“It is embarrassing to admit, but my skills are rather limited whilst away from my garden. Here, I reign above all else, but take one step outside and I am as vulnerable to death as any other. I become a being of flesh and blood once more. It is of no great concern, for my garden is everywhere, and thus I am everywhere from the most guarded castle to the deepest dungeon. All I need is a door, a vessel of passage."

  —Satanael

  ———

  The Knight

  The garden descends into an excruciating scream. The field withers, the clouds darken, and all that travels through the air is a guttural choke as Satanael looks about in sheer, utter terror. This space serving as his body rots from the inside. There is no escape from the miasma, and the man can only watch on in despair as the umbral poison spreads farther and farther into his paradise.

  Unfortunately, there is only so much of Creation’s loathing locked inside of the Knight. Its reach eventually stops a distance away, forming a large blanket of mist that drains away at Satanael’s power, but it is not quite enough to slay the garden. It pains him, afflicts him with a never-ending curse, but torment only serves to stoke a more desperate resistance

  “Y-you,” he chokes. “What is this? I am cold, so very cold. My mind does not listen to me. It whispers and whispers without end. It torments me with a miserable song. Am I not your child, Cosmos? No, these are lies. I am the chosen. I am not mad. Stop that. Stop speaking in her voice!”

  A mass of fleshy clumps manifest from the befouled air, but whatever it is Satanael attempts to create has been muddled. It latches onto his heart, it unearths the doubts hidden deep within, and so it is laid clear: the words he dreads most.

  “I am happy. I am… happy,” he mutters. “Do not take my color away from me. I cannot go back, not to that hopelessly grey world. Am I truly so pathetic? No, my flowers love me, and I love them. I cherish them, saved them from this disgusting world that would watch them shrivel. I am not a mindless killer. My cause is pure, so please do not abandon me.”

  The flowers are dying, and their once colorful petals have all been reduced to mere sludge and filth. Satanael cannot protect even a single bud.

  His cries are all that is left of the barren field. The rain turns into his tears, but the water only profligate the spreading stain. He cannot even weep without aiding the destruction of his life’s work.

  It is a miserable sight—almost pitiful, if not for the suffering he has wrought to create these blood-fed blooms. He has earned his dues. All that is left is to wait for him to break.

  A soft tap knocks on the Knight’s helm. It is Aegis, and he does not appear to be happy.

  “What is it, child?” it asks.

  Sadness. Aegis is sad watching Satanael suffer. For one beloved by Creation, it must be sorrowful to watch it be malformed and used in such a twisted manner, but more than anything else he does not wish to see the man so wracked with pain. He wants to save him.

  “Do you really want me to show him mercy?”

  He nods, and the Knight can only sigh before such a naive sentiment. It is only natural given his infancy; Aegis can only understand intent, the surface essence. He can follow orders, but he cannot grasp the reasoning. All he sees is that the man is hurting.

  “He has committed many foul acts, Aegis. Do you still desire his pardon?”

  The child does not understand morality.

  “He will seek us again. The likes of his kind will never forgive the humiliation of being slighted.”

  The child does not care. He is only focused on the present rather than the future.

  “I do not expect you to understand this now, but there will come a time when you must take the life of another. It is inevitable and hesitating in that moment will only lead to your death.”

  The child remains ever as stubborn.

  Truthfully, the Knight is not particularly set on the man’s death. On the contrary, it would be useful to have someone like him cause chaos in the kingdom to distract away from its own deception. But it is clear the two will be unable to leave so long as he lives. The child must learn here to face disappointment.

  “Ah,” Satanael mumbles. “You are the cause for this. You are the reason my divinity now treats me with disdain. It is you and this foul mist… this disgustingly insistent mist. I thought you to be my muse, but now I see you for what you truly are: a demon. You deceived me all for the chance to enter my garden and corrupt it with your lies. There is no need to turn one foul as you into a flower.”

  The earth ruptures beneath the Knight, and the field of grimy floral corpses are soon destroyed as great stalks of thorny stems rise up and pierce through the sludge. They sprout, conjoining into a single mass, until a giant amalgamation takes form into some sort of bizarre creature. It has no resemblance to anything that walks upon the earth, appearance more akin to an abstract painting than anything else. A messy collage of random bouquets wrap around its sloppily held body—the stems hanging loose and mimicking that of intestines—and strange tendrils emerging from the bottom serve as the thing’s legs. Only, there are far too many and each one is different in size from the other, leading its elongated torso to swing back and forth in an unbalanced stumble.

