wasteland, baby! [fushiguro megumi]

21: morningstar

september 2018

yokohama

third person pov

drown the girl in ichor and let it crawl beneath the ivory of her bones, for there shall be no mercy for the hell that she will unveil upon this earth. the girl no longer bathed in moonshine, but now tainted and buried in a sanguine pandemonium.

a hallowed chamber inked from the ground up. a cocked gaze followed by a snicker. her two souls converging into grey, her innate torment and purgatory essence now released as the hellfire skeleton of a dragon that was her domain. the sensation of superimposing an artificial space of a different scale onto a real space, in her domain, the girl held something more malicious than a pseudo grin.

"tell me kiyoe, do you believe in the afterlife?"

keiko scrutinised her older cousin, seeing as her ankles were weighed down by the plasmatic shackles forged by her own naive ideals.

"you bitch ... you've mastered domain expansion?" kiyoe squeezed out a stifled groan from her clenched jaws.

"i told you not to underestimate me anymore."

keiko didn't let her upturned scowl falter, sauntering towards kiyoe with her arms hooked behind her back. her polished penny loafers now dipped in the lava-like pool of blood, occasionally causing a small splash as she purposefully stepped into a burning puddle.

despite being in a domain forged by literal blood and flames, kiyoe still felt terribly cold. an unearthly presence sent icy trepidations down her spinal cord as keiko's question pounded through her throbbing head.

"well, i for one don't believe in that bullshit. the afterlife is just like a reaction to the innate narcissism that humans believe that we just can't not exist. isn't that why curses exist too? i think the principle is very simple." keiko mused, casting her vision down upon the older girl who was dragged to her knees by the chains around her ankles.

"you don't have say anything for me to know your answer. the chains around you feed on your belief that you deserve a life. the harder you pray to be spared, the heavier and hotter the chains will grow."

lavender and teal eyes the size of saucers dart to the added weight around her wrists, pulling her whole body down into the stale crimson liquid beneath them. "why haven't you killed me?"

under her lethal scarlet gaze, keiko flashed a venomous sneer as she gingerly knelt down to match kiyoe's eye level. her hand grazes the crimson fluid under their feet, letting the ethereal ichor seep through the cracks of her skin while a bloodied nichirin blade took form. as soon as it was fully forged, its blade was set ablaze.

"why should i kill you when i still have questions? don't worry, i'll make sure to go nice and slow, and just like you said, you'd wish you were dead."

"you fucking bitch-" the fiery blade was pressed to her neck, crackling through her skin ever so slowly with blood oozing out like how ketchup would be squeezed from an almost empty bottle.

"you forget yourself, kiyoe." keiko snapped her fingers, bringing forth an army of ghoulish corpses from the walls of her domain. "it's princess to you."

was she really keiko in that moment? before she had devised this unholy chamber of death, keiko was meticulous enough to make sure her friends weren't within the space that she used so they wouldn't be able to see her like this. as the soul of a god gnawed at her chest, keiko found herself wanting to bare fangs, to reclaim the power as her own.

prison of the afterlife, a domain reinforced by her other soul, the malevolent one, was in fact a more accurate representation of the chaos that resided in keiko's mind. a prison, not for anyone else but herself, chained to an infinite lifetime of remorse along with the corpses of her clan members. a reminder that she took lives, an admonition to the threat she believed she was, and evidence for her to never desire a second life of her own, to never pray for a chance to be reborn.