Chapter 2: Ritual

Angelica’s high metabolism had her falling and waking first. Slowly, she opened her eyes. The room was darker than before. Not much time had passed, but the waiters had drawn the blinds on the windows. Clover didn’t want to risk anyone peering in and disturbing her plans.

Clover... That pale woman stood smack dab in the middle of the dance floor. The waiters brought her tomes and the like, and she flipped them open to pages with strange symbols and patterns.

Angelica tried to get up. However, though awake, she couldn’t move her arms. She felt them: she felt the chill dance floor under what little of her arm skin was exposed. Still, they refused her command. The back of her crinoline--the stiff, cage-like garment to keep her skirt wide--had been smushed down in her fall. Consequently, her dress hung loosely over her as she lay. The other women seemed in a similar condition. Their fanciful wide gowns all deflated over themselves like balloons.

One by one the others began to wake. Just in time it’d seem, as Clover snapped her fingers and the waiters started grabbing the guests and dragging them across the floor. One grabbed Angelica and dragged her in front of Clover; another dragged Oliver towards the blonde’s side.

“I knew it!” Angelica shouted. “You are a witch.”

Clover chuckled. “Impressive. You can still talk? I should go faster then.”

The other people began to groan, it was all they could muster. Each guest had one of the wait staff standing above them. Each mustached servant began undoing their own coats and shirts.

Angelica spoke again.

“You poisoned us.”

“Correct.” said a smiling Clover.

“How?”

Clover removed her black lace gloves and Angelica’s heart sank. Hidden by her wrist was a vial held snug by a leather strap. A strange purple liquid glimmered within, and a rubber tube went from it towards a false fingernail. Clover popped the pointed thing off and set the vial and strap down to the floor.

“You don’t have nails that long working in a garden.” The redhead chuckled. “I spiked the wine casks, you see.”

Angelica turned from clover to the waiter looming at her side. The tall fellow had removed all his top garments to expose his naked chest. From his pants pocket he fished out a dagger. All the others did the same for their ‘charges’.

“W-wait stop! Don’t kill me!” Angelica shouted at the man. “I’ll pay you double what she is.” She closed her eyes at that raised blade.

“Pay? Oh I didn’t hire them. I enchanted them. I requested to visit the wait staff before the ball. I shook hands, exchanged words--some of them ‘magic’...” said Clover, trailing to a laugh at the end.

Something wet sprayed onto Angelica and sullied her bodice with its red stain. The blonde opened her eyes to see the waiter had made a long and deep cut into his stomach. He slid his hand in the wound and drew it out deep red.

The man crouched and used his hand to paint a crude circle around Angelica’s body. As before, all the other thralls did similar with their own assignments.

“W-what, what’s going on? What are you doing?” Angelica stammered.

“My ritual.” answered Clover.

“So you do worship the devil? You fucking witch. I’ll burn you myself once I get up!” said Angelica. She fluttered her eyelids and face: about the only things she could move.

Clover laughed again. She looked away from her tome to watch Angelica’s futile attempts at ‘writhing’.

“The devil? Oh no that’s fairy-tale stuff. I can’t imagine how many frail women like me wasted time going down that rabbit hole. Poor, things they were. My lord, however, is very real, and they are more powerful and wise beyond your imagination.”

The waiters had gone pale; their blood nearly run dry. Each one finished the runes they drew around the ‘guests’, then flopped over dead. Per Clover’s instructions, they were considerate enough to die away from the circles so as to avoid mucking things up.

“What are you doing to us?” said a man’s voice. It was Oliver. Every word sounded a strain.

“Ah the birthday boy’s awake. My thanks for gathering everyone here. Every ritual needs ingredients after all~” said Clover.

Clover knelt down in front of one book, a rather grisly looking black tome, and started flipping through its pages.

“W-wait, why not get the staff to be your ‘ingredients’ then, why involve us?” said another woman’s voice: Megan. She was paralyzed not too far from Angelica.

“I need more than your blood as fuel. A powerful emotion is essential: suffering suffices. The servants are more inured to suffering. They eat stale bread to our moist cakes, and drink water to our fine wines. You all, my peers, have higher expectations out life. When its threatened, you lament. Now, I’m sure those waiters would still feel no small measure of horror in your place, but why chance things?”