  It is a disgusting creature for someone who proclaims themself a florist, and the only part spared from the deformed manifestation is a colossal rose blooming from the top where the Knight assumes the head would be. The flower is unchanged at first glance, but a closer inspection reveals something nestled in the center. It is round, a much darker shade of red, and veinlike protrusions bulge out and creep along the surface. The Knight does not need to wait long before the thing opens up and reveals a large gaping mouth.

  “Hideous, I am hideous,” the thing says. “Ugly, ugly. But I suppose humans are disgusting to begin with, aren’t we? We cannot escape this soul born from filth. We do not deserve to be beautiful. We are all sinners wading through a defiled world, and I am its harbinger: a fool that failed to create a paradise. Let our bodies return to the earth so that a new world will sprout from our unworthy carcasses. I hear you, Cosmos. And I promise to atone… starting with the death of this great evil who has led me astray.”

  The creature springs to life and lunges deep into the blanket of miasma. The curse erodes at its exterior, but it remains unbothered. New filaments quickly replace the withered splotches. And it crawls forward in an unnerving jaunt as its tendrils tear apart the earth.

  “He is too far gone, Aegis. Close your eyes; I shall end this soon.”

  Closer and closer it come whilst raving in a crazed frenzy. When it finally nears the Knight’s reach, the grotesque thing leaps up and descends onto it with the full force of its body. The deliberate steps and careful movements of Satanael are gone, replaced by a beastly instinct.

  Even so, with such a large form, the Knight has no choice but to flee. It dashes to the side and vaults up as the floral beast crashes indiscriminately through the garden.

  The Knight wastes not a second and draws the twin blades before cleaving through the torso of stems and flowers in a fluid, arcing slash. It should have severed the thing in half; but the moment Satanael’s floral flesh is cut, a collective ooze of green bubbles from the exposed part and spurts out in hundreds of tiny string-like veins, reconnecting the tissue in a matter of moments.

  It is no use. No matter how many times the Knight slices its body, tears apart its stalks, or carves into its hollow shell, the beast continues its ceaseless rampage—screaming all the while in a jumbled ramble as the last remnants of Satanael’s consciousness begs for penance from his conjured deity.

  “Flay my flesh,” he cries. “Scorch my blood. Stake my heart. Spare me not your wrath, and may I be consumed in your hateful inferno. Agony, I must feel it more. I must not be allowed to have even a single thought bereft of pain. Suffer, suffer, until this world is heard no more.”

  The garden is unrecognizable from its prior splendor, and even the fields still yet untouched by the miasma have been razed by Satanael’s fury. The skies that once shone blue are now the colorless grey Satanael is ever so fearful of. Everything is covered in it, yet the man himself is oblivious to his own undoing. He flails there in that messy form, blinded—perhaps purposely so—of all the flowers crushed beneath his tantrum.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The Knight cannot watch this any longer.

  It plants its feet firm into the ground and recalls every last shred of the miasma back to its body. The air is hazy no longer as the mist rushes back and settles into its heart, and the creature brought forth from Satanael’s delirium halts, confused, over its sudden newfound clarity.

  “You…?” Satanael’s voice mutters. “The voices are gone. My mind is clear. Why have you stopped?”

  The Knight opens its arms wide and beckons the creature to come close. “I will resist no longer, Satanael. I know there will be no end to this struggle, so I submit myself. Slay me if you so wish. All I ask is that you let me become one with this garden. Consume me and transform my blood into the masterpiece you claim capable of.”

  The thing pauses hesitantly as if at any moment the Knight will cease its facade and torment it once again, but that moment never comes even when its maw-like rose nears its body.

  “Truly? You choose to entrust yourself to me?” he asks with an almost childish drawl. “Ah, I—perhaps I have misjudged you. You are not evil after all. No, I understand. This struggle in and of itself is a way for you to blossom. Through this exchange of ours, we have both been pushed to the very limit, the true core of our beings. Thank you, Lorelai. From now on we shall bloom together.”

  The rose opens its mouth wide, and its petals shiver in anticipation as its pungent breath brushes directly against the Knight’s helm. It is a foul aroma, a scent of dying flowers and putrid gas, but it needs not be tortured with that smell for long before the rose snaps forward and swallows it whole in one swift gulp.

