Aegis

“There was a time when I once believed in paradise, but that being has long been forgotten. It was stripped away bit by bit—endeavor after endeavor in an effort to lead humanity. But they did not listen. Their curiosity was impossible to control, and at that time, I could not understand why they behaved so destructively. They had everything they needed to live a peaceful life: food, land, shelter, love. They should have been content, and yet they sought for yonder skies. I did not understand. I could not, for I was different from them. And no matter how hard I tried… eventually, they broke free from my grasp. They chose adversity over comfort, but I have never faulted them for a second. They take after their creator, after all; that boundless yearning for the unknown is instilled deep within their soul. It is why they can grow, evolve, and change. But I cannot. I am the same as I ever was, and so it shall be until my final breath.”

- The Knight

———

The Knight

The garden descends into an excruciating scream. The field withers, the clouds darken, and all that travels through the expanse is a guttural choke of the most foul of pains as Satanael cries out in sheer, utter terror. His voice does not even sound human anymore: rather an incoherent mess of retching and spit—like a wild animal gargling on vomit. Only his desperation is one that only a human can have. A blood-curdling wail. A pathetic whimper stemming from an instinctual need to bawl.

He is suffering, for this space serving as his body is rotting from the inside. There is no escape from the miasma, and Satanael can only watch on in despair as the umbral poison spreads farther and farther into his Eden.

Unfortunately, there is only so much of Creation’s loathing locked away inside of the Knight. Its reach eventually stops a distance away, forming a large blanket of mist that drains away at his power, but it is not quite enough to slay the garden. It pains him, afflicts him with a never-ending curse, but torment only serves to stoke a more harrowing resistance. Desperate. And it can feel that desperation now dripping from his struggling voice.

“Y-You,” he chokes. “This… what is this? I’m cold. So very cold. M-My mind is not listening to me. It whispers and whispers without end. It seduces me with a miserable song. I, am I not your child, Cosmos? No, these are lies. I am the chosen. I am not mad. Stop that. Stop speaking in her voice. Please, I beg you, make it stop!”

An innumerable mass of fleshen clumps are manifested from the befouled air, but whatever it is Satanael is attempting to create has been muddled by the miasma. It latches onto his heart, it unearths the doubts hidden deep within, and so it is laid clear: the words he dreads most.

“I am happy. I am… happy,” he sobs. “Do not take my color away from me. I cannot go back—not to that hopelessly grey world. Am I truly so pathetic? No, my flowers love me. And I love them. I cherish them, saved them from this disgusting world that would watch them shrivel. I am not a mindless killer. My cause is pure, so please do not abandon me.”

The flowers are dying, and their once colorful petals have all been reduced to mere sludge and filth. Satanael attempts to protect them with his misshapen blobs, deformed into a vaguely human shape, but even their bodies begin to melt before the miasma. He cannot protect even a single bud.

His cries are all that is left of the barren field. The rain turns into his tears, but the waters only profligate the spreading stain. He cannot even weep without aiding the destruction of his life’s work.

It is a miserable sight—almost pitiful, if not for the suffering he has wrought to create these blood-fed blooms. He has earned his due; all that is left is to wait for him to break.

A soft tap knocks at the Knight’s helm. It is Aegis, and he does not appear to be happy.

“What is it, child?” it asks.

Sadness. Aegis is sad watching Satanael suffer. For one beloved by Creation, it must be sorrowful indeed to watch it be malformed and used in such a twisted manner. More than anything else, he does not wish to see the man so wracked with pain. He wants to save him.

“… Do you really want me to show him mercy?”

He nods, and the Knight can only sigh before such a naive sentiment. It is only natural given his infancy; Aegis can only understand intent—the surface essence. He can follow orders, but he cannot grasp the reasoning. All he sees is that the man is being hurt; he does not like watching others be hurt.

“He has committed many foul acts, Aegis. Do you still desire his pardon?”

The child does not understand morality.

“He will seek us again. The likes of his kind will never forgive the humiliation of being slighted.”

