CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR –
Megan point of view
“You shall burn away all accrued cynicism and earthly dross on your path to absolute immolation this eve…”
“Just who the f**CK is this crazy DODGEBAG?” I mumbled.
I nodded dumbly in the wake of the towering man’s hushed benediction, my entire corporeal form aquiver with uncanny primordial energies that defied quantification.
Just who was this imposing… host?
Guardian spirit?
His very presence exerted a granitic allure that made remaining upright an increasingly monumental effort.
As if sensing my disorientation, Lilly materialized beside me with that radiant fey grin of hers fully intact.
“That’s quite enough metaphysical pleasantries for one evening, Your Resplendency,” she chimed in a singsong lilt that danced along the precipice of insolence.
“My charge has been warmly received into the inner sanctum, as per your graciousness. Now, if you’d be so kind as to release her back into my shepherding for the remainder of our rite of unfettering?”
The leonine figure’s piercing stare held me transfixed for one eternal, airless inhalation before he inclined his head in a regal nod of acquiescence.
With a final ghosting caress along my jawline, he withdrew his immense presence back into the shadows like a lodestone retrieving its gravity well.
“Revel in the sensory uncoupling, daughter of endless becoming,” his litany seemed to reverberate from every surrounding surface all at once. “Your essence lusts for Its ultimate unbinding tonight…”
With that enigmatic pronouncement still ringing in my ears, Lilly looped my arm through hers and began tugging me back towards the sinuous, undulating heart of the bacchanalia unfolding all around us.
“Well!” She chirped with just a hint of breathlessness coloring her honeyed tones, “I must say that was far and away the most… esoteric greeting ritual I’ve witnessed in all my nights prowling this den of aesthetic debauchery.”
She flashed me an impish sidelong glance, those hazel eyes of hers glinting with rakish mischief amongst the subsonic strobe flickers.
“But I absolutely relished the look on your face throughout that entire arcane ceremony, I must admit. As though some deep, primal part of you recognized the ritual’s legitimacy far more than your conscious mind could begin to process!”
I opened my mouth to formulate a rejoinder, but the words dissolved into inarticulate vapors before my lips could even shape them properly.
The full-bodied throb and sinuous cadences permeating every inch of Lyra’s subterranean sanctuary enveloped me once more in that rapturous, free-flowing trance state.
This time, I actively surrendered to the seductive lure of untethered hedonism rather than resist its all-consuming pull.
I’m not entirely certain how much time dissolved into that interminable reverie of sinewy, kaleidoscopic abandon.
Just blessedly unshackled moments where my autonomous form transmuted into raw, primal dynamism and elemental rhythms with no corporeal boundaries to be contained or shamed within.
At some point – hours? Eons? – a harsh electronic trill began lancing through the opiated, senses-dissolving ambience with increasing insistence.
I surfaced from my enthusiastic communion with the beat just enough to register Lilly fumbling for her phone, brow furrowed into rare creases of consternation.
“Shit, shit…” She hissed frenetically under her breath, coming alert with alarming swiftness against the backdrop of my own blissful lassitude. “I need to run, hon – that was my mom. She’s…”
Whatever dire circumstances had arisen, Lilly clearly deemed them urgent enough to momentarily shed her perpetual poise and unflappable veneer.
With one last flickering glance at me writhing in heightened abandon on the dancefloor, she pursed those perpetually glossed lips and exhaled a resigned sigh.
“Look, just… promise me you’ll be smart and exercise SOME semblance of moderation while I’m sorted?” Her voice pitched upwards in a rare register of audible concern.
“This place can veer into some seriously unmapped territories after a certain hour if you aren’t caref-”
Whatever cautionary advisory she’d intended devolved into a sharp squawk as a particularly exuberant gyration on my part brought me colliding squarely into her.
Steadying palms found purchase against my sweat-slicked torso, the sudden frisson of unexpected contact shorting out whatever stern advisement had been teetering on her tongue.
One eternal, vertigo-inducing inhalation subsumed within the thrumming heart of euphoric delirium… and then the moment segued into Lilly whirling on those impeccably slender heels, mouth still agape as she beat a hasty retreat towards the exit.
Just like that – Lilly’s stabilizing presence had dissolved into the ether as swiftly as she’d choreographed my descent into unrestrained indulgence mere hours beforehand.
All pretenses and governors effectively removed, the incandescent trance state swiftly reclaimed its all-consuming sway over my every synapse and extremity once more.
It could’ve been mere moments or entire cosmic intervals that elapsed in that seamless continuum of primal physicality and unfurling supra-conscious expression.
Time itself bled into an abstract, relativistic canvas awash in infinite distortions and overtures of neo-primordial reawakening.
Eventually, some deep-seeded sentience intuited more than consciously acknowledged the rhythmic patterns modulating in a spiral of dissipating intensity.