  It will take much too long before his sanity erodes.

  Slowly, gently, the Knight travels down the slimy stalk. Complete darkness reigns here, and Aegis whimpers in fear as the plant walls tighten their pressure around them. Squeezing. Constricting

  What I need is a shock: a blow strong enough to shake the very foundation of this domain.

  Soon, it begins to feel a viscous liquid oozing from the side. Rancid and spoiled, the sludge burns at the touch like acid.

  I can feel it, his connection with this monstrosity of foliage. The garden may be his body, but this creature is where his mind dwells. The miasma could not penetrate the wall of stems and flowers. It is different now that I am inside. Here, in this crude stomach, he is more vulnerable than ever. There is no escape.

  The Knight gathers the miasma around its heart, and it condenses it, refines it, crushes it as small as it can until the baleful mist quivers uncontrollably from the tension. Unlike before, it will not simply let the mist flow out. No, it must be unleashed in one sudden burst.

  Cover your ears, Aegis.

  A flash of light bursts out. It vaporizes Satanael’s avatar faster than he can scream; and as the Knight emerge from the darkness and out into the cold sting of the outside, a rain of mangled bits and green blood splatters from above: falling, falling.

  Satanael remains silent.

  The garden is eerily serene now. There is no laughter, no leering voices to taunt its patience. All that can be heard is a gentle breeze and the faint sound of something crawling in the distance.

  There, by the birch tree wherein rests the most precious of his flowers, is the sunken form of Satanael. His mask is shattered in half, and his body has shriveled into a thin hollow shell.

  The four flowers have been unaffected by his rampage. A miracle, perhaps, or maybe it is the result of an instinctual love: a subconscious desire to protect his beloveds even whilst bereft of a sane mind. Nevertheless, he makes his way there now. He digs his dirty nails into the soil and slowly pulls himself forward, bit by bit.

  Hm? What is it, Aegis?

  The child excitedly raises his head, and he manifests a plain white flower onto his palm. It is a kindly and rather bland looking flower, entirely different from the blooms’ Satanael touts, but Aegis is proud of his creation. It also denotes a weakening influence. Satanael no longer has full control over this realm. And the twin celestial blades shine once again, confused over their sudden dormancy.

  “It is about time you two awoke,” it says, casually tapping against their handles. “But I suppose now is better than never. Come, let us put an end to this struggle.”

  The Knight heads toward the still-creeping form of Satanael. The man eventually reaches the amber displays; then, he collapses before the flower of rainbow petals, his mother’s essence.

  “From where does the blue jay sing?” he mutters deliriously. “Above, above. Oh joyous meadow; oh little bud. For what reason do you bloom? Abloom, abloom. Will you take me there, to that place o’er the yonder skies? Will you take me there, to the land of paradise? My precious garden, do not cry for me. You will live on in my heart. In this field of possibility, we shall all finally be happy.”

  The Knight approaches the man. He shudders in recognition, but then he smiles. And for a second it is as if all the world’s hatred is contained in that scornful sneer. Regret. Despair. Loathing. It courses through him in an instant. In the end all that is left is bitter acceptance.

  “What… will you do?” he says.

  “What I must,” it replies.

  “Ah, I see. And if I were to let you go? My strength is exhausted; I can no longer stop you. We could simply part ways here. I promise to never show myself before you ever again.”

  “I cannot do that. You have seen too much.”

  “What, that dreadful mist? I must say I have never heard about the Heaven’s Throne commanding such a power, but you need not worry. I am a man of my word. What secrets you have shall be safe with me—”

  “Stop this, Satanael,” it says with a firm command. “I know full well the kind of man you are. Do you really think me naive of your intentions? If you wish to fool me, then at least attempt to hide your face wrought with vengeance.”

  “Hehe, was it truly that obvious? Pity, and here I thought myself rather adept at deception.”

  He crumbles into a meager pile on the ground and then looks up at the false sky. There is naught left but resignation; soon, even his conjured form begins to fade, but before he does Satanael reaches out and bids the Knight one last request.

  “May I ask of you a parting wish?” he whispers.

  “Speak.”

  “Take these flowers away before you destroy my garden. They are innocent, and even if I am to perish… they shall live on, forever dreaming in eternal bliss.”

  “Very well. I will find a lone meadow where they may rest undisturbed.”

  “Thank you. I no longer have any regrets. Do with me as you please.”

