Chapter 103: Flashback Reveal of the Sun-Dome Trap: Stolen Water, Bleeding Ozone

The purple vortex didn’t dump him into a swamp.

It spat Cassius sideways onto blinding lapis-blue marble, inlaid with thick ribbons of liquid gold that burned under towering sun-domes.

Shk-t. Clink.

Warm turquoise water lapped against stepped alabaster, choked with floating white lotus and frost-jasmine spinning in oily gyres.

Diamond dust hung in the humid air, catching sharp prisms of noon glare off ivory pillars.

No grease. No rotting paper.

Cassius stayed low on all fours, his palms sliding on hot wet gold-vein.

Where...

His ribs burned. Not the scrap heap. Not the Nairobi Jeep. Not any room he had ever mapped.

"Ezaily... Where is she..." Cassius murmured softly and slowly in confusion.

A heavy carved-ebony double door at the gallery head swung wide on silent bearings.

Screee-thump.

Vilucious stepped through, carrying Florianthum bridal-style in his arms... her pale silk torn, her head slack against his shoulder.

Behind them, a tall female militant glided in dead silence, her armored boots making zero sound on the stone, hand resting on a narrow hip-blade.

Vilucious laughed. Soft, smooth, and hollow as a polished flute.

"We’re almost here my beloved Lordess, You would always cherish this in your memory."

Cassius didn’t wait to see more.

He jammed a dry magical catalyst purple ball between his back molars. Tink. Raw alum and sulfur exploded hot on his tongue.

He dragged his thumbnail deep across his forearm. Shk-rip.

Bruised-purple blood welled up, thick and ozone-sweet.

His irises bled out into pitch-black shadow, swallowing the white.

The purple blood smeared over his skin boiled into a cold, oily slime-smoke. Whum-zip.

Gravity inverted.

Cassius shot straight up through the steam, slamming flat into a recessed shadow-pocket behind a gilded alabaster gargoyle twenty-five feet overhead.

Thup-stuck.

The slime bonded him hard to the dark stone. Completely invisible from the floor below.

Vilucious lowered Florianthum to the wet lapis edge. Her bare heels hit with a heavy, flat plop-shush.

She raised her chin, voice raw. "My precious Lordess, thanks for everything."

Pinned twenty-five feet up in the dark, Cassius stared down through teeth gritted so hard his jaw ached.

Her left shoulder’s locked.

He started to observe as his analytical mind was furious with Lord’s deeds.

Three inches higher than her right, dead stiff against the silk... she was bracing off a fractured collarbone or a crushed rib.

A drift of imported frost-jasmine spun across the turquoise water below, hitting her bare heel with a wet clack-skit.

And her toes... (Cassius continued his observation).

Not resting on the lapis; curling hard, digging white into the wet gold-vein grout like a drowning climber finding zero purchase.

Vilucious stepped closer, the diamond decanter in his hand catching a sharp noon prism off the dome.

Every breath is shallow.

Not a panic gasp, just a micro-shiver in the hollow of her throat where the pulse hammered twice as fast as normal blood.

The female militant shifted by the ebony doors, her hip-blade scraping leather with a dry, metallic shhh-t that echoed off the high marble vaults.

Florianthum raised her face toward the light.

No blank surrender. No empty stare. She have hope left within her eyes...

Her pupils were blown wide with terror, the skin around her eyes tight and pale, yet a sharp, stubborn spark pinned the center of her gaze- not looking at Vilucious, looking past him toward the high open archways where the wind moved.

She’s terrified.

And she wasn’t ready to fold. Every muscle in her frame screamed survival, refusing to let the light go out.

His shadow-eyes burned, hot sulfur tasting bitter in the back of his throat.

Hold on.

His fingers twitched against the stone, purple slime-glue pulling tight.

Just stay loud inside! Cassius controlled himself as he saw something.

Vilucious’s fingers hooked into the high slit of her gown.

Skrrt-shhh.

Dry midnight blue tissue parting against skin.

The contact hit Cassius behind the eyes like a live wire grounding out.

Cold palm...

He felt the pressure through the stone, through the twenty-five feet of humid air- Vilucious pressing raw skin above her knee, testing the flex of her hamstring like a butcher grading meat.

The alabaster under Cassius’s fingertips fractured with a dry, ceramic tink.

Purple slime-glue peeled a millimeter off the carving, hot ozone stinging his nostrils.

Move your hand! (His frantic mind shouted).

His shadow-eyes burned so hard the white-hot sun-dome above blurred into a greasy, purple-ringed smear.

One inch higher and I come down through your collarbone.

He didn’t look at Vilucious’s face. He watched Florianthum’s thigh muscle... it didn’t go soft.

It locked hard under the silk, a tight, vibrating cable of muscle bracing against the marble edge.

She’s waiting for him to commit his weight.

Her hip shifted half a degree left. Microscopic. Intentional.

