Blasphemia II: Deus Vult Pt. 05

Judith slapped a gore-covered hand over the succubi's mouth. "Not another word out of you," she snapped. Celerity rasped into its sheath as she took hold of the chain after Luca, heaving herself up hand over hand. Filia flitted past her, lofting up to the next floor with a powerful flap of her wings.

They proceeded up the structure in that manner, Filia sinking a chain into the wall, then flying up to the next floor while Luca and Judith climbed. It was slow going, but unless the building suddenly changed orientation again, there was no other way to do it. Neither Luca or Judith had the luxury of having wings like Filia did.

By the tenth ascendence, Judith's arms were burning. Luca was panting heavily, and he paused for a moment on the next landing as Filia sank their next chain into the wall. "Okay..." he breathed. "Perhaps I've been a bit lax with my physical training."

"Keep it up, big man," Filia said, patting him on the arm. "Almost there." Judith didn't miss how her fingers curled and squeezed just slightly, and entertained a vision of chopping them off. Then again, she'd probably like it. The Templar's bloodlust was up, the presence of such overwhelming evil around her awakening a killer instinct. Her heart was back to pounding in her ears.

Then she realized it wasn't her heart that she could hear beating.

Slowly, the three of them looked up. A few floors above them, a sickly purple light shone through the hole Filia had made in the floor. It pulsed rhythmically, in time with the loud heartbeat noise pressing in on their ears. "God, what now?" Judith wondered.

"We're about to find out," Filia said. She shook her wings out, then grabbed hold of where the shadows concentrated on her shoulder and pulled. A massive chain came free, at least a foot in diameter. It wound around Filia's arm like a snake as she hurled it up at the ceiling. It vanished into the gloom of the purple light , until it bit into some surface they couldn't see. "Grab on to me," she said.

Luca did so, fingers winding around the succubi's wrist, and Judith scowled at how readily he obeyed her. Then she sighed and did the same. "Ready."

"Here we go!" Filia yanked on the chain, then flapped her wings hard once. The shadows shifted, binding themselves back into swirling shawl around her shoulders. Then they began to rise, the chain melding back into the shifting mass as they rose. It was like being hoisted by a winch towards an uncertain, ominous gloom, rather than the other way as was usually the case. In such close proximity, Judith could smell the reek of sweat coming off Filia and Luca. Both scents coiled together into a potent bouquet that cut through the stink of the ichor on her body. How nice it would be, to wash herself clean, then bury her face in that scent and...

She shook her head. Focus.

As they reached the lip, Judith reached out and took hold, detaching herself from Filia and pulling herself into the new room on her own. As she did, she drew Celerity, and looked around.

And nearly dropped the sword.

The new space they stood in had once been the nave of a church - Judith could tell that much from the terra-cotta floors and the shattered remnants of the pews and statues around her. The debris swept back along the floor, arranged in patterns that made the sharp edges of the splintered wood and marble stab at her eyes. She followed the swirling eddies towards the back of the room, where they became a large pile. Atop the pile was a throne, made from shattered pew wood held together by a fleshy paste that Judith knew likely was once alive.

Seated on the throne was the Pope, slumped over and deathly still.

"Your Holiness!" Luca cried, scrambling into the room. He rushed towards the sitting figure.

"Luca, wait!" Judith warned.

As Luca got close to the mound, the Pope's head snapped up. His eyes were wide. "No, my son! Stay back!" A moment later, a spear of bone erupted from the wall behind the pontiff, aimed right at Luca's head. Only Filia's demonic speed in tackling Luca to the ground saved him from being speared.

The gloom in the room lightened, allowing Judith to see what was behind the nightmarish throne the Pope was shackled to. The wall looming over the throne was covered in a pulsing, thick mass of purpled rotting flesh. What made it worse was that it appeared to be alive in some fashion, the muscled wall pulsing and twitching. Judith spotted faces among the grotesquery, stretched beyond recognition. Near some of them, as much a part of the wall as the flesh, were scraps of colored fabric. She recognized what they were a moment later, and felt cold horror gnawing at her gut. "The Swiss Guard, no..." They'd been reduced to paste and made into a wall - an end far worse than what they deserved.

"Your Holiness, what's happened to you?" Luca said, nudging Filia off him. He started to move closer to the Pope again, then stopped short as he checked himself. "What is this place, why are you in it?"

