THE GODDESS'S BLOSSOM ( A TAINTED REVELATION)
Fighting in the ancient Himalayan monastery was an ill-omened waltz of orthodoxy and zealotry, the whispered supplications of monks against the goreless slaughter of new devotees to the Goddess of the Serpent. Crystal prism cast a faint, silver light, a beam of unfamiliar illumination in the darkness around it. Luca was dancing with death alongside the head of the acolytes, suave, her movements sinuous and constricted by the tiny pieces of obsidian that enveloped her, their dark powers entwined about her in coils of useless serpents.
The good old days are slipping past you, guardian," she mocked. Her eyes were surely cold in their calm. "The flower promises a new era, a web of authority worked fine and subtle, much greater than the shattered pieces of yesterday.".
Luca fought desperately, his experience in underworld combat now augmented by what the guardians had learned. He charged her connection to the shards, realizing that severing her connection to their power was their best choice.
Bianca and Isabella fought their way through defenders and monks, determination being an end to the constant pressure of acolytes. Dante, not giving up on determination, provided great cover fire, cutting through the ordered attack of acolytes.
When Luca attacked downward at the leader, he noticed a small, dainty mark on the hilt of one of the obsidian swords she wore – a flower enveloping itself over one snake, not two. His heart stopped in a burst of recognition, a beautiful foul flick from Bianca's grandfather's texts.
"Get.that symbol."
Luca gasped, freezing in mid-attack for a moment.
The acolyte leader's mask of calm cracked, a flicker of surprise and something very close to fear playing in her eyes. "You know it?"
"It's. an old mark," Bianca interjected, having witnessed the mark as well. "A mark of one specific bloodline. one that the Serpent's Eye has intimate connections with."
Before either of them could utter a word, the ground under their feet began to shake with tremendous force. Section of monastery floor collapsed, revealing a hidden room below. A burst of black energy, far stronger than anything they had ever seen before, shot up from below.
The leader of the acolytes' eyes widened in horror and awe. "The heart… it's stirring."
A grunt, grittier and sandstone older than the rock it appeared to be, heavy as if burdened with the millenium and upon millenium.
"The bloom. has borne fruit."
The slithering nightmare form they had seen within Caspian's compound was forming out of shadows, but there were no nightmare creations like this monster. This monstrosity loomed huge in height, with its scales that reflected otherworldly light, eyes that flared with evil, elder wisdom. It appeared power which radiated out of its form.
The acolytes were filled with fear, fanaticism lost in raw terror. Even the stoic leader was surprised for an instant at the sight of the beast's advance.
"What is it?" Isabella screamed, voice trembling with terror.
Elara struggling against her, determination burning in her eyes, replied in icy resolve. "The source. The heart of the Serpent's Eye power. We were naive to think that it was a store of shards."
The narrative shifted, the scope of their conflict growing larger than anything they might have imagined. The shards were not all of the power; they were vessels, fragments of something larger, something uglier.
When everything that was all pieces went amok, acolyte leadership risked a bet. All of the obsidian pieces that she had put into the crystal prism. Blazing energy was blown, which reached a point where it reached a scream destroying eardrums. Shattering the prism, its peaceful light was shattered, and black energy of pieces ran into hellspawn serpent with potency exponentially built.
The leader stumbled, her strength sapped, a stunned look of comprehension on her face. "We were mistaken… it doesn't work… it consumes…"
The devil snake gave a deafening bellow, its power now immense, its eyes fixed on Luca. The hum within him increased, no longer a gentle pull, but a raw, uncompromising wave.
"Luca, what is it?" Bianca screamed, terror ripping her voice apart as she saw him stagger.
Luca experienced a searing agony in his head, visions overwhelming him – not half-formed forms of what had come to be but an agony of belonging, closeness for the atrocities that were to be inflicted upon him. The voice of the past was echoing in him, no longer strange, but eerily home.
"The blood." Luca's parched mouth, his strained, stretched-voice, his staring into the snake's searing eyes, his mind shrieking. "It's calling me."
Elara's eyes flew open in horrified awareness. "No… it can't be…"
No one had time to answer when the terror snake opened its jaws and spoke, its ages-old thunder of the whispers now with a chilly personal voice. "Welcome home… my son."
Luca's blood froze. The voice. his father's.
The greatest plot twist of all time was there, everything Luca thought he knew, shattered. Vittorio's engagement with the Serpent's Eye was more, more intense than ambition. He was soured by it, yes, but he was bound to the well. The "awakening" wasn't a recollection of power; it was an awakening of something sleeping, and Luca… Luca was included, his blood the key to its total release. Now the fight against the Serpent was a dirgeingly intimate fight, a fight against his own lineage, with blood in his veins. The flower-adorned serpent had yielded its most rotten fruit, and the garden of their existence would be overcome by an unimaginable shadow.