Cassius tasted sulfur and old copper on his back teeth, his ribs aching with the pull of the ceiling.

Do it.

Cassius teeth grind as he tried controlling his rage. His fingers dug deeper into the cracked gargoyle, holding the drop.

Vilucious leaned in, his breath brushing the curve of her throat.

"Open them. Nothing to hide between us."

The words didn’t float in the steam. They dropped heavy as lead weights into the pool.

Cassius bit down.

The catalyst ball in his molars didn’t just taste bitter--- it shattered.

Raw alum and sulfur flared behind his eyes, a violent, blinding purple migraine that spiked straight through his temples.

Control it!

His hands clamped the alabaster gargoyle. Stone screamed under his fingertips; a deep, jagged krr-shhh as the carved wing sheared off in his fist.

Can’t.

The fury wasn’t hot anymore.

It turned cold, greasy, and crystalline, the kind of dark-system overload that smells like melted copper and ozone before a transformer blows.

His shadow-eyes didn’t just dilate. The black ink of his irises spilled over his eyelids, weeping thick, bruised-purple tears that didn’t fall, they boiled upward into his hair.

Vilucious crowded her space.

A low, unhurried drone of diplomatic pleasantries... promises of open borders, velvet-lined cells, and shared crowns.

Up in the dark rafters, Cassius squeezed his eyes shut.

Breathe you have to, Cassius commaned himself.

The sulfur taste in his mouth turned thick and metallic, his pulse hammering a slow, deliberate cadence against the stone.

Not yet. Let him finish the script.

Vilucious’s fingers slid up her wrists, pinning her hands to the marble rim.

Then, slow and deliberate, his palm tracked down between her thighs.

Enough!

Cassius didn’t wait.

The bruised-purple blood on his forearm hardened instantly under his will... shk-tink- forging a razor-cold blade of crystallized violet ozone.

Without a sound, he drew the blood-knife across his own throat.

Tch-rip.

Blood didn’t drip. It detonated.

In the same blinding millisecond, before the drop could fall, his shape-shift magic dissolved his collapsing weight into an oily, iridescent stream that plunged straight down through the steam.

Plop-whum.

He hit the deep turquoise water of the sunken luxury tub, sliding completely under the suffocating ceiling of floating white lotus and frost-jasmine. Invisible.

The water didn’t stay still.

A violent, double-spectrum shimmer erupted beneath the petals... bruised violet needles weaving through raw, hammered silver.

Reincarnation magic coordinates and shape-shift power pressure tearing the liquid apart at the molecular level.

From the bottom of the basin, Cassius expanded the purple-blood mass into a massive, rigid rotary fan of razor-edged geometry.

Whirrrrr-CRACK.

He spun it with the full kinetic weight of his rage.

A solid wall of pressurized water and gale-force draft shot straight up out of the tub and spread all over the chamber.

SHHHH-BLAM.

The impact hit Vilucious dead-center.

The wind slammed into the high arches, sharp and reeking of burnt alum, yet Vilucious didn’t flinch.

He stood planted on the lapis floor, his expensive robes barely ruffling against the draft.

Before he could reach out again, a thick tentacle of iridescent purple-silver slime snapped from the shadows.

Then, Florianthum’s scream.

Schloop-snag.

It wrapped around Florianthum’s waist, yanking her sideways across the marble into a dark pillar alcove.

A sharp, breathless cry tore from her throat-

"AAGHHH---" as her heavy, expensive gown caught on the rough stone.

Following Vilucious’s earlier command, she had already unfastened the bodice, her exposed shoulder flashing white against the dark.

The instant her skin bared, the violent silver-violet reincarnation shimmers exploded from the slime tether, swallowing her whole in a humming, blinding cocoon of raw light.

Then the water answered.

Cassius hit the deep turquoise basin in a silent, oily drop, expanding his shape-shift mass into a massive rotary fan beneath the floating lotuses.

Whirrrrr-CRACK.

A solid wall of pressurized water and gale-force spray shot straight up from the tub.

SHHHH-BLAM.

The hydraulic blast smashed dead-center into Vilucious, shredding his fine garments into wet rags and throwing him backward onto the slick tiles.

Beneath the churning water, Cassius jammed the chewed paper-and-zinc reed against his molars.

His lungs locked. He forced the air past the magnet.

The marble dome stopped vibrating.

A hollow, multi-tonal bass bell rang out from every wall at once... thick, grinding, and ancient like an ocean floor splitting open.

IT WAS NONE OTHER THAN CASSIUS’S OWN SCRAPE INVENTION.

But then, the legendary opponent’s eyes started to close as he was dying from his own attack and all the powers that he used at once consumed his energy at a very high speed.

At the same time Lord Vilucious used his binding flash magic as his eyes turned whole white void from anger.

Then Cassius’s sentence rang in his mind coming from his heart as his almost closed eyes figured out the Lord’s magical flash coming towards him too.

I cannot fall... N-e...ne...ver---