The Creators

Chapter Sixteen: Reunion

Prelude: Coming Ashore

DIAMOND

The ocean washed over the desert. Like a biblical tide, it swelled ever forward, consuming sand and rock in a gentle tsunami. I rode it upon a ship made of water. The masts, the deck, the sails, the cannons, and the portholes were all shaped in aqueous detail, trapping the liquid in a prism-shaped by my mind. Even the great wheel was made of water, and I steered the rudder with a hearty pirate laugh, and a “yo-ho-ho!” I sailed my watercraft for miles and drew the ocean ever inland until I reached a chain of mountains. From my memory of what Passion had taught me, these were the Ogre Peaks, a northern uplift that crested the Gratoran Desert’s Jenok Peninsula. Great civilizations lived within the vast caves that networked the rock, creating caverns so large they could house cities within them. I stopped my ship and wondered if I wanted to visit the place. I wondered if I wanted to stay there for a while. I loved my mom, truly I did, but the closer I got to her, the less I wanted to see her. I was coming to the realization that I would be perfectly happy to never see her again. I smiled. Nothing was stopping me from doing just that. Nothing but…

I felt a tug on my mind.

“Not now!” I growled.

The tug persisted.

“Hey!” I yelled. “I said no!”

The tug stopped. There was a pause, then I felt something else. I became awash in an overwhelming desire to abandon my side-quest into the Ogre Peaks, and head straight for Droktinar without stopping.

“You don’t get to tell me what I want to do!” I hollered. “I do what I want!” I set sail for the Ogre Peaks, and shouted a defiant, “yo-ho-ho!”

To her credit, it took Corruption a long time before she crossed the forbidden line, and forced my desires southward toward Droktinar. Toward Mom.

Part One: Exodus

TERA

“Fuck me, you fucking ape!” I snarled as I rode the orc, rolling my ravenous feminine muscles up his delicious length, taking gout after gout of his thick hot milk deep within my starving womb.

“Master, please!” he croaked. Though his voice was sharp with terror, it was also rich with pleasure. He’d come to me in the morning as a hulking alpha male of four-hundred pounds. Now he was an emaciated husk of skin and bone, everything that was once hard and bulging now rendered to soft atrophied blubber—everything, except one thing. He was pallid, and his flesh was yellowing. His organs were failing him, but I only needed one to work. I’d forgotten how thrilling it was to suck a man dry.

“Fuck me deep,” I hissed, slithering my tongue across his face, “fuck my tight little pussy. It’s so wet just for you. Drown in it. Die in it.”

“Please!” he blubbered. “I have children!”

I grinned. “Any males?”

He sealed his lips, and I giggled, and corkscrewed my pointed tail further into his ass, pressing the tip to his abused prostate and coercing it to give me more. He thrust and heaved, smashed his fat cock into me as though trying to split me in two, but my thighs were strong, and his soul was weak. In the end, he died with a smile on his face.

I tidied myself in the mirror and basked in my vanity for a moment. I had never been so well-nourished in all my years. My hair had never been so luxuriantly black, my flesh had never been so supple and rich, and my curves had never been so bodacious. Even when I was Death Kiss, I hadn’t fed so gluttonously. I did up my wavy black hair before my black and purple eyes, then stepped out of my wagon, and into the desert summer heat.

I couldn’t see the end of the caravan. The exodus was so enormous that the wagons and carts stretched to the horizon in every direction. Julia had spent a month gathering all the tribes of the Gratoran Desert. They came by the thousands, flocking like the sheep they were, simply adding mass to the momentum that barreled relentlessly eastward.

“Good morning, Aiko!” I called merrily to the Breytan at the head of our column.

“And to you, Director,” Aiko smiled politely back, not at all able to hide her contempt. She wore a white robe as a mark of purity, which put her a cut above the Breytans who wore red robes, denoting the loss of their virgin blood or whatever stupid shit Julia had thought up. If I was being honest, the only good idea she ever had was to make me the director of sin. It was a dream come true. I orchestrated sadomasochistic orgies, forced good-looking families into incestual debauchery, changed people’s sexuality on a whim, and summarily executed weak men with my cunt. I was feared and revered, desired and hated, infamous and celebrated all at once. I sauntered from the steps of my extravagant wagon, walked past the line of muscle-bound slaves who pulled it for me and strolled up to Aiko.

