The Creators Ch. 02

LUCILLA

I stared down in awe at the spectacle before me. Julia was... a god, there was no other way to describe her. Every inch of her beautiful naked form was alight with a deep sapphire flame, a flame that seemed to darken the closer it burned to her skin. I watched as its tendrils licked away at the bedsheets, burned away the frills of the rug, and blackened the stone beneath her. She was in pain; incredible, soul-crushing pain. Steam rose from her crying eyes as she confessed sins that weren't her fault; the inferno intensifying and flaring with every heave of her inconsolable sorrow. I stepped back, shielding my eyes, feeling the heat whisk upon my flesh. She was alone in her own hell; a god caged by her own guilt. I'd never seen her in such agony. She thought she had no one. She wanted me to leave her. She wanted to die. Well, too fucking bad, Julia; you're stuck with me!

I reached out a hand, and felt the heat tickling its warning on my skin. Icy fear placed its weight in the pit of my stomach, but I didn't stop. I stepped closer to the blue hell before me as the cadence of my heart thundered in my ears.

"You won't burn me," I whispered, more to myself than her as I reached forward. "I know you won't."

My hand blistered, the hair on my arm singed off, my skin began to peel, but I kept reaching forward.

"You're in control," I said softly, extending through the burning pain, reaching through the flame, "you are the fire, Julia."

The pain was incredible, the heat was searing, I could see the steam leaving my arm as the last protective wrap of moisture evaporated in the inferno. The blisters blackened on my hand, I could smell the flesh cooking, I could feel the fingernails melting, but I didn't stop. Through the tears, through the agony, I extended forward, reaching for the woman whose internal pain dwarfed the torture of my flesh, reaching for my friend in need, my beloved in crisis.

"It's just you, Julia," I said, tears streaming down my face, my blackened hand crackling in the sapphire hell, "it's only you."

My scorched hand touched the dark blue of her shoulder, and she turned to me, her eyes widening in horror. The burning sensation crept up my arm; a sleeve of blisters trailing the scalding crimson. Through tear-stained eyes and the red haze of agony, I saw the raging blue inferno quell to a smoldering cobalt ash. Her entire form dimmed to a husk of flaking embers; her skin that of dwindling blue coals, her hair not but wisps of smoke. Then... she ignited, set ablaze in a white inferno that consumed me. I shrieked in horror, knowing that this was my last moment, but my breath did not scorch my lungs, and my skin did not melt in the heat. My ruined arm flaked with dead skin, and new unmarred flesh was revealed below. The fried nerves in my hand electrified with sensation, and I felt two arms embrace me, and a kiss melt onto my lips. I could see nothing in the blinding white light, but I could feel it all. The heat swirled around us in a vortex of energy, consuming the room, setting every waking tone and color ablaze in its brilliance. Through her lips, I felt a surge of power. It flowed into me, screeching through every vein and muscle, igniting every nerve and neuron. My eyes flashed open in the exhilaration, my heart thundered in the intensity of the euphoria, and every muscle in my body surged with energy from a higher plane.

I love you, her voice whispered in my mind, through the inferno, through the chaos, as clear as a songbird in the dew-soaked dawn after a hurricane.

I love you too, I whispered back, and I meant it; I meant it with every inch of my soul.

The vortex spiraled into twisting lengths of fire, and then dissipated. The afterglow of the inferno spotted the lenses of my eyes, and they cleared to reveal her image. An aura of white light outlined her figure, her emerald eyes glowed with power, and her veins shown through her skin with the same white energy. It dimmed and brightened with the pulse of her heart until the deific glow faded from her completely, leaving her beautiful, but normal—at least to unknowing eyes.

"Did you just..." she started, looking over my body, "...did you just bind with me?"

"I don't know what the fuck just—" I stopped as I looked down at myself. Bright white patterns of energy glowed from flesh. The patterns were intricate and untouching, resembling curls of flame that curved along every swell and bow of my form. It was as though my body was a canvas, and Julia had painted the most complex, beautiful maze of flourishing lines upon it, accentuating every elegant stroke of my feminine figure with a fiery design. It flowed in spirals of impossible intricacy about the domes of my breasts, accentuated the subtle rises of muscle in my arms, created long, elegant bows along my torso, and curved in wide strokes along my legs. There was not a bare inch of me that wasn't highlighted by the fiery maze of impossible knots, waves, and curves. The glowing patterns didn't dissipate or fade like Julia's aura, but thrummed steadily with the beat of my heart.