The symphony of groans grew louder from the limp vessels. The redheaded witch would have to move a bit faster here. She didn’t want any of them regaining enough feeling to crawl out of their circles. The pale woman found the right page and started saying some horrid words: words that made Angelica’s skin crawl.

Angelica started screaming. She hoped to distract Clover, but it was music to the witch’s ears. Plus, the more Clover spoke these words, the louder her voice got. Its once squeaky timbre now echoed, bouncing off the walls and snuffing out a few of the wall scones with its thoom.

Clover’s emerald eyes turned deep black through and through. Soon, the void that filled them sparkled. She had a conversation with an unseen force.

“I’ve brought the sacrifices and prepped my dress. Where is my promised transformation oh great Hudraloth?”

Clover stood tall now. A small ball of red light formed in front of her chest. It glimmered as something spoke through it.

This voice was as deep and slimy as the depths of the sea. Every word snuffed another candle then replaced it with a deep black flame to keep the chamber lit.

“You shall have it, but know this is just the first step.”

Clover continued. “You said I could become as an eternal flower, free from illness and brimming with vitality.”

“You will be that and much more.” said the voice. “I give you a taste of true power. You will be as the plants you adore. You will grow rich on the bounties of reality and the nutrients life gives forth... but when the time comes you must bear the fruit of my arrival. Harvest enough souls to pierce the veil to reality so I may bless this universe and others. I will give you the means.”

“How will I know when I have enough?” she asked.

“You will know.” said the being.

A thin red tendril of light reached out from the sphere to poke at Clover’s neck. She shut her eyes and accepted it. Whatever the process was, it looked like it hurt, but she grit her teeth and didn’t squeak so much as once. It left no mark when it slithered out.

The sphere disappeared. Clover began to twitch. Something rustled under her dress. Her dress itself rustled. The hem of it, previously down to her ankles, raised upwards to her knees. It sounded not like cloth, but as flesh or the shifting petals of a flower. Indeed, the ruffles at the edge of her red dress curled almost identically to rose petals.

Clover started to laugh. Her voice was back to normal. Her cackle bounced off the walls.

“Oh this... this is something.” she muttered. The symphony of groans crescendoed as some of the guests got a look at the emerging horror. They crawled out from under the brim of Clover’s skirt: thin red vines.

The appendages were shaped like a plant: yet moved far quicker. They lashed in the air like whips and made similar sounds.

Angelica started to twitch, her fingers stirring. That wouldn’t do. Clover wasted no more time. There’d be time later to enjoy what she takes.

A vine cracked through the air, slithering right towards Angelica.

“N-no. Get off me!” said the young noblewoman. With great effort, the blonde moved her arm to grasp at the limb. She yelped. Something nicked the flesh of her palm.

“Ah careful.” Said Clover to Angelica. “Tiny hairs: much like a stinging plant. Although, they aren’t stinging so much as sucking...”

It was sudden. An eruption of thin lashing limbs. They rushed out from Clover’s dress and coiled over all the other paralyzed partygoers. There were dozens of them. The vines stung as they crept through their clothes. Under all those layers of fabric, the tips of the flesh-vines grew more pointed like the prick of a thorn brush. With this sharpness, they punctured through skin and muscle with ease.

And Clover began to drink.

She drunk not just blood, but their life itself. She siphoned their very souls. Angelica cried out: still the only one with the vigor to do so. The blonde socialite turned and saw Oliver. His once handsome face grew gaunt; his manly figure became so withered his suit hung on him as though on an old man. One of Clover’s vines punctured him at the neck.

The others were the same. Peggy and Megan’s eyes rolled back. They looked liked old ladies. Angelica worked up the courage to stare at her hand. Her skin clung to to her bones tight and wrinkled. She felt so dry, as if all the moisture was being sucked out of her body--which of course it was.

The runes beneath the ball guests glowed a bright red. Their offerings and suffering fed Clover. At the center, her body began to grow. Her once dull red hair snow himmered as it draped just above her shoulders. Her pale skin shifted in tone. As the vines twitched, the almost ghost-white of her flesh turned to a plantlike-green much like the stem of a spring flower.

“Yes!” she shouted. “I’ve never felt so energized before. Such vigor...”

Clover curled her toes into the smooth floor. Her strength was now enough for her toes to tear at it. She felt like dancing, and did a very small twirl one way than back the other--so as to not tangle her vines.

Angelica spoke, her voice now a whispered effort.

“Y-you. I don’t want to die. You witch.”