“How’s your mom?” I asked her sardonically.

“She is recovering,” Aiko answered smartly.

I put my fingers against my nostrils and inhaled deeply. “I can still smell her,” I looked up at Aiko, and sniffed down to my elbow, “I can smell her all the way here. She’s such a deep woman, your mother. I touched her where you used to live.”

Aiko turned red all over and bit her lip. The crescent-shaped scar between her brows turned vividly white with her rage, coaxing me to mock her more.

“My favorite part about ravaging her,” I pontificated, “was that moment she finally gave in to me. Her eyes rolled into her head, and she moaned things that no noble samurai woman ever should. She said—well, you were there; I don’t need to tell you the whole story.”

Aiko shook with fury for a moment, then calmed herself with a deep breath, and smiled politely to me. “Someday, Director Autumnsong, you will overstep yourself, and Sister Julia will make certain your screams are heard in the depths of hell. I will be very glad to bear witness to that.”

“Careful, Aiko; there’s a very good chance you’ll already be waiting for me down there, and you’ll have a very rude awakening when you see me crawl into Satan’s lap, and give him a kiss.” I grabbed her ass and squeezed until she gasped. “You think you’re untouchable? What if I have a few of my boys hold you down and pop that precious little cherry of yours, hmm? Do you think Julia will punish me, or you?”

“You would need a hundred men to take me!” she snarled, her hand twitching toward her katana.

I chuckled. “But I’d only need one of me. Go ahead and test me. You’re no Jade Tao.” I slid my hand through her crack, pushing the fabric deep between her supple cheeks until I could feel her little anus pulsing against my fingertips. Tears poured from her eyes, but she did nothing. “That’s right, little girl,” I grinned against her cheek, “I can do what I want with you here. No rules about this dirty little hole, are there?”

“Please, Director,” she hissed.

“Oh, now it’s please?” I giggled, and slid my fingers back and forth across her puckered little butthole, feeling it pulse beneath her cloak. “Yes, you’ll be saying ‘please’ quite a lot when I’m through with you. Just like your mother did.”

Aiko closed her eyes, and fat tears rained down her face. “Forgive me, Director.”

I circled her rim, pressing into the elastic center until I almost breached it through her cloth, and I sniffed deeply upon the musk of her unbidden arousal. “Pay me proper homage, you pathetic worm,” I whispered.

The caravans passed us, the joyful hymns were sung from a myriad of orcish lips, the bullwhips cracked, and the women screamed and moaned. The tortured sinners shrieked along the side of the road, the thousands of black banners billowed in the desert wind, and the millions of orcs with the crescent symbol burned into their brows marched to the east. These biblical scenes played out before me as Aiko got to her knees, and began licking my cunt. Though I appreciated the dichotomy of fear and hate that played across her eyes as she clumsily did her best, I didn’t forgive her. I’d forgotten what forgiveness was.

JULIA

It had been three weeks since I’d found Yuntok and his tribe, and two weeks since I’d found the last remaining highway of the orc empire, the Gratoran Road. I had walked all the way to the sea, where the melted ruins of Hektinar lay in great heaps of steel, and then I had turned south and begun my journey toward Droktinar. Many would die along the way—many had perished already—but those who fell would be carried into heaven, and those who stayed were blessed to do God’s work. Those sinners who could not be absolved were nailed to the cross and ignited with my fire. Their shrieks of agony alerted me of their purification and confirmed that they would be jettisoned to paradise upon their passing. The Holy Mother was infinitely merciful.

Though I walked upon the sand that steamed when water splashed it, my feet did not burn. I melted the earth beneath my soles, knowing that for millennia to come, millions upon millions would make the pilgrimage their ancestors once did, and they would seek to walk in my footsteps. And I did walk. Though many offered me a cart, and many even offered to carry me, I walked. Only when night blanketed this holy desert, did I dare rest. Only then did I dare look upon my imperfections, and succumb to the piece of the devil that lay within me. I had come to terms with the idea that I had unholiness in me. Sister Tera made sure I admitted it.

