Aegis Apotheosis

Nefas of the Abyss
The livid red sky overshadowed the earth with an omen of calamity. Dark clouds painted the tainted blood red canvas and blotted the view of the cosmos; were it night or dawn, no man of the earth could say for sure. The harsh winds churned the desolate lands and drew a haze of ashes, blanketing the man who lay with a visage of death to befit his bearings. The grounded man opened his eyes to a world alien to his recollections. As he struggled to his battered feet with a hacking cough, the man began an instinctive stroll to a destination whose significance he could only ponder.

And after a brief trek upon the empty lands, his deliverers appeared before his jaded hazel eyes under the herald of a whirlwind of ash and bone from under the dead earth. The cloaked figures who stood ahead would have had nothing to distinguish themselves from a fray of shadows were it not for the sight of their exposed sickly faces. Were this a dream, the afterlife, or a very message from a God, soon he would know. Even here, he had no fear, for in death, he had already peered.

One, seven, fourteen... The man bode his time counting these visitants in wait of an answer. Among these beings, the woman in front caught his particular interest—nay, not with the elegance of her posture, but with the black text which reeked of an anarchic presence. At this, the man could only stroke his rough beard.

The figure in the center, the presumed master of this world, released an arm from her book and raised a chiseled finger in the man's direction. "To the woman who stands before us in spirit, we request an audience," came her quivering response. In tandem, the ground caved just beside the bearded man's feet to reveal the face of an identical book. With nigh inhuman haste, the man kneeled and unearthed the book with his bare hands to flip through its pages before coming to a pause. The nature of what he had read could only be discerned by his frozen expression.

Regaining his focus after a period of silence, the man rose to his feet and tossed the book aside with naught a shift in his mellow expression. "This moment is one I had awaited for some time; but I must ask, what am I to you?" he questioned.

But the questioned figure would not answer in speech, and the flip of a page from her book signaled a gruesome end. In a single instant, the very earth enshrouded the bearded man in a casing of dirt before a single word of protest could be uttered from him. "This vessel is no longer needed," spoke the figure responsible. "We eagerly await our meeting in person, Nefas of the Abyss." The tearing of flesh from bone from within the prison exuded a ghastly noise, and the crumbling of said prison released a deathly stench from the bones left in its wake. At this, the figure simply grinned from ear to ear.

---

"How... unruly."

Only the quiet sound of her blood dripping to the ground kept her awake in absolute darkness. She raised a single hand to wipe the blood from her mouth and stood with what meager strength she had. Leaning on a wall of stone, she proceeded to violently hack up blood before raising her head. With a moment of ponder, she took a bated breath and called out to the ruins upon which she dwelled.

"Awaken."

Her voice, however faint it was, brought new life to the slumbering ruins, and the innumerable, lingering wisps of Animae Casi all lit up at once to reveal its splendor. The blond-haired woman stood upon a spire of a rocky pillar in the center of a massive space as the only remaining soul intact in this lost metropolis—a once proud city whose remains told a tell of forgotten origins. For so long had the woman's blood-red eyes remained closed that even the inscriptions on the stone monolith which she rested upon seemed like a novelty—a novelty which she would yet pay little heed in her desire to see the world she had so adamantly isolated herself from with her own eyes and a fresh perspective.

The Nefas of the Abyss, she had been called—such to replace the name even she could not recall. In the ruins she had dwelled since ancient times, looming and thriving from the perspectives of those whose minds succumbed to her profound influence; only few entities knew of her existence. Why, then, had "they" called out to her true from?

The Nefas of the Abyss had hidden herself from the world long before the prosperity of the legendary first Nefas collective came to an end, but through the power she had obtained, she could continue to observe history unfold and satiate her thirst for knowledge—the knowledge to rend the laws of a reality she loathed as an endless nightmare as much as she could before her own tenuous body betrayed her. But even with her success, some questions yet remained, and the reclusive woman had found some futility in using mere vessels to uncover the meaning of the covert organization responsible to the assassination of her brother, the revered founder Glacies. It was clear that a more daring approach would be necessary. She had never particularly cared much for the brother she considered overly idealistic, but the circumstances of his death were undoubtedly among the greatest of mysteries in Nefas lore, with such an elusive truth that the inquisitive woman could not help but seek out by any means necessary. The time had come unravel these cowardly conspirators, and whether a hero or a menace she would then be named, she could not have cared less.

Centuries of punishment from the pain and suffering of her puppets had taken its toll; alas, in her frail state, there was little she could do in her own body, and any small error would undoubtedly ensure her demise. Even so, never had she quivered at the thought of opening her eyes and dying by a foe, for reality itself could only ever be compared to a playground in her eyes, one that she had little time left to indulge in regardless.

As she shambled to the edge of the spire, her tattered and bloody beige robe caught under her feet and caused a trip and fall; but for as long as she had experienced the suffering of others that even her own suffering, be it a herald of death of not, seemed only like a meaningless dream. And so, she would endure. With a grandiose bout of newfound might, she stood. With a tender step, then a stroll, then a dash, then a leap, the Nefas of the Abyss threw herself beyond the spire, the wind brushing away the blonde locks of hair which obscured her vision and allowing her to observe the remains of the city far beneath the structure—even amid the rubble, some buildings yet stood, if only in a shadow of their former glory. As a ruin that existed for much over two-thousand years, the medieval architecture clearly suggested that it was once home to a then advanced civilization in worship of Velia Agostinha Vivax. Hidden somewhere beyond this maze of antiquity was the ascent to the world outside.

The Nefas of the Abyss spoke to herself whilst still in descent, "So the Nefas of old know me as Mulier Aridus? Then it is time I showed them the Arid Woman as I always viewed her." With that, she vanished into the ruins as the wisps of light went black.