As Seen On TV

“I’m sorry, Emrys. I know I shouldn’t have tried to kill James Darling on my own, but fate afforded me an opportunity, and I took it,” Petra said as she genuflected before Emrys upon the grand balcony of his Sanctum. “I almost killed him, Emrys. I impaled him through the chest, and the shards of my crystalized Miasma remain buried in his Bile-infested heart! He was helpless then, if only for a moment. I had him dead to rights Emrys, I did! But then, this… thing that looked like a little girl and called him her father intervened.”
They were alone on the sanctuary world of Dorshadah, a rogue planet with no sun of its own, but close enough to the center of the galaxy that the dense stars bathed it in perpetual twilight. Its barren regolith was a stygian blue, and shaped into tall and strange formations by its singing winds, swirling molten core, and a siege of shooting stars. Here Emrys had made his Sanctum from the world’s wine-dark stones; an immense gothic cathedral that towered above the chaotic alien landscape.
Emrys paid no mind to the surreal view offered to him now, his attention devoted solely to his disciple. As he pondered her words, he unwrapped the cloth that covered the eternal thorn-prick on his finger, then held it up for her to see. When Petra nodded her consent, he gently touched it to her forehead, and a cascade of recent memories went flooding from her mind to his. He let his finger linger there for only a moment before drawing it back and rewrapping it.
To Petra’s relief, he was laughing.
“You really did almost kill him,” he said proudly. “That’s… that’s incredible.”
“I would have brought him back to you to ensure he never could have resurrected, and we could have used him to lure Mary –” Petra began to rant in frustration.
“Don’t dwell on the victory that was denied you, Petra. Focus on the victory you achieved,” Emrys instructed. “You showed the Darlings that they weren’t untouchable. You made a demi-god bleed, and those shards you were able to get into his heart will no doubt prove useful in achieving our ultimate goal. Be patient, Petra. Whether the Ophion Occult Order surrenders willingly or we subdue them by force, I will soon be free of my chains, and the Darlings will no longer have any hope of standing against us. You used your power, stealth, and cunning to great effect in your ambush of James, but this incident serves as a lesson to how decisive variables outside of your knowledge and control can be. No plan of attack ever survives first contact with the enemy, after all. When dealing with creatures like the Darlings, we must always assume there are variables we haven’t accounted for yet. We must be cautious, we must have contingencies in place, and most importantly we must work together. If you ever get an opportunity like this again, don’t take it. Assume it’s a trap and run.”
“I will. I will,” Petra said with a solemn nod. “They’ll be after me now, I know it. They’re not going to let something like that slide. I won’t risk another attack until your chains are broken. You’re right; I need to be patient. We’re getting stronger, they’re getting weaker; our victory is only a matter of time.”
“Don’t get complacent now, Petra. Victory is never certain until it’s achieved, and it would be imprudent to underestimate the Darlings. They’re obviously capable of more than we’ve yet to realize,” he said.
He cocked his head slightly, as if trying to listen to something that was just barely on the periphery of his hearing.
“For instance; is that static I hear?” he asked.
Petra furrowed her brow in confusion, first at the question itself and then at the distant sound of electrical static that he had brought to her attention.
“The Retrovision!” she screamed in realization, jumping to her feet and racing through the vaulted corridors to the reliquary where it was kept. Throwing open the lofty stone doors with a single shove, she was immediately caught in the monotone glow the infernal device was casting across the entire chamber.
It was a loving recreation of a classic 1950s boxset television, made of dark, polished wood panels with a pair of shiny chrome knobs beneath the flickering, convex screen. The screen sat atop its speaker almost as if it was on a pedestal, ensuring that it could be seen from anywhere in the room; and, in turn, see anything in the room as well. The screen showed nothing but snow; a mosaic of pixels switching from black to white and back again with no real pattern, but the human mind nonetheless insisted that there was some meaning to the madness.
Petra jolted forward to turn it off, but Emrys seized her by the arms and held her back.
“Don’t! It’s a trap!” he shouted. “They can use that screen as a portal to their playroom. If you get too close, they’ll grab you and pull you in!”
Petra was about to suggest destroying it remotely, but before she could utter a sound a butcher’s knife came flying through the screen aimed directly at her heart. Emrys pulled her out of its path and behind a bookshelf for cover.
“C*nt!” Mary Darling’s strained voice screeched from the Retrovision’s speaker, the electrical static replaced by a Big Brother-esque close-up of her face. She wore an odd expression, as in addition to being both very drunk and high on amphetamines, she was enraged and grief-stricken to the point of a psychotic breakdown over the attempt on her brother’s life. “You filthy, rotting, necrotic little c*nt! How dare you! How dare you try to take my brother away from me! I’m going to flay you alive, dunk you into our fermenting cesspit, hogtie you with rusty barbed wire and watch my pigs rape you until your pelvis is gelatin!”