“Do you remember our first night together?” the holy succubus sighed as she strolled beside me, hooking her arm into mine, resting her head upon my shoulder, “You were so very frustrated. It was adorable. You just couldn’t figure out a way to fuck me in a reasonable manner until I finally had to just… rape you.” She giggled. “Then it became quite clear how you liked it. Tell me, do you fantasize about the night while you’re trudging through the day?”

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Sister Tera?” I muttered.

“I have some fresh-baked wisdom from the Holy Mother just for you.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Perhaps you have wisdom, but I will be the judge if it is holy or not.”

Sister Tera slinked before me, walking backward as I plodded ever forwards. “Your red-robed priestesses need more training.”

“You have already extensively trained them!” I growled. “And the impure priestesses are now more lecherous than they have ever been! I had to burn fifteen of them because they could not resist sinful copulation after swearing their celibacy to God!”

“Their souls could not overcome the devil’s touch. Do you really want priestesses who cannot bar the sanctity of their own womb?”

“No,” I sighed. “You are right, of course, and you are wise, but I’m running out of Breytans. I have barely two-hundred left, and the flock they must shepherd is in the millions.”

“Just because they have wings, doesn’t make them angels. The Holy Mother gifted you with a clear focus of her path, but she gifted me with the vision to see the darkness in us all. Darkness must be brought to light, even if it is ugly.”

“Wise words indeed,” I said, and turned toward Jade. Though she was most certainly impure, she did not wear a red robe, but a black one. “High Guard Tao,” I prompted, “what do you think? Can your soldiers endure more of Sister Tera’s tests?”

“If they cannot, then they deserve to burn,” Jade said simply, then looked directly at Sister Tera. “I trust that you’ll make certain they are tested to the satisfaction of the Holy Mother. Any failings thereafter will be a blemish on your reputation, Sister Tera, not mine.”

“Of course,” Sister Tera smiled, unable to hide her uneasiness. She seemed to think everyone around her was nothing but a joke (including me), but not Jade. Not after the night of Jade’s sacrament. I had written scriptures of flame across the High Guard’s beautiful body, covering her from ankle to neck in passages of the Holy Mother. Though she screamed deep into the night, she endured it bravely, even asking me to continue my authorship until every last bit of her canvas was inked. However, I didn’t think it was the burns I’d inflicted that so disturbed Sister Tera; it was the burns Jade had inflicted upon herself. For when I was done with my penmanship, Jade handed me an iron rod and asked me to heat it. Then, before the eyes of her brethren, the orcs of Gratora, and Sister Tera Autumnsong, Jade removed temptation from within. After that, Sister Tera could hardly stand to look at her.

Jade stared impassively at Sister Tera until she averted her gaze, and smiled charmingly at me.

“I best get to work then,” she said and winked. “See you tonight.”

I smiled back at her as she left, then scolded myself for doing it. She was right; I did think about her often as I plodded through the desert with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. Too often. Her temptation had become so pervasive in my mind that it nearly eclipsed my meditations upon the Holy Mother.

“I am a weak woman,” I muttered.

“You are the strongest woman I know,” Jade assured me.

I smiled up at her. “You do yourself a disservice, High Guard. No one—not even me—has shown their devotion to God as you have.”

Jade did not return my smile. She never smiled anymore. “It as you say, Sister Julia: there can only be healing through pain. Enduring pain does not make one strong. It was my weakness that necessitated my pain.”

“Indeed,” I said, and looked to the sky, where way up in the glaring pale sun, a falcon circled ominously overhead. I wondered what sign the Holy Mother was giving me. Be ever watchful? Or beware of the opportunistic predator? Sister Tera was certainly that; and the more time I spent with her, the more I felt like her meal.

ANGELA

I circled overhead as a peregrine falcon, flying so high that to those below I would be but a spec. Still, it didn’t feel like high enough. My ocular vision could make out the shape of Julia and Jade in front of a massive dust cloud. When the wind blew just right, the dust cloud would thin to reveal a mass of people so vast that its ends couldn’t be seen from even this high up. It had taken Julia Gendian three weeks to marshal the greatest force since the fall of the orc empire, and it had taken Justina and I just as much time to recruit exactly one Ionan to our cause. I adjusted my wings and flew toward the distant mountains.