The Pope made a pained noise, his body spasming. He'd been an elderly man before, but now it seemed as though what little strength that remained had been sapped from his body, leaving him almost a dessicated husk. "I cannot pretend to know, my child," he panted. "What has happened to the Holy See is beyond my ken."

FIlia slowly approached the throne, eyeing the wall warily. "Your Holiness," she said. "Is there any way we can free you?"

The Pope's brow furrowed as he gazed upon the succubus. "Who are you? What are you?"

"My name is Filia. I'm an Infernal, a denizen of Hell. I was sent here to make sure you survived on orders from my master Lucifer." She held up a hand. "Before you ask, no, I don't know why he asked it of me. But he seemed to think it important you survived this."

"Even the forces of evil set aside their crusade to oppose this horror?"

"Yeah. I'm not on board with any of this." Filia made a face. "There's a level of gross where I even I go 'yeah, I'm done.'"

Despite himself, the Pope laughed once. "The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways," he murmured. "I do not know why I was brought to this place, nor why I am bound to this parody of my seat in Saint Peter's, nor why the good men of the Guard were brutalized and made into what you see behind me." He hung his head. "I'm afraid, my young friends, you may be too late."

Judith's practiced eye saw it a moment later. The front of the Pope's vestments were burned away, exposing his gnarled old chest. Seared there was a brand of some kind - not angular and sharp like the demon runes that scarred her body, rather, full of headache-inducing spirals and Euclidean geometry. The blackened corruption there spread across his skin, rotting it away yet keeping him alive in a cruel transformation. It was like the Templar earlier.

Filia saw it too, and the succubi made a face. "Damn it all," she muttered.

"This is your fault," Judith snapped at her. "If you didn't insist on your foolish diversions, we could've gotten here faster and stopped this!"

She expected the succubus to argue back, as she always did. But for once, FIlia was silent. Her wings drooped slightly. A sign of shame?

Luca wrung his hands together. "What can we do?" he wondered aloud.

"Leave this place," the Pope said in a soft voice. "Begone from here. I know my end approaches. I am ready to embrace it. I have done my duty to the Lord."

Filia's hand clenched into a fist. "I can't allow that, your Holiness," she said. Fire flared to life around her hand. "My magics are not just for hurting. I can heal too. If I can excise that cancer from you and heal it at the same time, you might just survive. I have my orders."

Judith stepped in front of Filia, holding Celerity at her side. "His Holiness has made his choice, Infernal," she said in a dangerous voice.

"I have a name," Filia snapped. "You know damn well what it is. And do you want to stop this or not?"

"Of course I do!"

"Then it's worth a shot at least." Filia's wings flared. "Stand aside, Templar."

The room itself seemed to respond to the tension, the gloom lightening to expose more of the defiled space. Behind them on the chair, the Pope let out another pained groan. "It goes against everything I've ever lived for to put my fate in the hands of a demon," he said. "But in this case, I have no other recourse but to do so. But I don't know how you will be able to approach. I can feel that grotesque thing behind me, like I'm connected to it." He trailed off into a series of pained groans as the corruption on his chest spread further. "It will attempt to kill you if you get close."

FIlia looked to Luca. "Can you make those barriers mobile?"

Luca nodded. "I can."

"Put one around me."

Luca folded his hands and began mouthing a prayer. Judith squeezed the hilt of Celerity. "This had better work," she said.

"Hey, if not, at least we tried," FIlia said, before a shimmering golden barrier surrounded her. Her next words were lost, muffled beyond recognition by the thick holy barrier.

The succubus moved forward. As soon as she crossed an invisible threshold, another bone spear shot out as if it had been fired from a rifle. It struck the barrier with a loud crack, the bone splintering upon impact. Luca visibly winced, his praying hitching for a moment before he continued. All Judith could do was watch as Filia forged closer to the Pope, several more of the bone spears breaking upon Luca's barrier. As the gap closed, she watched the Pope carefully. Was it just her, or was the corruption spreading faster the closer Filia got?

As Filia got in the Pope's personal space, the barrier moved outward to encompass the throne as well. The Pope looked up at the succubus, his face betraying no fear. Filia's hand came alight with hellfire, the other conjuring a cloud of red sparks. She said something to the Pope that Judith couldn't hear. Then with fire in one hand and healing in another, the succubus laid her hands on the Pope's shoulders.

