NOVEL NEXT Chapter 51: Flayed Dreams [Sidestory]
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Once upon a time, in a place far beyond the shadows of the Star-Touched Lands — where grand pillars of concrete rose towards skies laden with smog and ash — there lived a painter of unparalleled talent.
She was a woman whose heart bled with dreams and colours. Her brilliant brushstrokes, drawn by hands bearing steady fingers and matchless precision, brought forth hues of vividity to a world otherwise void of vibrancy.
Canvases portraying lands of fantasy — of promises and smiles and happily ever afters — filled her public gallery.
A rainburst of life, beckoning the hope-weary denizens of the concrete forest to remember that they, too, had once dreamed.
The people praised the Painter's work. They begged her to exude her craft with greater clarity, greater warmth, and ever greater wonder.
That they sought to immerse themselves in her worlds gave her endless joy, and so she strived to meet their unquenchable demands.
The Painter drew and drew, but even her prodigious imagination had limits. She was born into the same forest of concrete grey as her patrons, and without seeing the rest of Creation, her works would soon reach the threshold of whimsical capacity.
Thus, the Painter bid her home farewell, tearfully promising to return after seeing all the beauty that the rest of the world had to offer.
So that she may one day draw for them the true face of a beautiful Dream.
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The one-eyed woman blinked and found herself in a cell.
There was no other way of describing it but as a pit of horror. Blood smeared the walls of the masonry prison, forming spirals of suffering that displayed pain in the most vivid of details. An artistry of blood-curdling wounds in abundance, delicate strokes detailing the most minute facet of the tortured expression. Passion and insanity mixed to birth a composition of the most depraved creativity upon concrete walls.
And within the centre of this temple, steeped in grotesque mastery — this tribute to Agony itself — was the vague shape of a person. They sat with their legs crossed, clenched hands placed on their knees. Flayed from head to waist, the inside of their skin was strewn with the gruesome illustrations of aesthetic torment.
The woman cocked her head. This was new.
She had thought to find one of the other Divine Conduits strewn within the Province where her god currently resides. She had not expected to see a fifth Corpus wandering the same lands when there should have only been four.
The woman studied her environment, dispassionately looking past the orgy of bloody murals and seeing only the construction of the cell itself.
The room did not exist within a physical plane. No doors. No windows. Six panels of artificial stone sealed in from all sides to form a square cell. The only light source came from an illuminated bulb above, but it shone despite having neither connection to electrical power nor sorcery. She could sense nothing beyond the space she currently resided in.
A spatial pocket?
That was exceedingly rare in the current era, even among the false miracles afforded by the Dead Beasts who once crawled from within the womb of the Star-Eating Mountain. That it was used to house the body of a Corpus as well was intriguing.
She examined the drawings once more, taking note of the wounds depicted in the sketches.
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Yet the lands outside the protection of concrete were harsh and unforgiving. It was a place where men clad in steel and smoke fought against machines wrought of flesh and organs. It was a place where the screams of the dying filled trenches and foxholes, where soldiers begged for their Mothers and Gods as fleshy tendrils of giant constructs tore limbs, harvested flesh, and pilfered organs from their still-breathing corpses.
The Painter wandered from battle to battle, one hell after another. She bore witness to an endless sea of suffering. She tried to search for beauty even as she wept to God at allowing the existence of such horrific cruelty.
There was none to be found.
Thus, the Painter abandoned her brush and took to the needle. Her dexterous fingers — once renowned for creating art of boundless joy — instead mended wounds and saved lives. Sutures became her brushstrokes, and mangled bodies of soldiers her canvas.
Her beautiful hands, once stained only with the myriad colours of cheerful paint, grew drenched in the blood and fluids of entrails.
But those hands saved lives, and so in her fervour to stem the tide of the dying, she mastered the surgical arts and became a Chirurgeon without equal.