When I got to Iona, it was the late afternoon, and the office of Justina Autumnsong was woefully empty. Only the eminent ambassador herself sat at her desk, passively tossing darts at a board as she compulsively masturbated without any sense of zeal. There was a row of very large and ornate dildos littered across her desk, and I perched myself upon one with two heads separated about an inch from each other.

“Holy hell, did you bring all of these back from Drastin?” I exclaimed. “I knew you had a collection, but damn!”

“These aren’t mine,” Justina said, examining one with passing interest. “I found this treasure trove beneath Helga Sunscraper’s bed.”

“What?!”

“They only get to lie with a man once in their lives; is it any wonder they build up a collection?” Justina put the dildo down and pulled out the one that was inside of her. “Helga told me Nona has a whole room full.”

“No way.”

Justina shrugged. “Conservative prudes are always the worst deviants.”

“Says the open-minded liberal who wouldn’t leave the bathroom for three days straight after she grew a penis.”

Justina smiled thinly. “I was just testing to see if I could become a self-feeding biological system.”

“We had to stage an intervention.”

“Wow, who would’ve thought giving a succubus a penis would be a bad idea?” she snorted derisively. “Anyway, I won’t be making that mistake again. Now, what news from Gratora?”

“Looks like they’re a day away from Droktinar.”

“Droktinar is only four days away from Droktin’s Pass.”

“They’ll stop for a while in the city.”

“Droktinar was built to house a million people. Julia’s followers eclipse that by an order of magnitude. They cannot stay for long. Any news of Diamond?”

“I didn’t see her down there. I don’t think the god of water has much use for a desert.”

“A desert is the perfect place for a god of water if you think about it. She’ll show up soon.”

“Have you put any thought into what we talked about earlier?”

Justina picked up her notes and scanned through them. “The only logical explanation is that Diamond was always a Creator. She is spawned from Passion, who was the sister of a Life Giver, which means her lineage is right. She came out of Passion’s womb as a late adolescent, which means she was likely in gestation for eighteen or so years. Perhaps she was conceived on the same day your brother and the others were. Like the other Creators, Diamond couldn’t express her powers until she came under extreme stress or pleasure. As to why she doesn’t carry her mother’s patterns, perhaps only one Creator in a bonded pair can become the Bound One. It is obvious by the color of Julia’s markings that Corruption’s purpose in binding two gods was to hijack their connection. She must’ve gained some astral power from it.”

I scowled as best as a falcon could. “It doesn’t really help us to know any of this.”

“We don’t know anything, and you’re right, it doesn’t help us at all.” Justina turned her notes over and ran her hand through her hair. “Did you see any openings?”

I shook my head. “Your mom never stays too far from Julia. No one will ever get close enough fast enough. Plus, Jade stays on Julia’s shoulder like a fucking parrot, and even if she can’t kill any of us, she can still delay us long enough. Assassination won’t work. How’s the recruitment going?”

“Helga is our only volunteer to face Nona, and she’s not exactly up to the task. The Ionan scouts are bringing back news of Julia’s movement. As you can imagine, it’s inspiring quite a bit of awe in the ranks of the Guard. Meanwhile, your brother insists upon staying absent for the sake of neutrality, whatever the good fuck that means. We need him here, Angela. We can’t play by imaginary rules anymore.”

“Brandon could make Helga invincible.”

“You don’t think the Ionans would notice that one of their lowest ranking warriors suddenly became the best swordswoman in the clan?” Justina raised an eyebrow. “If the point of Brandon’s absence was to remove the idea of outside influence, then I hardly see how that’ll work. My point is that we don’t need to remove that perception! Have Brandon come in here and shoot a flock of seagulls out of his ass or something! Right now his absence is working against him!”

“You know there’s another reason he doesn’t want to come here,” I said, giving Justina a furtive look.

“Bianca,” Justina sighed.

“The woman gave Brandon her daughter’s virginity. He impregnated the whole Ofanian Guard. They’re practically his family now.” I ruffled my feathers. “Brandon is… well, he’s really loyal.”

“To his dick,” Justina grumbled and selected a new toy to play with.

