,” she said quietly.
“You were establishing your territory,” he said in understanding. “Like a true Demon Lord.”
“You don’t sound happy about that,” she pointed out.
“You may carry the title, Lilly,” he said, “and we may recognize you as one of us. But you were never meant to stay in the darkness with us. You submitted to the trials as a way to contain your essence. You have lived the life of a mortal to understand them. If you were meant to be a demon of any kind, you would have been. You’ve never wanted to stay in the Abyss and you advocate for the survival of existence too vehemently to convince us that you were ever one of us. We will help you accomplish whatever goal it is that has brought you to us, but never believe that you belong with us.”
“It makes me wonder just how bad I am that even the demons don’t want me around,” she said only half-jokingly.
“It’s not a question of bad, Lilly,” he said, resting his hand on her shoulder. “It’s a question of good. When you allow yourself to open up and show us the essence you hold within you, you are radiant. It causes us pain as we try to adjust what we are at our core to be around you.”
“So, you’re saying I’m too good for you all?” she asked sarcastically.
“Yes,” he said seriously. “When I discovered you were in the Feywild, I was filled with a sense of relief that almost put me on my knees. Not because I was glad you were gone, but because I knew it meant you were getting closer to where you should be. We will always be there, lurking in the shadows in case you need to call on us again. But we are finished with our lessons, Lilly. It’s time to move on.”
“So, no more Demon Lord posturing,” she asked as a twinge in her chest made her sight go misty. As painful as their lessons may have been, she didn’t want to let them go.
“Remember the source of your strength was never the Abyss or demons therein,” he said. “You have every right to stand with pride in the face of those who would oppose you. But it is not because of your status with us. Take the confidence you learned walking beside us and remember that it is yours because of who you are, not what you claim to be.”
“But who am I if not one of you?” she asked, looking up at him.
“The person who taught the demons what it means to have something to lose,” he said, cupping her head in an attempt at a gesture of tenderness. “And, for that, I sincerely apologize for what I have to put you through.”
“I know, old friend,” she said, reaching up with both hands to hold his wrist as she pressed her cheek into his palm. “I forgive you.”
Ganga-Gramma nodded solemnly as he took her by the right wrist and pressed a kiss to the cracked sigil to clear the damaged seal. It was always better to place the sigil in a space that hadn’t been damaged in the past, but there was no room left anywhere else. The result was an added layer of torment as Ganga-Gramma used the tip of his claw to begin carving the intricate symbol upon her soul. She gritted her teeth together to keep for crying out at an agony so intense as he worked, if she’d been experiencing it in her mortal body, she would have passed out to escape the pain. In the Ethereal Plane, separated from her physical vessel, passing out wasn’t an option. Inside the farmhouse, however, her body responded to her barely contained need to scream by doing it for her.
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Dear Soulmate,
This is not a letter I would normally write to you.
I just need to try and get my head back together for a minute.
Sometimes I wish the Christian faith existed in this world.
Not for religious reasons, either.
I wish Christianity was around so I could blaspheme in a way that could sum up how I feel right now.
I’m sitting here shaking as I smoke my way through my entire stash of herbs leftover from Gehenna to cope and it’s just barely keeping me at a level of apathy that feels comfortably numb. I barely have the cognitive function to write this. Truth is, if you were here with me right now, the only function I would want you to assume would be to keep people away from me for a while. I’m an ancient being condensed into one gooey center that’s barely holding on to this thread and I’m going to be raw for a long time. I have no idea what I am capable of at this point and that scares me. I don’t know if I want to break something, kill something, fuck something, or just lay down and hope that I will feel something different soon.
The only thing keeping me grounded right now is knowing that you’re out there. Even if I can’t feel you right now. After I went through the Demon Trials the first time, I used to try and wax poetic about where my head was at. I tried to keep you at the forefront of my thoughts in some way so I wouldn’t forget what I was working towards. But I learned something new this time around. There’s nothing poetic about it. It just is. Just like I know you’re the prize at the end of this whole fucked up game of Hide and Seek. But I have to wonder what the purpose is in all of it. Why am I playing your game and solving your puzzles if there’s no point outside of learning a lesson? What are you trying to teach me? I love you. As much as someone like me ever could. But what is it that I’m trying to prove?
Why am I going to force myself to relive this over and over as I try to record my history for you? What are you looking for? Why am I looking for you when you don’t want to be found? I can’t feel you anymore unless I’m asleep. Does that mean that you gave up hope? Did you give up on me?
If you are listening, somewhere out there, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll do what I can to get the Dark Pantheon in line. But after that, I need a break from the shit. Did we choose to become mortal for a reason? The whole reason I agreed to this was that it was my argument, that reading about life was great and all, but you had to live it to understand the feelings there are no words for, that gave you the idea. You may be the prize at the end, sweetheart, but I’m too tired to keep running. I have to make peace with the fact that I may not see you when it’s done. If that’s the case, then maybe I’ll see you in the next one. But, for now, I need to find a party to adventure with for a while.
I know the Prime Material Plane is a trap you set to see if I would forget about you. To test my resolve when it comes to staying on track and figuring it all out. But I cheated. I stayed in the planes that touched every world in the Prime System. Maybe you staying away is my punishment. Which means I’m essentially just killing time until you forgive me. Am I sorry? Not really. Now I know that I’m not giving up by walking away from divinity. I’m just trying to find the sensations there are no words for, whether you’re there or not is up to you.
I’ll get the Dark Pantheon’s help to send off one last signal flare to show you where I am and who I am. But after that, I’m done with your puzzle. I love you, but I can’t keep letting your game distract me from taking care of myself. I’ll find a party and pretend to be mortal with them for a while. You’re welcome to join me. But it’s up to you to find the path.
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