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Crafts of vicious ripping. Of jagged edges and rushing blades. Walking mountains of mutilated men, rusted hooks swaying from the face-strewn torsos stapled to their breasts. They wander the killing fields, tearing limbs and meat from wailing prey so that the plundered flesh might be added to their bodies by the pound.
Bodies of harvested organs, animated through suffering. In the background of the bloody mural, there was the looming outline of a Sun — torn in two, with an enormous six-fingered hand reaching out from within the Celestial Star. Blood poured from the gaping wound and fell to the Earth in a deluge of unholy immolation. The hateful glare of the rift twisted and tore its way across the entire Sun as the tear birthed something unspeakable from within.
She knew that Sun. She knew what was born from it; what forces would inflict such misery.
The woman looked back at the Corpus. Clutched tightly in its hand was an identification tag tied to a metallic chain. She read the words.
'Captain Frida L. Cassatt'
'17th UEC Expeditionary Force, 4th Company'
Daemonic Blood Type: O-01-14a (+)
'May He always preserve our Souls'
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
You too, a wanderer from beyond the Ridge? What presently occurs beyond the Reverse Sides of the World, I wonder? Which horror was it that drove you to walk willingly into the belly of Mount Tai?
Curious, but ultimately not her concern. She and her foolish god left those places for a reason.
The more critical and pressing issue was…
This Corpus is not the Primate's work.
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There, beneath azure skies — in open fields of spent metal and defiled corpses, her once-innocent soul stained beyond repair — the Painter-turned-Chirurgeon spotted something peculiar: a pregnant fox, her belly swollen with unborn life, skin strained and twitching as the litter within squirmed.
The fox birthed her litter within the open ribcage of a dying man. Nine newborn pups — mutants one and all, bearing too many eyes, too many tails, too many teeth — tore themselves free of their Mother's womb. Ravenous, they turn their hunger on the withering carcasses of both kin and dying.
The Mother cried. The Soldier screamed. And within those unholy expressions of purest pain, the Painter finally found her beauty.
It was found in the bleakness of blood. It was found in the hanging rope of hope. It was found in the blackest pits of Tartarus, where even there, one might see the cursed human spirit clinging onto the face of a Dream.
The Dream is the cruellest torment. It binds those forever to the suffering of what they cannot grasp.
The Painter became mesmerised by torment, and amid the throes of suffering, she thought to paint the Agony of Hope itself.
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"Of course, it is not his. You don't think for a second that the monkey was capable of such majestic flair, do you?"
Someone else had entered the cell.
The woman turned. Lying across the lap of the tortured Corpus was the humanoid form of an accursed female beast, dressed in threadbare lace of alabaster and gleaming pale ornaments that beckoned atop naked skin of mercury. A cascade of snow-white hair covered the swell of the creature's curves and silver-pale complexion.
The Fox leaned her head back, greeting the one-eyed woman with a gaze that once turned Heavenly Kings wild with lust.
"Hierophant."
The woman inclined her head.
Whore.
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Guided by masterful hands, under brushstrokes of bodily fluids and canvases of flayed flesh, the prodigy seized those fleeting moments of ecstatic beauty, painting imagery of indescribable wounds and capturing expressions of horrified despair. Once she had mastered her newfound art, the Painter returned to her home and proudly displayed her works to the people of the Concrete Forest.
But the people of Concrete were cruel, unable to see the beauty of her work. They decry her art, calling her mad, for where once her colours and brushstrokes brought joy, now there was only horror.
Their disdain echoed in her heart, thorns pricking at her flesh. Yet she painted on, stubbornly believing that surely, one day, they would eventually come to understand the worth her art portrayed.
As time passed, her mind grew ever fervent and darker, her painting depicting torment on an inconceivable scale. The suffering in her works was impossibly stark — her talents elevating them beyond the sanctity of reason — until one could not even gaze upon them without becoming mad.
Chirurgeon and Painter worked hand in hand, producing works of jutting bones, gutted entrails, torn limbs, severed heads, flayed skin, and the expression of men and women when they suffered such wounds. With each stroke, she strayed further from the realms of happily ever afters.