BRANDON

I sat in a chair made of lilac flowers and watched a six-legged bear with the lower body of a mantis fight a snake with the underbelly of a centipede. The two horrific amalgamations of animals warped and transformed as the battle intensified. The bear-mantis became a dragon-tiger-wasp, and the centipede-snake became a spider-crab-jaguar. They collided in a ghastly display of fangs, teeth, mandible, and claws, then retreated once more. The dragon-tiger-wasp became simply a giant wasp with an exaggerated stinger, and the spider-crab-jaguar committed wholly to its arachnid body. The massive arthropods engaged in combat of flailing limbs and stinging underbellies. The spider managed to get its belly lower, and it shot upward and upside down to drive its point into the wasp’s abdomen. The stinger bounced harmlessly off the insect carapace, and the wasp used the moment to take advantage. Clamping its horrific mandibles around the spider’s head, it slowly began to squeeze. The spider trashed in agony, whipping this way and that, but the wasp wouldn’t be thrown. It wrapped its legs around the struggling arachnid and turned it over onto its back. The spider thrashed for a few more useless seconds, then raised its forelegs in surrender.
A second later, Bianca was laughing as she released her daughter from the chokehold, the pair of them now back in their valkyrie forms.

“You tried to stab me!” Bianca exclaimed.

“We have unbreakable skin,” Arya grumbled.

“Something tells me you forgot that in the heat of battle,” Bianca tittered, and hoisted her daughter to her feet. “You went for a killing blow against your own mother. Should I be proud, I wonder?”

“Maybe I’m just so used to sticking something into you,” Arya sneered.

Bianca wrinkled her nose. “Just remember that I once pushed your entire body out of me; the little bit you put back is but a pittance. Now,” she grabbed Arya by the hair, and grinned wickedly down at her, “we dueled, and you lost. You owe me what we agreed upon, so do your stretches, get your lotion, and wait for me in the tree with your wrists roped to your ankles. Mommy will come visit you when your timeout is over.”

Arya tittered musically and flapped toward the tree. Bianca watched her go, then turned to me.

“Was the demonstration to your satisfaction, Your Holiness?”

“It was utterly petrifying, so yes.”

“Our enemies don’t stand a chance,” Bianca grinned wolfishly. “We will crush the hordes of the Heat Bringer like ants! They will not make it a step past Droktin’s Pass!”

I just smiled back and hoped my face didn’t belie my terror. I had hoped that Julia would just meander in the desert for a while and then… I don’t know… go away. Of course, even when she was uncorrupted, Julia had never been one to procrastinate, which made her the polar opposite of me. While the Heat Bringer amassed a horde larger than any had seen in thousands of years, I sat in Ofan, and vainly hoped some miracle would save us all. It kept me up at night realizing that to most people, I was that fucking miracle.

News of Julia’s return had finally gotten east of the Gratoran Wall, and all the rulers of Balamora united under one flag to combat the coming menace. Just kidding. They all decided that the best course of action against this existential threat was to collectively shit their pants. The king of Grundinar ordered the invasion of what was left of Drastinar, the queen of Justinar then sacked Grundinar, the king of Brondinar evacuated his entire kingdom into the eastern mountains, and the king of Ruminar formerly declared himself to be a devout servant of the Heat Bringer and decided to commit genocide upon anyone who didn’t follow the Maternal Path. The dwarven princedoms all decided that burrowing into their caves was the best course of action, the now nomadic nymphs disappeared into the northern wilderness, the centaur enclaves secluded themselves into the eastern mountains, and the elf empire completely shut down.

It was extremely obvious to me that I was supposed to reveal myself, unite the world under my banner of hope, and charge into the fray, but finding the deepest darkest hole in the ground to scuttle into was sounding more and more appealing. Angela insisted that our greatest weapon against Julia was that everyone thought I was dead. Cool, well that could also be my greatest defense. If it weren’t for my sister, I probably would’ve been on the other side of the world by now, but for some damnable reason, the idea of seeing the disappointment in her eyes was worse than seeing the black evil in Julia’s. And so, I was stuck in limbo, pissing away the last few days I had alive observing pointless training exercises and trying not to look like I was perpetually about to shit myself.