Several more knives came flying through the Retrovision, each striking the bookshelf with so much force they sent several tomes tumbling down to the floor. Petra flinched in horror at the sound of the knives penetrating into the wood, the traumatic memory of how Mary had once killed her with a barrage of knives threatening to overtake her resolve.
“Mary Darling, as touching as your concern is, there really is no need to get hysterical,” James’ muted voice came from somewhere offscreen. “I’m perfectly fine, and I had the situation well in hand.”
“Horseshit!” Petra screamed, James’ blithe dismissal of his near-death experience snapping her back to the present moment. “If that inbred hellspawn of yours had shown up three seconds later, you’d be in two separate pieces right now!”
“Don’t talk that way about our precious little girl!” Mary screamed. She took several deep breaths before taking a swig of whiskey, followed by a sob that morphed into a deranged laugh. “I’m sorry, James Darling. I’ve gone and ruined the bit, now haven’t I?”
“Emrys, just bring the roof down and crush that thing!” Petra whispered.
“They’re trying to bait us. They want us to act rashly,” he whispered back. “Let them get impatient and come through. Better we fight them in our Sanctum than risk getting pulled into theirs.”
“Oh, but Emrys dear, we don’t need you to come through to us,” Mary said, her tone suddenly much more composed and chipper. “As our former contestants, you both get the home version of our gameshow!”
At her cue, the Retrovision began playing the upbeat yet distorted instrumental music that Emrys and Petra both immediately recognized as the theme song to the Darlings’ snuff gameshow, Fun & Fatalities.
“No. No no no no no no no,” Petra whimpered, retreating even further behind the bookcase and grasping at her hair as she struggled to fight back her memories of that night.
“Darlings, that’s enough!” Emrys ordered. Disregarding his previous instruction, he defiantly stepped out from behind the bookcase and stood directly in front of the Retrovision.
He expected to have to deflect a flurry of knives or some other assault, but instead, a holographic projection of Mary resolved itself in front of him. She was wearing the same red sequined dress and heels she had worn the night she murdered Petra, undoubtedly to further mess with her head.
What was even more concerning, however, was that the hologram was blocking Emrys’ view of the Retrovision.
“Why hello there, Ducky! How delightful to finally see you again!” she said in a jubilant yet strained tone, fighting back both her rage and intoxication. “What’s it been now? A couple of years? We tried ringing you up on the Retrovision before, but you were always so good at deflecting our signal. But those shards Petra left in James’ heart are a double-edged sword, if you’ll pardon the pun. He was able to use them to hone right in on you! Like the Randian hero he is, my James can turn any setback into an advantage! And of course, it’s hilariously typical for a pathetic little untermensch like Petra to try her hardest and succeed only at furthering the cause of her betters.”
“My Miasma lodged inside one of your hearts seems like it serves my cause more than yours, Darlings,” he said smugly. “What do you two possibly hope to accomplish with this little stunt? I’ve beaten you twice before, once in your own playroom, and now I’m even more powerful and have my dedicated disciple by my side.”
“You mean the girl cowering behind the bookshelf because she’s scared of what’s on the TV?” Mary asked mockingly. “Petra, Ducky, I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I’m not going to do any of those horrible things to you, because I’m going to eat you, and I don’t think you’d be very palatable if I threw you into my cesspit. You’ve been marinating in Emrys’s Miasma for two years, and it would be a shame to spoil such an exotic flavour.”
“Step through that Retrovision and say that, if you’re so confident,” Emrys dared her.
“Believe me, I’d love to, but James Darling does need to take it easy at home for a bit while he recuperates, and my place is by his side,” Mary replied. “But not to worry; with the new home edition of Fun & Fatalities, it will be like we’re right there with you!”
With the assistance of some dramatic reveal music from the Retrovision, Mary stepped aside and revealed a circular gameboard sitting on the floor, the light from the television screen honed in on it like a spotlight.
There was a glowing, mist-filled hemisphere in the center of the board, randomly alternating between multiple colours. There was a small yet ornate brass pointer arrow orbiting around it at a constant speed of one rpm, passing over numbered black and bronze segments.
“Each player picks their colour by touching the glass when it comes up,” Mary explained. “You have to tap the glass every time you see your colour, and when someone misses, the arrow stops and you have to do whatever challenge it lands on. James made it for Sara, and she absolutely adores it! Of course, she never loses. I imagine her playmates don’t love it as much as she does.”
“You expect us to play this?” Emrys asked incredulously.