Everything went wrong all at once.

The moment Filia's hands made contact with the Pope's vestments, power burst free within the confines of the holy shield. Filia and the Pope were lost to view among a burst of smoke and light, flashes popping off like strobe lights within the dome. At the same time, the haze in the room took on a reddish hue, bathing them all in a crimson glow. "Something's not right!" Judith yelled.

"I can't hold it!" Luca cried out. The tattoos on his arm glowed brighter than any Templar ink that Judith had ever seen. The scholar screamed and clutched at his arm as if it were on fire. The shield faded away.

At the same time, Filia's Infernal power reached critical mass, coalescing into a bright ball around her and the Pope. Then it burst like a balloon, throwing the succubus backwards. She hit the ground hard, bouncing twice before stopping on the ground next to Luca. Her entire body was charred black with third-degree burns, the smell of cooked meat wafting up to Judith. The succubus made a noise of agony the likes of which Judith had never heard before. "Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck!"

"What happened?" Judith demanded, looking back and forth between the grievously wounded succubus and the cloud of black smoke obscuring the Pope from view.

"I don't know," Filia said, slowly pushing herself off the ground. Her body trembled in agony. Sparks flitted across her skin as she shocked herself with healing magic, her purple skin regenerating rapidly. "The moment I touched him all my power slipped through my fingers!"

"What does that mean?"

A deranged howl cut off Filia's reply. Templar and succubus alike looked towards the source. In his bastardized throne, the magical discharge had warped the Pope's physical form. His face had been scoured almost completely off, save for his mouth, from which a primal noise of animal pain and terror ripped free. He screamed far louder than a man of his age should have had the ability to, the volume spiking louder and louder with each passing moment. On his chest, the corruption had spread to cover almost his entire body, creeping further before Judith's eyes.

"It didn't work!" she yelled at FIlia.

"I see that!" Filia snapped back, her voice barely audible over the Pope's screaming.

"Kill... me..." The voice was raspy, almost a whisper directly in their ear underneath the clamor of the howl tearing free of the Pope's throat. "My body... no longer mine... destroy me... save yourselves!"

More wails joined the Pope's, the sound enough to make Judith's ears ring. Before her eyes, the flesh wall that had once been the Swiss Guard rippled and began to slough off, moving towards the Pope on his chair. She moved a hand away from her ear to take hold of Celerity, but the screaming stabbed in like a knife directly in her eardrum, making her grit her teeth and clap her hand back. "When does it cease?" she shouted.

The flesh entombed the Pope, hardening like a grotesque cocoon around him. As it did, the screaming stopped. Judith dropped her hands, panting heavily as sweat dripped off her nose. "What have you done?" she demanded of Filia.

"What have I done?" Filia snapped, gesturing to her still mostly burned body. "You think this is my fault?"

"You obviously did something to him!" Judith said, Celerity clearing it's sheath. "What have you done?" she shrieked.

"I am not to blame for everything!" Filia roared back. "When will you get that through your thick, goddamn dense, pious sk-"

Filia was cut off by a loud sound akin to a person biting into an apple. She blinked, then looked down. A spear of flesh and bone jutted from her chest, tumors full of white light pulsing in time with a heartbeat none of them could hear. "Wha-" Filia managed, blood trickling from her mouth.

Then the spear ripped free with an equally sickening noise out the succubi's back, trailing blood and bits of bone. Filia fell to her knees without a sound, staring blankly at the wall. Then she pitched forward and was still. Judith gaped, then whirled to see where the bone weapon had come from.

The thing originated from within the flesh cocoon, it breaking free having cracked the casing like marble. As Judith watched, more tendrils of bone and flesh punched free, until the whole thing shattered to reveal what had been born. It was like the verde templar from earlier, except so much worse. This newborn Nightmare was covered in eyes, the once sacred body of the Pope mutated into a new puppet for Yog-Sothoth. Eyes blinked along it's arms, it's torso, it's legs, all of them gazing right at Judith. Behind it spread four wings constructed of bone and rotting flesh, a mockery of the Angels.

Judith bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. "How dare you," she seethed. "How dare you!"