  The Knight raises the Solgas and calls forth an inferno to surround the blade.

  “Solgas—”

  A mighty slap knocks against the Knight’s helm, disrupting the spell and leaving it puzzled as an angry Aegis babbles into its ear.

  “Hm?” Satanael says, aghast. “What is that sound? Is that… an infant?”

  Aegis, it scolds in its mind. Now is not the time.

  But the baby does not stop. He kicks and flails and screams in an attempt to stop the Knight from continuing with its execution.

  No, I already told you why we cannot spare him, especially now that you’ve revealed your presence. For as long as his hatred of me remains, it is too dangerous to leave him alive.

  Unfortunately, words of reason have no power when it comes to the stubbornness of a babe set in his ways.

  But then, something truly baffling occurs. A miracle. The Knight is left speechless, for right before its very eyes, Aegis cries out and fills the entire garden with life once more. From the mounds of dirt, the fields withered by the miasma, and the far reaches hidden out of sight: they are all gone, replaced by a beautiful expanse of flora and vibrant color. The mud beneath gives way to the rolling green meadow of before. The grass flutters, the wind blows in a joyful dance, and every last one of the crushed flowers have been revived. The garden returns to its scenery of paradise, as if not a single moment has passed since the Knight stepped through the boutique’s door.

  Every trace of the battle is gone, reduced to a memory.

  Satanael’s form recovers as well. His flesh solidifies and his body returns to a lanky physique. He stares with disbelief at the landscape around him; and then he takes a step forward, and another, and another. He frolics all throughout his beloved garden before falling onto his knees as great and uttering a shaky, yet thankful, breath.

  The Knight does not know how to react. It should be concerned, for Aegis has just rendered all its effort to break the man completely void, but even so it holds a small curiosity. The child’s wish may just come true after all.

  Perhaps… yes, I can use this. Aegis, reveal yourself.

  The baby looks at it with a perplexed look, especially after all it has warned him to never allow be seen by anyone.

  Your presence is already known due to your prior tantrum. Do not worry. I shall protect you.

  Aegis is still a bit wary, but he does as the Knight says and rids himself of his invisible veil.

  The Knight walks up to Satanael and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. He turns his head, eye red and wet with tears, and soon finds himself exposed directly to Aegis’s star-speckled irises.

  “This child,” he says with awe. “Why do I see her in you? The Mother… she is there in your eyes. Those oh so beautiful eyes. I do not understand.”

  He stares into that great celestial expanse, into that world beyond the sky.

  “Ah, I see now. You are the holy one, the blessed Comet of legend. This entire time, I was the true sinner, wasn’t I?” Satanael laughs a bitter laugh, and he smashes his head against the ground with a sudden burst of force. He grovels there, burying his face in the muck, before raising his palms up in deliverance as if waiting to be granted punishment. “I am unworthy: a vile, wretched creature. For the crime of blasphemy, please grant me unending torment. I must atone.”

  The Knight takes his hand into its own, and then it leans in close. It whispers into his ear the words that shall chain him once and for all.

  “Rise, Satanael. Your wrongs are great indeed, but worry not: all is forgiven. For you are special. Your skills, your devotion… they must not be wasted in this little corner of the world. Your duty lies elsewhere.”

  “What must I do?”

  “Pledge yourself. Your body, your soul, your garden. From now on, you will dedicate everything to me. And on the day of this world’s final reckoning, you shall be led toward the beauty you desire.”

  He raises his head, and his expression fills with such innocent joy. He has waited his entire life to hear these words. However, there is still one last speck of doubt buried within him.

  “But why?” he asks. “Why does the holy child lie with you, the hero of Polus? Do you intend to use him as a pawn of the kingdom?”

  “Oh, that is right. You still do not know of my identity, do you?”

  The Knight removes its helm, and thus it discards Lorelai’s skin. Its face distorts into a hideous amalgamation of human contortions, shifting through appearance after appearance as Satanael watches on silently. Eventually, a quiet laugh parts from his lips.

  “I was never in control. No, everything has been predetermined from the start. The true mastermind was hidden all along, a puppeteer amidst a kingdom of marionettes. And I am but a mere doll foolishly gazing at the sky’s Constellation.”

  He regains his posture and then prostrates himself before it. There is no longer any doubt; everything he is and everything he shall be… it belongs to the Knight.

  “But if this doll can be of use to your cause, then use me as you wish. I am yours. Now, and for eternity.”