"Holy shit," I whispered, "you turned me into your fucking mascot."

"I'm sorry, Lucilla, I didn't—"

"Sorry?!" I exclaimed, looking up at her. "Look how fucking hot this looks! Quick, get me a mirror; I need to see how my ass looks!"

"Lucilla-"

"Yeah, I love you too, babe," I said, studying the patterns on my palms and the bottoms of my feet. "I know this is a big moment, and I'm definitely ruining it right now, but I honestly don't know how to deal with that level of emotional intimacy, so if you could just please let me have a moment of vanity, that would be great. Thanks."

Julia handed me a mirror, and I took an indulgent glance at my ass (it looked fucking awesome) and then checked my face. I really did love the patterns, but I was glad they only extended to the top of my neck; it would be hard to hide them otherwise.

"OK," I breathed, taking a deep inhale, then exhaling through my nose, "we just bound ourselves. I am officially your reservoir of infinite power, and I love you with all my heart. Now what?"

"Um..." Julia said, looking around. Every window in the room had been blown out, there was a ten-foot hole in the wall that showed a vertigo-inducing five-hundred-foot drop from my room at the top of the tower, and on top of it all, the same patterns that now tattooed my skin were scorched black onto every surface of the room. They ran in straight perpendicular patterns with the edges of the walls, the tops of tables, and the bricks of the floor. From the behind the closed door, I could hear the sound of faint yells and footsteps charging up the stairwell.

"...I don't think you need to rescue those girls anymore," Julia finished. "I think it'll be pretty obvious to your father what happened here. Does he know about me?"

"It won't take him too long to find out," I said. "People know you're staying in my quarters. He'll check the records, find out your suspicious birth date, then check the census books, track your lineage, and put two-and-two together. He's insane, but he's far from stupid."

"So," Julia said, "what do we do?"

"First, we get dressed," I said, "then, we get my gold, and run."

Excerpt from Arbitrus Gen's Journal, Chapter Five, Page Fifty-Seven:

I will, for a moment, cease my critical authorship, and instead touch on something beautiful. Something we all feel. Love, of course. Love is the Holy Mother's gift to us all, that we may find spiritual perfection in another person, and bind our souls to theirs. This binding is famously made quite literally upon the flesh of a Creator's spouse, but the feelings are no different. Love is love; it is indescribable, so I will not attempt with my meagre sentimentalism to do it here. As many of you know, I was a homosexual, and I did bind with a man. Though I sired three children with a woman, there was no love between me and her. It was difficult for me to reconcile this sinful love with the teachings of the Maternal Path, but as they say, love is blind. Those decades of blissful ignorance were the happiest of my life, but upon John's tragic passing, I was left unblinded to see what the world was becoming. My love and my ambivalence was what caused the catastrophe. Had I acted sooner, Droktin would never have been able to do what he did.

So the warning I send to you, reader, is to always keep one eye open on the world. Give praise to God in the heavens, but keep your ear to the ground. Listen closely, and you will hear the seditious words of the future. I acted too late, and I did too little. The orc empire is fallen, and the Gratoran Desert is barren, but evil lurks in the shadows. There is a name to this evil. Satan might be the moniker you think I'm hinting at, and you are right, but the devil does not work directly. The devil has factors among us, and these factors do not sleep. Tethered Ones are ultimately self-serving hedonists, but Sentients... Sentients are the voice of hell. As I have told you, they come from the Life Giver, but unlike Tethered Ones, these things were abandoned. They are without love, they are without soul, and their only desire is chaos. There are three of them, and if you are well-read, then you know of Wrath. Wrath famously infected Droktin's horde, and made his soldiers manic with battle-rage. Sorrow has not been seen for a thousand years, though her mark is documented in history with crimson scripts of suicide and decay. She is not as well-known as Wrath, but I believe she persists in her quiet way. But Sorrow and Wrath do not hold a candle to the true evil of the world. The ancients called her 'the most ancient one,' for she is older than history itself. You probably have never heard of her, but your ignorance is her weapon, for she does not leave a trace. She infects the highest echelons of power, she whispers in the ears of kings and queens, and she blackens humanity with her seductress's drawl. She is not like the others. Wrath and Sorrow never knew love, but she knows hatred.