“Die?” said Clover. “Oh no, there’ll be no death anymore. No such thing exists in Hudraloth’s world, and neither will you perish in my flesh.”

“Your f-flesh? You sick twisted bi-”

Angelica fell over. Her body was done, drained dry as a husk to nurture Clover’s transformation. She was aware though: alive in a sense. She felt loose and light, yet constrained. She was surrounded on all sides by a tunnel of flesh: red and a bit greenish-yellow. It occurred to her she was in that tendril.

Her body--no, her soul, that’s what she was now--shimmered a dull blue. She was naked now, exposed. She tried to move or swim or float backward but it was no use. Some force pulled her deeper into Clover’s body. Worse still, she felt the walls in here. She’d bump against the interior of this vine now and again. It felt slick to her ghostly touch.

The witch felt the spirits as squirming bits of air. She could sense their every movement, flutter, and bit of pained discontent. It was lovely, but they hadn’t even settled yet.

Angelica emerged in some organ she couldn’t describe. There were walls of red-green-yellow flesh shifting. Only a few souls beat Angelica here: one of them Oliver’s. The blonde saw him there far in the distance stuck inside a blister-like construct. His original form was restored, albeit naked like her, and he pounded and thrashed against the inside of this supernatural cage.

Angelica knew Clover, that wench, that monster, was growing. She had to be, as the chamber of flesh expanded. Angelica found herself soaring towards the wall now. The witch’s laughter filled her ears.

“Ah Angelica, you’d like this. I know all they do now. Every memory, every skill, every bit of gossip. All of it’s mine as they writhe in my body like a bug in a pitcher plant. Oh if you only knew what Oliver thought of you~”

Angelica was stuck to the wall now. A hemispherical bubble grew around her, holding her snug in this living soul-cage. Like an open book, pages flying through the air, she felt herself exposed. Every secret of hers, every bit of her mind was now known by her captor.

Angelica felt pressure. Every movement of her ethereal form was a small burden now, but still she pressed up against the translucent container holding her spirit near Clover’s flesh. It wouldn’t budge.

“What?” she asked. “What does he think of me?”

Clover’s chuckle reverberated all around.

“You poor thing; as if I’d tell you! Why don’t you ask him yourself? You and all the other socialites have an entire eternity to gabber with one another now. An eternity within me.”

Angelica shouted to Oliver, professing her love--shallow though it may be, it still felt real to the 20 year old woman. It was something to cling to. Alas, he was too far away. He was out of ear range and only barely in sight: especially with the screaming of other souls drowning out her voice. Soon, the blonde quietly slumped in this new cell of hers.

Clover burgeoned up and out. The tomes by her toes got trod as she moved her feet to hold her balance. The sensations were unlike anything else. She felt alive, alert, and pleased beyond human bounds. The souls within their cages fidgeted nicely. Her awareness of her body reached heights she never thought possible. As her 5-and-a-half feet turned to 12, then 24, she experimented and found she could waggle her elbow much as she could a finger.

Not very useful, though it hinted to her how much she controlled her own body.

Clover’s dress stayed with her. It was no mere cloth, but now a part of her body. Fabric turned to flowery petals and leaves. Blossoms formed in her hair: begonias and bergenias, daffodils and daisies and flowers of all sorts. Those flowers were mostly green in tone to compliment the hair’s red. Those red-green tendrils coiled around her arms and legs like vines on trunks. Indeed, with how big she was growing, her arms and legs quickly reached that level of thickness and then surpassed it.

The magnificent mural adorning the ball room’s ceiling crumbled against Clover’s head and shoulders. Her head poked out from the collapsing roof and she took a deep breath of fresh air. For once, her lungs felt unstrained doing so.

The green-woman curled her arms, still growing, and her clenched fists ripped through the sides of the hall. By now, all the suits and dresses on the streets stared up at this disaster and the gigantic woman committing it.

Clover’s body finished ravaging Oliver’s manor. The dance hall was destroyed, and her first act as a 300ft (100m) giant was to waltz through the rest of the structure as though it were a paper doll house.

“Such strength~” she beamed. She hadn’t felt this alive since forever. Hudraloth’s promise was true. These souls innervated her with power and with life. That was Hudraloth’s domain after all: life. It’s why she choose them as her lord out of all the others.

The sun hit her green skin and the chlorophyll within her green-flesh soaked up its energy. Clover no longer feared its burns. She didn’t fear anything.