The new Nightmare's head twisted around completely, until its chin was pointed at the ceiling. It's mouth opened, revealing a glowing eye directly in the center of its mouth. "We are assuming control of this form," a layered voice said.

"It speaks," Luca breathed.

"The scholar," Yog-Sothoth said, turning his gazing eye upon Luca. "You were also an acceptable candidate, but proved too wily for my servants to contain. This old creature, on the other hand, was easy chattel, and will serve us well."

"You miserable spawn of the darkness," Judith roared. "YOu defile the body of God's messenger on Earth!"

"Flesh is flesh, Judith Magdalena," Yog-Sothoh said in a calm tone. "Simply a collection of fatty tissues, some muscle, and bone. For one such as I, it is as malleable as clay. But what makes this flesh special is the concentration of faith within." The thing raised an arm, eyes along the forearm and fingers blinking rapidly. "Here in this space, perhaps the most sacred on your tiny little world, this flesh existed at the center of what made it sacred in the first place. Faith oozes from every pore of this flesh, makes it resonate with what keeps me tethered. With this flesh, I can free myself."

Judith raised her arm, grabbing onto every last scrap of holy power she had. "Not if I have anything to say about it."

"Without your succubus?" Yog-Sothoth sounded amused. "Let us see how long you survive."

The puppet's wings flapped, webs of gore snapping between the spikes of bone to form membranes. It shot up into the air, hovering in place with measured downstrokes of it's four wings. Yog-Sothoth raised a hand, the roof came apart above him, deconstructed into its component parts by force of will. Wood and nails swirled around it, forming a makeshift barrier.

Judith grit her teeth and reversed her grip on Celerity. She didn't pause to check if Filia was okay. Nothing mattered to her other than getting her blade deep into this thing and carrying out the Pope's final wish. Lord, ready my hands for war and my fingers for battle, she thought, repeating the Psalm like a mantra as she ran forward.

Yog-Sothoth raised an arm and threw a cloud of debris at her. Judith moved to the side to avoid it, then scampered back as another cloud crashed down in front of her. She sliced a ceiling beam in half with a swipe of Celerity, using another as a springboard to get close to Yog-Sothoth. She raised her sword, brought it down with a furious roar...

Then stopped short as Yog-Sothoth caught the blade in his hand.

"Such a lovely blade," the Before God remarked, the eyes on his arm all spinning to look at the glittering steel. "But you will need more than consecrated steel to damage me."

He turned and hurled Judith over his head. She smashed into the wall at high velocity, and all at once lost all feeling in everything below her head. He broke my neck, her shock addled brain managed to think as she fell to the ground in a broken heap. My neck is broken. That blow broke my neck. I can't fight with a broken neck.

All she could do was lie there, unable to move as Yog-Sothoth moved over to her. He cocked his head to the side, looking down at her. "Flesh is also weak," he said, as if they were exchanging pleasantries over tea. "So easily broken."

"My faith..." Judith rasped, her voice deathly quiet. "Is ironclad."

"And yet it won't do you much good if you don't have the mobility to swing your blade or weave your holy spells." Yog-Sothoth held out a hand. Dark violet energy flared in his palm. "A pity." The blast built in intensity, until it was generating force that Judith could feel on her face.

She closed her eyes. So this is my end.

Then all at once the feeling stopped. Judith's eyes snapped open.

Several of Yog-Sothoth's eyes were spasming, pupils wide as they darted around the room wildly. "Oh?" the Before God said. "What is this?"

Then the spasming eyes exploded, putrid blood spattering the area around Judith. The thing took a few steps back, raising its arm and watching curiously as a few more eyes went wild. The puppet's mouth worked up and down for a moment, before a familiar voice rasped out. "I will... protect... my flock..."

Luca's meaty hand touched Judith, feeling along her body before coming to rest on her neck. "Hang on," he murmured. Warmth flooded into her being. Her head began to spin as bone set and sensation returned to her body, holy magic restoring her neck to pristine condition. How does he move so fast without me noticing? And how is it that covered in blood he still manages to smell intoxicating?

Her fingers twitched, then clenched around her sword. A burst of energy bloomed in the core of her being. Judith jackknifed up into a sitting position, breathing heavily as her brain took a moment to remember how to move her body. She worked her jaw, wiggled her fingers, and lifted her sword. "Let's try that again." Her voice promised murder most vicious.