14.6

Zyrdicia awoke in the astral darkness, wondering whether she were dead. A delicate, persistent sensation on her back told her that she was still very much alive. The pain was gone. Or at least she had no perception of it anymore.

She tried to place the strange sensation between her shoulder blades. She attempted to roll backward, to make it stop. It reminded her of an insect walking incessantly across a small area of skin. She was unable to move. In the floating, delirious twilight of consciousness in which she now hovered, she had only a vague memory of where she was or what had happened.

"Luscious." The Tenaebran word hovered in the air for a moment. The insect dance upon her back had stopped when it was uttered. Now it began again.

Zyrdicia concentrated upon it. The word had called her back to herself. Consciousness returned in a foul psychic flood of perception. She realized with a strange mixture of disgust and intrigue that Baal was feeding on her blood. His tongue flicked gently in and out of the wound on her back, licking the drops of mortal blood still flowing from it.

The Sephiroth sensed her awakening. His lips touched the exposed bone one last time. She felt a cold burst of magic in the vicinity of the wound as he breathed upon her, closing the wound. The magic would speed the healing. She hoped it would also help counteract the effect of the venom from his nails.

He turned her in his arms. Her blood stained his white lips crimson. She stared at them. A wave of longing mixed with fear washed over her. They were Azriok's lips. She knew intuitively what they would taste like, having tasted her blood upon them so many times before. She looked into Baal's eyes, perplexed and still to weak to move. She watched the color of his eyes transform from cobalt to ebony. Now they were windows into the heart of darkness at the center of the universe, eyes so perversely familiar to her that she did not have to look at the rest of the face. "How. . . ?" she mumbled.

"Baal is a conduit for me, precious. With great effort, I can project myself through him," Azriok smiled. He drew her limp body close against him and enfolded her in wings of liquid velvet. She wondered distantly whether it were merely an illusion. It felt too right to be unreal. Not that it mattered, really. She had no strength to resist it, real or unreal. Battered by thunder, drained of blood and poisoned with venom, there was nothing to fight with now.

She felt the magic at work, weaving her back together ever so slowly. Her vigor would return as time passed. Until it did, there was nothing she could do. She could not even open the bind-rune and let him take her out. She tried to cling to her hatred of him. In her mind, she replayed the text of the scrolls Philip had found detailing the deception, the wager for her soul. She felt his psychic presence in her mind, listening, and she did not care in the least.

"Deesh, Zyr planted those writings to deceive you. You must believe me. Of all the entities in your world, I'm the only one you can trust. Would I have given you so much power if my only intention was to destroy you?"

Zyrdicia closed her eyes, listening silently.

"Every set of wings I fed you made you more godly, more formidable. I taught you more Tenaebran magic than anyone in your world has ever possessed. In all things, I created you to be strong. If I had intended to devour you, I would have never given you those things. I would have taken your soul when you were defenseless, as a child. My gifts to you would only make destroying you more difficult. I gave them to you so that you will survive - with me, forever."

"Lies."

"It is your mortal companions you must doubt. They all serve Zyr. They are your father's tools. In all of this, only I have been true to you." Azriok's blood-stained lips hovered over her own as he spoke. His eyes enveloped her and sucked her awareness into his essence. "My existence has but one purpose - you. If you die, so do I."

Zyrdicia had no words for him now. She had only the shadowy infinity of his eyes, the sensation of his dark embrace, the wonder of his nearness.

"There was a wager, but not the one you think, precious. I bet my immortal soul that you would choose my freedom rather than the enslavement Zyr intended for you. If you do that, Zyr will be no more. The entire cosmos shall be ours."

Zyrdicia wrenched her attention from the eyes that threatened to subsume her in their beauty and looked carefully at the contours of his angelic face as he spoke. Something in it transfixed her. It flickered. It was barely noticeable and lasted no longer than the space of a heartbeat - but it flickered. She saw Baal's face somehow behind Azriok's.

It was a hoax. The realization struck her with the blunt force of a blow.

The illusory Azriok smiled, unaware the deception had fallen apart. He kissed her, pushing his chilling tongue into her mouth as though he had every intention of devouring her. She wanted to push him away. Her body would not co-operate. Her limbs felt as though they were made of lead.

Razor-sharp teeth sliced her tongue and lips. She tasted more blood in her mouth. Had she not seen the ghost-image of Baal, she would have believed it was Azriok. The sensation was just the same. She wondered suddenly why it mattered that it was not her dark angel, but another dark angel. The icy electricity of the touch was the same, the biting kisses. And yet it somehow did matter.

"No!" she murmured weakly, turning her face away stubbornly.

"There are so many ways to hurt you without killing you, Deesh. Some you adore. Others, as you recently discovered, you do not. Drop the bind-rune," he whispered, his lips sliding gracefully down her throat, slicing the skin smoothly with his incisors along the way. Fresh blood welled up in the incision, though far less than it should have been. Her blood volume was far too low to generate the torrent that should have flowed from the severed arteries.

She whimpered, "I can't. Stop! I know you aren't Azriok."

"He guides my every move from afar. He dictates this illusion. For all intents and purposes, right now, I am he. After the suffering you endured, he insists on coaxing your compliance with bliss. He remembers how sensitive your flesh is."

Zyrdicia was horrified. Though her body's craving for Azriok had never gone away, this was not what she wanted. She would have almost preferred another flesh-shredding grasping of her spine to this sense of helplessness. She felt another wave of darkness crest over her, and gratefully submitted to its release. Unconsciousness was her only escape.