“Oh, right, silly me. I forgot to mention that the game is also on a timer,” Mary replied with a sinister smirk. “If there’s not a winner by the time the clock runs out, then everyone loses.”
With an irritated groan, Emrys finally took a moment to inspect the device that the Darlings had intruded into his Sanctum.
“Aside from the fact that it’s powered by your Black Bile, it’s a fairly standard mechatronic thaumaturgical apparatus,” he said nonchalantly. “You don’t scare me, Darlings. Let the clock run out. I don’t care. We’re not going to play your demented little game.”
“It’s not standard, Ducky. My brother made this. He’s a genius with this sort of thing,” Mary huffed at him.
“He’s nothing without the Black Bile, and neither are you,” Emrys sneered.
Screaming in rage, the hologram of Mary pulled out a knife and threw it, with the real knife coming out of the Retrovision an instant later. Emrys caught it effortlessly, and then tossed it to the floor in disdain.
“This is pathetic,” he muttered, brazenly turning his back to the screen. “Come on, Petra. We’re leaving.”
He made it only nine steps before a harsh, mechanical buzzer stopped him in his tracks. He slowly turned around, and saw that the arrow on the gameboard had stopped and was pointing directly at him.
“What? Times up already?” Mary asked with a wide, sadistic grin. “I guess that means you both lose.”
The glass on the gameboard shattered violently, and a pillar of Black Bile erupted upwards like a geyser of living oil, screeching horrendously as it reached out for the ceiling.
“Petra, run!” Emrys shouted.
They both dashed for the doors, only for them to slam shut just before they could cross the threshold. Worse, the hologram of Mary imposed itself between them and any attempt at escape.
“Sorry. Only one way out now,” she said, pointing back towards the Retrovision. “This would be so much more fun if you would just play along! Maybe I should’ve let Sara do this. She’s much better than me at coercing uncooperative prey.”
“I am not your prey!” Petra screamed through gritted teeth.
She summoned a pair of miasmic blades before vanishing into her shadow form. She tried to pass through the door, but the Darlings’ influence over the room appeared to have extended to that as well.
She spun around to face the geyser and saw that the Black Bile had formed a quivering, polyp-like mass in the center of the room. It screamed with a thousand different tortured voices, the cries of the Darlings’ former victims that had helped to sustain it. Its tentacles began to slowly grow, dripping Bile onto the floor as they stretched outwards. The fluid was vile and viscous, and it began to smoulder the instant it made contact with anything solid, sending a festering stench wafting in every direction.
Petra sent her blades spinning through the air with the intent of hacking the polyp to pieces, only for them to evaporate on contact while barely causing any damage themselves. She then attempted to use her power over alchemical humours to bend the Black Bile to her will, but it was far too strong and strange for that. After only a few seconds of effort, she was first to relent and fall backwards from the exertion.
“Consider this payback for eating our beloved pet Voggathaust, Emrys,” Mary said coldly as she glared down at Petra in contempt.
“Is that your plan?” Emrys laughed. “By your own admission, your brother is still recuperating from a few slivers of my Miasma, and you think this Scion of Moros can eat me whole?”
“Not you, Ducky, but Petra it should be able to handle with only a bit of indigestion,” Mary grinned, never having taken her eyes off the weakened and petrified Petra. “One pet for another.”
Emrys froze, his bravado gone as he now fully comprehended what it was the Darlings meant to do. He stretched out his hand, and through the Retrovision he tugged at the Miasmic shards in James’ heart. They heard him scream, and the hologram of Mary vanished as she raced to his side, giving them a moment of privacy to discuss their next move.
“She’s only keeping the doors shut; I could break them down if I really wanted,” he said softly as he knelt down beside her. “We can just walk away.”
“And leave the Sanctum, and everything in it, to them?” Petra asked. “You know what they’ll do with that kind of power. We can’t surrender this place. Let… let it eat me!”
“Absolutely not!” Emrys objected, raising to his full height so that he could knock down the door.
“This is my fault! I’m the only reason they were able to track us here!” she sobbed.
“I’m the one who took the damn Retrovision in the first place!” Emrys countered.
“I’m not helping! I’m only making things worse!” Petra screamed. “You can’t lose this place just to save me! I’m not worth it!”
“I… I can break my chains without the resources I’ve stockpiled here. I can’t break them without you,” Emrys said somberly. He anxiously glanced backwards at the ever-growing polyp of Bile that was still inching its way towards them. “But you’re right, we can’t leave it to the Darlings either. I’m going to bring the whole Sanctum down on itself. It will crush the Scion, the Retrovision, and everything else.”
“Emrys,” Petra pleaded softly.