Almost instantaneously, I felt the corporeal tethers slamming my physical form back into suffocating restrictions like an anvil of reconstituted gravity.
I swayed dizzily, every over-stressed muscle fiber screaming in revolt at being so abruptly deprived of its fevered unbinding.
A parched rasp sounded from somewhere within my ravaged larynx as I peered blearily around the drained environs of Lyra’s aftermath.
Clumps of exhausted revelers clung to each other and whatever furnishings remained upright amidst the detritus of expended debauchery.
Spills and sticky residue adorned every available surface in abstracts clearly suggesting the previous evening’s untamed exploits had indeed lurched into questionable territory as Lilly’s final warning had intimated.
My sandals scuffed and stuck against the detritus with every lurching footfall as I staggered towards the nearest illuminated exit sign, craving the harsh sobriety of night air in my raw lungs.
Just a few yards from that beckoning beacon of egress, a hulking silhouette uncoupled itself from the shadowed entranceway bar with a leonine grace that triggered some bone-deep recollection.
I squinted through my disheveled, sweat-matted tresses to make out distinct features… only for the words to shrivel up in my abused windpipe.
The massive, undulant physique sculpted from onyx sinew and simmering intensity padding towards me with such uncompromising hunger defining its very aura could only belong to the same regal “host” who had initiated my spirit journey through Lyra’s sacraments this evening.
Instinctive prickles of unease reawakened along my nape and knuckles as the preternatural juggernaut of a man closed the remaining distance with chilling, ceremonious patience.
We regarded each other through the hazy half-light in wordless appraisal – his piercing stare growing more and more unsettling with every passing breath.
My parched lips struggled to formulate a demand, question… any feeble attempt to exert control over this rapidly escalating situation.
Before a single syllable could take shape, a massive hand whipped out to encircle my slick wrist in an uncompromising vise.
The being’s other palm clamped over the lower half of my face, absorbing whatever abortive outburst I’d intended to spew with almost mocking dismissal.
My pulse hammered desperately as the primal, sanity-shattering entirety of my night’s cosmic delving condensed into one ultimatum staring back at me through those annihilating, sundered orbs of its eyes.
Run? Fight? Submit to this unknowable cosmic mystery for better or worse?
Just as the final coherent threads of my instincts to flee came screaming to the fore, a thunderous commotion erupted from somewhere beyond the main entranceway.
“GET YOUR DAMNED HANDS-OFF HER!”
That voice… the overpowering bass rumble laced with unvarnished menace was as unmistakable as it was disorienting in this plane of detached nihilism.
A towering silhouette seemingly wrenched itself free from the very architecture of the entranceway in a tumult of shattered masonry and deafening force to come barreling into Lyra’s eviscerated interior in a tectonic wake.
I could only squint and blink owlishly through my dishevelment and the oppressive gloom as the massive, borderline supernatural presence rapidly resolved into a painfully familiar figure charging across the debris field with startling singlemindedness.
“Chris?!” I wheezed, the reverberation of his name on my raked vocal cords enough to startle the host-like entity gripping me into loosening its hold by a fraction.
That was all the opening required.
With a bestial roar that seemed to shake the very foundation of the entire edifice, Chris exploded into a surge of blinding momentum – every sinewy cable of musculature and unstoppable force finally unleashed.
Whatever he slammed into the writhing mass engulfing me, the shockwave of impact launched me sailing back several feet to crash into an abandoned tabletop in a bone-jarring heap.
I wheezed and blinked the vertigo from my vision, my entire body throbbing in tandem with the decimation unfolding nearby.
Muffled roars and deafening impacts that seemed to reverberate from far deeper than the material world wracked the very air around me.
Those bestial exhalations reverberated with feral torment and pain in a way that sent icy tendrils of anxiety snaking through my still chemically addled consciousness.
That couldn’t… it shouldn’t be possible for HIM to be on the losing end of any conflict – not the same hyper-augmented Adonis who had proven his unrelenting superiority against every conceivable threat and monstrous adversary humanity could array against him in the harshest of gladiatorial arenas.
And yet the very structures around me began groaning and disintegrating under the sheer magnitude of forces being unleashed and absorbed only paces away.
Random punctuated spasms made me flinch in dread anticipation of some unknown, primordial monstrosity finally manifesting from wherever this cosmic path of dissolution had led me.
“CHRIS!” I croaked again with lungs that felt lined in shattered glass remnants.
Only resounding silence and the creaks of strained infrastructure answered my plea this time.
Just when the vertigo clouding my faculties prepared to fully overtake me again in a muddled descent to unconsciousness, an abrupt displacement of smoke and debris heralded the emergence of the hulking death engine allowing itself to be glimpsed amidst the chaos.
Backlit by sputtering electrical fires and structural havoc.
Chris appeared less a man and more an uncompromising elemental of violence unleashed by the sheer magnitude of his approach towards my prone, stricken form.