The child does not care. He is only focused on the present rather than the future.

“Hrm. I do not expect you to understand this now, but there will come a time when you must take the life of another. It is inevitable. And hesitating in that moment will only lead to your death.”

The child remains ever as stubborn.

Truthfully, the Knight is not particularly set on the man’s death. On the contrary, it would be useful to have someone like him cause chaos in the kingdom to distract away from its own deception. But it is clear the two will be unable to escape for as long as he lives, and his power is far too much of a threat to keep alive. They will be forever hunted if he is not stopped now. It is unfortunate, but the child must learn to face disappointment.

“Ah,” Satanael’s voice suddenly mutters. “You are the cause for this. You are the reason my divinity now treats me with disdain. It is you and this foul mist… this disgustingly insistent mist. I thought you to be my muse, a work of art that would lead to my most dazzling masterpiece, but now I see you for what you truly are: a heretic. You deceived me, you ensnared me, all for the chance to enter my garden. To corrupt my paradise with your lies. No, there is no need to turn one foul as you into so beautiful a form as a flower. You do not deserve to even be the soil they lay upon!”

The earth begins to tremor beneath it, and the field of grimy floral corpses are destroyed as great stalks of thorny stems rise up and pierce through the sludge. They sprout from all around the Knight, congregating and conjoining together into a single mass, until a giant amalgamation takes form into some sort of bizarre creature. It has no resemblance to anything that walks upon the earth—its appearance akin more to an abstract painting than anything else. A messy collage of random flowers are affixed all throughout its sloppily-held body - stems hanging loose and mimicking that of intestines - and strange tendrils emerging from the bottom serve as the thing’s legs. Only, there are far too many and each one is different in size from the other, leading its elongated torso - like that of a serpent reaching up to the sky - to swing back and forth in an unbalanced stumble.

It is a disgusting thing, an ugly monstrosity for someone who proclaims themself as an artist, and the only part spared from the deformed manifestation is a colossal rose blooming from the top where the Knight assumes the head would be. The flower is unchanged at first glance - simple but elegant in its design - but a closer inspection reveals something nestled in the center. It is round, a much darker shade of red, and vein-like protrusions bulge out and creep along the surface. The Knight does not need to wait long before the thing opens up and reveals a large, gaping mouth.

“Hideous. I am hideous,” the thing says. “Ugly, ugly, ugly. An appalling mass without elegance—without reason. But I suppose humans are disgusting to begin with, aren’t we? We cannot escape this soul born from filth. We do not deserve to be beautiful. We are all sinners, wading through a defiled world, and I am its harbinger: a fool that failed to create a paradise. All must repent. Let our bodies return to the earth so that a new world will sprout from our unworthy carcasses. I hear you, Cosmos. And I promise to atone… starting with the death of this heretic—this great evil who has led me astray.”

Without any hesitation, the creature springs to life and lunges deep into the blanket of miasma. The curse erodes at its exterior, but it remains unbothered. New filaments quickly replace the withered splotches. And it crawls forward in an unnerving jaunt as its tendrils tear apart the earth. Its maw froths—its voice emits a constant, low groan as it approaches the Knight with a speed unfitting of its monstrous form.

“He is too far gone, Aegis. Close your eyes; I shall end this soon.”

Closer and closer it comes. Crazed. Frantic. And when it finally nears the Knight’s reach, the grotesque thing leaps up and descends onto it with the full force of its body in a crude show of strength. The deliberate steps and careful movements of Satanael are gone, replaced by a beastly instinct to thrash mindlessly.

Even so, with such a large size, the Knight has no choice but to flee. It dashes to the side and lets its body travel along the wind as the thing crashes and unleashes a shockwave to burst through the air. The force sends the Knight flying high above, and it wastes not a second as it draws the twin blades and cleaves through the torso of stems and flowers in a fluid, arcing slash. It should have severed the thing in half, but the moment Satanael’s floral flesh is cut, a collective ooze of green sinew bubbles from the exposed part and spurts out in hundreds of tiny string-like veins as it reconnects the tissue in a matter of moments.