“Yeah,” I smiled at Bianca, “we’re gonna… we’re gonna fuck ’em up. Yeah.”

Bianca, bless her sweet heart, just beamed radiantly, bowed, and flew after her daughter.

God, I wish I had that kind childlike confidence, I thought.

You really think she’s that naïve, Brandon? Angela teased in my mind. She’s can tell you’re one scare away from shitting yourself into the stratosphere, and she’s trying to keep you together.

I narrowed my eyes at the falcon who had fluttered into the garden. I didn’t send you that thought. Did you learn to read minds?

No, I’ve just spent so much of my life looking at that stupid face of yours that I can read it like a book. Angela dropped from the tree, and transformed into her human self. “You were supposed to go to the mountain peak two hours ago. You’re avoiding me, you asshole.”

“I am.”

Angela ran her hands through her strawberry hair and sighed. “Brandon, we can’t do nothing anymore.”

“If I intervene, then they’ll choose Julia.”

“I can count on one finger the number of women who are willing to challenge Nona for your sake. Do you know why? Because these women train for generations to serve gods that come once every few thousand years. One god is marshalling the world’s largest army to go on a holy crusade, and the other is sitting on his ass waiting for someone to suck his dick. Not really a choice at all, is it?”

“Julia’s corrupted!”

“They don’t care, Brandon! The shock-value of that revelation wore off weeks ago! You had a chance, you had Nona right here in Ofan, in the heart of her enemy’s kingdom, ready to serve you because she was so terrified of a god Freydis had sworn her to, that she was willing to break Freydis’s wishes if you would just prove that you could make a hard choice! They don’t respect you for respecting them; they think you’re weak because of it!”

I ground my teeth. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“Goddamn it,” Angela rubbed her temples. “Not everyone shares your weird hermit philosophy. Some people—most people—don’t want to just be left alone. They want to be wanted.” She looked up at the baobab tree, and shook her head. “Bianca is doing everything she can to persuade you not to go to Iona. She wants to be wanted by you so badly that she’ll damn the whole world. You’re her very purpose in life. I know you know this, Brandon. I know you encourage it because you don’t want to hurt her.”

I dropped my head, and ran my fingers against my brow. “You’re right. I’m weak.”

“You’re just too compassionate,” Angela said, and planted a kiss on my head. “I’ve read enough history now to know it’s the curse of Life Givers.”

“I can’t just betray her, Angela. She saved me. She saved us.”

“Well then,” Angela said, and raised my face to hers, “we’re going to have to get a little mean.”

ASTRID

The Sword of Iona was the most hallowed weapon on Balamora. It had survived for longer than every recorded nation, and had been passed down from High Guard to High Guard for hundreds of generations. I was the first non-High Guard to ever wield it, and fittingly, I was also the first Ionan to ever lose it to another clan. That would’ve once been a disgrace worthy of suicide, but now the sword that was once so heavy on my mind held very little weight in my heart. Now there was another sword on my back. It was an unfamiliar sword, and yet it felt like an extension of my arm when I wielded it. It was heavy—I liked a heavy blade—but it wasn’t overbearing. The balance was so precise that I could’ve lain the crossguard across a pin, the edge was so keen that it could cut through rock like butter, and the blade was so strong that I could pry up boulders and never bend it. It was precious to me, but even this priceless weapon meant nothing to me compared to the other thing I held.

I cradled Willowbud in my arms, not daring to breathe. She snored her divine snores, loud and grating enough to ring in my head, but each one trailing with the cutest little whimper. Her lips bubbled spit against my nipple, and she sometimes gnawed on it compulsively in her slumber. Now that my wings were jet black, I could block out the sun completely. The darkness in my cocoon of feathers was total, but I could see clearly in it with my nocturnal eyes. I didn’t know how to classify myself. I was most certainly a valkyrie, yes, and anyone who tried to say otherwise would meet the hard end of my fist. I walked like a valkyrie, I moved like a valkyrie, and I flew like a valkyrie, but I could not deny the other thing that I was; the huntress. While I could still stand proudly in the sun with my wings unfurled and the wind whipping through my (now black) hair, there was something about the darkness that awoke me. While I could still dance with a blade in hand before the terrified eyes of my enemies, there was something extremely appealing about stalking my unknowing prey from above, and silently dispatching them without them ever being aware of it. I did not think that I, Astrid Skyborne, had changed; I thought there was just… something extra added to me.