“Petra, it’s fine! The instant there’s a crack in the wall, we turn into our shadow forms and get as far away from here as quickly as we can. Do you understand?” he asked.
With a reluctant and guilt-laden nod, Petra agreed.
“I’m back! I’m back!” Mary shouted, her face once again appearing on the Retrovision screen. “That dastardly little maneuver just cost you your one way out. If you had just come through the screen, maybe you might have had a shot at beating us. The adrenaline and the Adderall are helping me hold myself together more than usual, but trust me, I am really drunk right now. But now the portal’s closed, so it’s just you and the Scion. As much as I wanted to eat you myself, Petra, the Bile is so much of what I am that I think letting the Scion have you instead will be almost as satisfying. The thought of watching is the only thing keeping me from passing out. Next time keep your pets on their leash if you don’t want them put down, Emrys.”
“She’s no more my pet than she is your prey, Darlings,” Emrys replied as he positioned himself between her and the Scion. The Bile recoiled slightly at his encroachment, but pressed onwards regardless.
“Oh, are you going to fight it now? Excellent!” Mary declared as she applauded gleefully. “You’ll humiliate yourself and get to watch Petra be eaten alive!”
With a hateful glare towards the Retrovision, Emrys began waving his hands over one another as he wove his Miasma into a three-dimensional spell circle, chanting deep incantations as he did so.
“Charging up a big Kamehameha attack, are we?” Mary taunted. “It’s not going to be big enough, you know. The Scion will still be standing, and you’ll be too weak to do anything else.”
Emrys ignored her, and continued weaving his spell sphere. Interlocking rings of braided Miasma spun at varying speeds and angles around a single, concentric point as the Scion continued to grow upwards and outwards. It towered over them now, and Emrys’ little ball of black mist didn’t look like it could pose any more than a mild irritation to the eldritch beast.
But that of course depended on where he aimed it.
The tentacles were dangling over them now, eager to get at Petra but still not quite emboldened enough to provoke Emrys. Better to let him waste his one shot, and then not have to worry about him at all.
“Come on, Emrys! Blow your load and then collapse into the pathetic heap of bones you are!” Mary egged him on.
“Is it enough, Emrys?” Petra whispered, staring up in terror at the slithering branches of oozing, fetid Bile.
“It will have to be. We're out of time,” he answered.
Without any fanfare, he fired the spell sphere down at a sharp angle, sending it effortlessly pummeling down into the lower levels.
“Oh my god, you missed! All that buildup, and you actually missed!” Mary cackled.
She laughed so hard, she didn’t immediately hear the growing rumbling coming from below. The whole Sanctum began to shake as if from a great earthquake, wave after wave cascading through the walls, each stronger than the last, until finally a support column gave way and crashed down upon the Scion.
Great hunks of the wine-dark stone fell upon it from above, and as soon as the front wall began to crumble, Emrys and Petra shifted into their shadow forms and left it to their fate. Their shadows flickered erratically as the shaking walls caved in around them. Though they moved with superhuman speed, it still felt like they were just barely keeping inches ahead of the destruction. Leaping over rubble and slipping through crevices, they did not stop when they broke free of the outer walls. They kept running as far and fast as they could as the Sanctum collapsed in a thunderous implosion, throwing up a vast mushroom cloud of dust and debris in its death throes.
They made for higher ground in their bid to escape the cloud, and as the dust began to settle, they saw a great crater where the Sanctum had once been. The Retrovision, the Scion, and everything else inside had been crushed together into near-unimaginable densities until they sank through the very ground that held them, and were now on their way down into the planet’s molten core.
Dropping to her knees, Petra stared out in dismay at the desolation that had once been her home.
“It’s gone. All of it. Everything you’ve built over the past three years; gone,” she lamented as a lone tear rolled down her cheek.
“Better gone than lost to the Darlings,” Emrys reminded her, reassuringly putting his hand on her shoulder. “Better to lose it than you.”
He really wasn’t upset with her, and that just made her feel worse. He had just destroyed his own Sanctum to save her life, which wouldn’t have been necessary if she had either successfully killed James or never had been foolish enough to attack him in the first place, and at that moment she honestly didn’t share his certainty that that sacrifice was worth it.
“The Sanctum can be rebuilt, and much of what was in it replaced,” he reminded her. “I can’t replace you, Petra. Come, there’s no sense in lingering here. We’ll fall back to Mathom-meister’s for now; take some time to recuperate and then decide what to do next.”
“Okay,” Petra said softly as she rose to her feet and turned her back to the crater. “I… thank you. You didn’t have to save me, either tonight or the night we met. Thank you.”
“I didn’t have to let you die the night we met, either,” he answered her with some regret. “I couldn’t watch you die again.”
Category:The Vesper's Bell