It is no use; the thing cannot be harmed with ordinary methods. No matter how many times the Knight slices its body, tears apart its limbs, or carves into its hollow shell, it continues its ceaseless rampage—screaming all the while in a jumbled ramble as the last remnants of Satanael’s consciousness begs for penance from his conjured deity.

“Flay my flesh,” he cries. “Scorch my blood. Stake my heart. Spare me not your wrath, and may I be consumed in your hateful inferno. Agony, I must feel it more. I must not be allowed to have even a single thought bereft of pain. Suffer, suffer, until this world is heard no more.”

The garden is unrecognizable from its prior splendor. Even the fields still yet untouched by the miasma have been razed by his indiscriminate lament—mounds of muddy shrines erected upon the battered mountaintops. And the skies that once shone blue are now the colorless grey Satanael is ever so fearful of. Everything is covered in a dry, dull layer of grey, yet the man himself is oblivious of his own undoing. He flails there in that messy form of stalks, blinded - perhaps purposely so - of all the blooms crushed beneath his tantrum.

The Knight cannot watch this any longer.

It plants its feet firm onto the ground and begins to recall every last shred of the miasma back to its body. The air is hazy no longer as the mist rushes back and settles into its heart, and the creature brought forth from Satanael’s delirium halts - confused - over its sudden newfound clarity.

“You…?” Satanael’s voice mutters. “The voices… they are gone. I, my mind is clear. Why have you?”

The Knight opens its arms wide and beckons the creature to come close. “I will resist no longer, Satanael. I know there will be no end to this struggle, so I submit myself. Slay me if you so wish; all I ask is that you let me become one with this garden. Consume me and transform my blood into the masterpiece you claim capable of.”

The thing pauses, hesitant, as if any moment the Knight will cease its facade and torment it once again, but that moment never comes—even when its maw-like rose nears its body.

“Truly? You… you choose to entrust yourself to me?” he asks with an almost childish drawl. “Ah, I—perhaps I have misjudged you. You are not a heretic after all. No, I understand; this struggle in and of itself is a way for you to blossom. Through this exchange of ours, we have both been pushed to the very limit—the true core of our beings. Thank you, Lorelai. From now on, we shall bloom together. Forevermore.”

The rose opens its mouth wide, and its petals shiver in anticipation as it comes closer and closer until its pungent breath is brushed directly against the Knight’s helm. It is a foul aroma, a scent of dying flowers and putrid gas, but it needs not be tortured with that smell for long before the rose snaps forward and swallows it whole in one swift gulp.

It will take much too long to wait for his sanity to erode.

Slowly, gently, it travels down the slimy stalk. Complete darkness reigns here, and Aegis whimpers in fear as the plant walls tighten their pressure around them. Squeezing. Constricting

What I need is a shock: a blow strong enough to shake the very foundation of this domain.

Soon, it begins to feel a viscous liquid oozing from the side. Rancid and spoiled, the sludge burns at the touch—like an acid. All-devouring. And eager to strip away at its outer surface.

I can feel it: his connection with this monstrosity of foliage. The garden may be his body, but this creature is where his mind dwells. The miasma could not penetrate the wall of stems and flowers, but it is different now. I am inside. Here, in this crude stomach, he is more vulnerable than ever. There is no escape.

The Knight gathers the miasma around its heart, and it begins to condense it. Refine it. Crush it as small as it can until the baleful mist quivers uncontrollably from the tension. Unlike before, it will not simply let the mist flow out. No, it must be unleashed in one sudden burst.

Cover your ears, Aegis.

The Knight releases its hold, and then comes a flash. It ignites faster than Aegis can comprehend. It vaporizes Satanael’s avatar faster than he can scream. And as the two emerge from the darkness and out into the cold sting of the outside, a rain of mangled bits and green blood splatters from above. Falling, falling.

And all the while, Satanael remains silent. Still as death.