I frowned in the darkness. Well, that was wholly untrue. I, Astrid Skyborne, had changed tremendously, but my genesis hadn’t come from Gloria’s bite; it had come from Night Eyes’ torment. I had become Angel, the winged gladiator, the hedonist and whore of whores. I had killed my mother on the sands of the arena just for my glory. But no, I wasn’t her either. I had not stood in triumph over my mother’s corpse but had stood in the horror of what I’d done. I had changed, and I could not say who I was anymore. Neither Angel, nor Astrid, nor something in between. I was someone else, someone… older. Perhaps I was lost, I did not know, nor did I care. Throughout the most tumultuous time in my life, there had been one constant. Willowbud. Maybe I couldn’t see her when Corruption blackened her lenses, but she had been there. She had been there the whole time, watching me, waiting for me, and in the end, she felt for me the way I had felt for her ever since that beautiful day on the mountaintops.

I dared to breathe, and my patterns thrummed alight. Symbols and shapes of mountains, canyons, and gorges decorated every inch of my flesh, marking me with her love. With her love! The very idea was so euphoric that it brought tears to my eyes, and I cradled my god deeper into my bosom, delighting in the way her teeth gnawed so roughly against my nipple. She had come back to me. She had saved me. There was nothing in the world more precious to me than this tiny little hermaphrodite with the white hair and the forest-green eyes. Now I knew there was nothing more precious to her than me. I wept with silent joy in my cocoon of feathers and cursed myself when an errant tear dropped from my chin and splashed Willowbud on the face.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she gazed at me. I beamed down at her, wishing I wasn’t crying like some madwoman. She grinned back up at me, my nipple still in her mouth.

“Is it still daytime?” she whispered.

“It’s almost evening,” I whispered back.

“Then it’s still naptime,” she grinned, wrapped her lips about my areola, and began to suckle. Her eyes slowly closed, and little snoozes of contentment emanated from her mouth. I cradled her closer, and I savored the precious moment for a little longer.

WILLOWBUD

Gloria dropped a deer carcass between herself and Astrid, and the two of them went to town. The first night we were together, Astrid had been very bashful with her feeding. She tried to scuttle off with some food in her arms so that I wouldn’t see her eat. I told her that I thought her animalistic feeding was a total turn-on. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve let her be a shy eater. The Huntress had not completely left my beloved valkyrie, and now she was encouraged to make a show of cracking open bones, sucking the marrow out, ripping great chunks of muscle from ribs so that the sinew and tendons strung and snapped. When she was thirsty, she’d imbed her fangs into the meat, and emit the most disgusting sucking sound as the meat dried to white jerky between her lips. Gloria, for her part, was a much more refined eater. The pretentious old bitch had actually brought a silverware set with her on her vertical trek a mile up the side of the Gratoran Wall. Now she quartered her meat into little cubes before eating it in four precise mouthfuls, watching Astrid’s boorish consumption with obvious distaste.

“There’s a jar of tofu in the sack,” Gloria said, sliding her bag over to me. “I got cabbage and turnips too. Those go together, right?”

“Sure,” I said. I sifted through the sack and pulled out a newspaper. It was the Grundin Journal, and the entire front page was an artist’s rendition of the black-eyed Julia leading her army through the desert. Apparently, the self-proclaimed ‘Flame of God’ wasn’t too stuck-up to do an interview. I opened the paper and scanned the article, my mouth moving with the words.

Her Holiness, Julia Gendian lives a modest life. Every morning, she wakes up, prays to the Holy Mother, and then washes herself with a small basin of water barely large enough to fill a pot of coffee. As she does this, she explains to me that she can clean herself perfectly by just lighting herself on fire, but she prefers to wash herself with water so that she must suffer the same chafing and dry skin as her followers. The walk, she says, is one of atonement, and one cannot find atonement without suffering.