With each stroke, she brought the Dream of the outside world into the Forest of Concrete.
~~~
The Fox pouted, lips impossibly lovely even with the hideous background of the flayed Corpus over her.
"No need to be rude. Here I am, generously affording you a view deities and humans alike have died to witness, and all you can do is offer insult. At least spare a word of praise for my beauty. I would even settle for one of those horrid poems you like making."
The seduction of the Fox went beyond simple allure. It was nothing as mundane as the cultivated captivation of refined practitioners seen in the lands of the Star-Eating Mountain. Hers was a beauty so potent that no living creature could resist the temptation of her form.
The woman felt nothing.
~~~
One faithful day, after countless hours of toil and labour, the Painter unveiled her masterwork. It was a sight taken from the most bottomless pit of hell, a mural of flesh that displayed Agony at a depth hitherto unimaginable. The mere sight of it had witnesses tearing their eyes out in despair, and with that, the people of her home suffered her beauty for the final time.
They burned her gallery to ash, even while blinded and crippled by the horrors they had seen. Of the Painter, they locked her in a room of concrete, ignoring her pleas to let her continue her horrid art, even if no one might be able to understand them.
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Why should I praise you? You are the same as we last met: a vermin hideous beyond words, who thinks laurels of lace and pearls might compensate for her repulsiveness.
The Fox's violet eyes blackened to abyssal pits. The anger soon faded, and they flickered into a shade of lovely pink.
"I had thought our time apart would endear you to me, yet you are as disagreeable as ever," the mercurial woman sighed. "Indulge me in a conversation, will you?"
The Fox mournfully reached up to cup the flayed face of the Corpus, tenderly stroking its cheek with a delicate finger.
There is little for us to talk about.
"Come now, darling. You and I both know that is not true. And besides, do not act like I'm not doing you a favour. Are you not horrendously bored, stewing all alone within the Heart of that boorish man?"
The woman did not reply; she merely redirected her gaze to the Corpus above the Fox.
The final pieces began to fall.
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Denied her instrument and her paint, the Painter clawed at her wrist until the blood flowed, using the sanguine red to paint the walls of her prison. When the walls ran full with her art, she drew on herself instead, staining the front of her torso with imagery of the most horrific of wounds and expressions of Agony she could conjure.
Then, when she could no longer find space upon herself to paint, she used her knowledge of the medical arts to flay her very skin, such that she might use the underlayers of her flesh as the canvas on which she painted.
From her very person, she crafted instruments of ligaments, nails, and snapped bones. Her own arm she tore, such that she could draw on her back. Teeth were pulled, made to frame her greatest work. Such beautiful art she weaved: unseen, unequal…
Eternally etched upon concrete will.
And so, the painter gave her life to breathe Agony never to be witness, leaving behind her greatest work.
She had suffered. And so she must be beautiful.
And though her name is long forgotten, in time, a loathsome Fox would stumble upon her Art. It would witness the woman's sacrifice, gaze upon the ultimate painting of Agony itself made manifest…
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Did you enjoy tormenting this one?
"Torment?" The Fox cocked her head. "I merely sought to bring out the girl's potential. She was uniquely suited to the touch of the Star-Eating Mountain, and good materials were hard to find in those days."
She sighed mournfully. The sadness on her lips had heralded the doom of countless great men, all giving their very souls to taste the sweetness of that breath.
"Not my greatest creation, this one. I had thought that the end product would be of a more presentable repute. The Painter is — or, I suppose, was — one of yours, after all. Yet the Corpus turned out rather different from what I expected."
Within the dim light of the concrete cell, something monstrous flashed within the creature's eyes.
"You Demons from Beyond the Ridge are all so interesting. It's too bad this one expired before she finished her work."
~~~
The Fox witnessed it… and declared it inadequate.
"Come now. We both know you could have done better. It is a poor artist who only delivers what is requested."
— Excerpt from 'Divine Chronicles'