The Owls are not what they seem.
His fingertips collapse like moon dust scattering in anti-gravity. Blurry fractal eyed input dispersed - view from the skytower is lonely. The artificial painted-sky above is stained with electric neon clouds that hiss the scorn of razor-sylphs. Why did he come down here in the first place? Assignments get forgotten along the way to the bottom all the time. Smoke stings the edge of the inner flesh along his throat and he knows...remembering-always: this is not a retrieval assignment. Sometimes you aren't down in these hollow places to bring anything once lost or forgotten back to the Day...sometimes you have make deliveries too...it can be a dirty job but someone has to take it. Exchanges must be made. There are usually parties not keen on this sort of trafficking, this is certainly the case when your delivery is alive and kicking the whole way down and may have their own Nightside connections.
He laughs, discards the cigarette, grazes his elongated, bony hand glides along the the fabric of the messenger bag hanging off his left shoulder - checking to ensure the soul prism in which his specimens are stored is still with him, right next to that Toxic Dart Gun always by his side all throughout the Long Night. These missions get hazy, reflective illusions of the fogs, bent mirror halls of endless inky corridors, time snapping angles...all standard routine down here. Air is dank and breathes in ELF-carried, reverberating water drops along the cracks in tunnel walls. Black, sharp fungus grows along oily veins in tucked away corners, twitching as though it has sentient teeth. He had, at the least, gotten used to the habit of ensuring his field equipment was never misplaced...you can't have such things falling into the wrong hands. Ever watchful eyes in the silent black, their Lux-projections pierce the airs in a shrill resonance. Sacrificial Sun extinguished in the swirling, growing Shadows.
Eyes cut along the path of a tiny spider headed in the direction of distant Parfaxitas. So much deeper to go than the Negative Towers...Travel like Owls along the flaming, dark sky. Heavenly waters of purification touching upon the dancing alchemical fire, cold fusion seers the wetwire of nerves. Overclocked: the air sanitation filter, Decontamination Bays & nano-sterilizing suits - integrity will only hold out long enough to get back to the service transit lines if operations go smoothly up until the drop off the bottom. "Cast these dirty little fuckers into that pit opening up to the City of the Mad...Let them fester in knowing intimately the cries of the negative abyss as the double-headed one picks off their slime-bound companions from the hive" his contact, ex-general in that Old army game, had told him during the debriefing. “No! I must kill the demons” he shouted. The radio said “No, John. You are the demons” a consultant relayed recent transmissions. Who needs Golems when you have living flesh to work with? A dragon with split open stomach lay dead in the cold embrace of ferroconcrete microworlds. It wasn't supposed to be a war down here on this run but things get hairy sometimes...
He brings the King a mock sacrifice as instructed to do by Control - his ego could never resist perceived honors. The true Hunted in his dark-violet Prisms are going into the endless Below of Ever-Down. In a sudden flash of electric sky Lux bombs are reigning down from Angry Chariots and the Black Ones laugh engulfing the discarded daemon vessels in the debris. The King's head is sitting there, viscous slime for blood staining the ground with inverse-blossoms of worms staining the ash covered soil in fractal putrescence of inverse-neon shimmer. A monument of betrayal and misdeed in Nightside, rotting head attraction like some daemonic statue of a forgotten deity never paid worship. His names lost in the desert sands of time. A single fiery sword from above pierces the black marble altar before Lilith's feet. Her wolves whimper in fear at the the scourge of burning vengeance carried upon the airs. Cthonic flame diminished, stolen by the true Hunter. Countless legions of slain daemon anti-souls tinge the atmosphere with the taste of thick, fleshy smoke swirling in hues of a unique cruelty. The Scythe of time wielded by Lunar hands across all their Screens. Amidst the rubble three new occupants are taken by the ever grasping infinite hands and wails of the mad in Masak Mavdil. Perched upon the sharp onyx stones of the Saturnine border walls between Nightside and Malkuth sit Three birds, laughing in the caws of their silent speak communion. Atonement for sin is required. "He that is not with me, is against me: and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth." Saturn cracks the ground, those divine waters of putrification will wash away the remaining void.