Suffering seems to be a common theme in Julia’s exodus. No one exhibits this more than High Guard Jade Tao, who wears the Sword of Iona like a trophy, but whose scars are beyond the counting. It seems that women especially are held to a brutal standard, and any who stray even a little from Julia’s interpretation of the Maternal Path are punished severely. Director Tera Autumnsong, the formerly-infamous ‘Death Kiss’ and eminent of the late Brandon Sorensen, is tasked with punishing women who step out of bounds sexually. When I ask the director exactly why she chooses some of her perverse and heinous punishments, she simply taps her head and declares that if she wanted to do it, then it was God’s will. She then enslaves and rapes me for several hours before telling me to leave. It is very hard for me to do so. Read my subsequent article, “A Night with Death Kiss” for the details.

While walking beside Julia, I can’t help but look back with pity upon some of the poor crucified orcs slowly roasting alive from the fire beneath their feet. Julia explains to me that their pain is their salvation and that they will be delivered to heaven in a golden chariot when they pass from this world. I ask her if she has ever doubted her interpretation of the holy word. She is surprisingly forthright with her confession that she sometimes is confused by God’s message, but she vehemently asserts that she never doubts it. “I am not my daughter,” Julia explains. “I am not blessed with the vision of god herself.”

When I ask about the whereabouts of Diamond Glendian, the ‘Water Dancer’ and the newest addition of the Creators, Julia smiles sadly at me. “Where ever the Holy Mother has taken her, that is where she needs to go. She will come back to me only when the time is right.”

When I ask what Diamond’s religious beliefs are, Julia refuses to comment.

After my third day on Julia’s trek to Droktinar, a fight breaks out amongst some of the citizens. The fight turns into an all-out brawl and soon escalates to lethal engagement. Julia has to break up the fight herself. She burns the murderers alive and scorches the palms of those who took up arms against their brothers. She then makes the entire congregation sit and pray for the burning men even as they scream. I watch as the endless tide of orcs kneels row by row all along the great caravan. For as far as the eye can see, the multitude stops, and kneels. Those that are miles away cannot know why they are bidden to kneel and pray, but they do so without hesitation. Such is the power Julia wields amongst her adopted people. Whether that power is born of fear, respect, or simply deific awe, I cannot say, but there is no doubt that she has it.

After the prayer is over, Julia reestablishes herself at the front of the caravan, and continues her walk. She is visibly aroused. She does not shy away from the fact that she is sexually excited by the mortal agony of those she sends to heaven—she is proud of it.

“At first, I was quite vexed that the Holy Mother had laid perverse temptations in my mind,” Julia explains. “It wasn’t until Sister Tera came to me and unwound the complexity of my desires, that I saw clearly why it was the Holy Mother stirred my arousal when I enact her justice. If I am to purify sinners with hellfire, then I must have a little of the devil in me.” Sister Julia smiles coyly at me. “The penis is a man’s organ, and men are of the devil’s gender. I will not pretend to be a perfect soul, but I know that an imperfect tool can still be useful. The Holy Mother has made me her judge, her deliverer, and her high-priestess, but I am too impure to carry her gift. Only Sister Diamond carries God’s true vision.” Julia looks upon my body with obvious interest, and says, “sodomy is not a mortal sin, you know.”

As of the sending of this article to my publisher, the great exodus is but ten days away from Droktinar. When I ask Julia what she will do when she arrives there, she states, “Sister Diamond will come—I know she will. I will light the furnace, and she will water the desert, and God will provide the rest. The holy kingdom will be born, and all will bask in its radiance.”

When I ask her if she plans to stay in Droktinar for long, she simply smiles, and looks out at the distant shape of Droktin’s Pass.

I put the newspaper down and clasped my hands together to hide that they were shaking.

“I can smell fear, you know,” Gloria said, eyeing me.

I farted. “Does it smell like beans?”

Astrid giggled, and Gloria scowled.

“We’re all scared; only an idiot wouldn’t be,” Gloria muttered. She took the newspaper from me and scanned it. “God, the world’s falling apart. The human kingdoms are cannibalizing each other, the dwarves have dug underground, the nymphs ran to the mountains, and the elves locked down. It’s nothing like the last time.”

“You were there, weren’t you?” Astrid asked Gloria. “When Droktin opened his pass?”

Gloria nodded. “It was Arbitrus who started it. He was a madman, make no mistake about it. He should’ve known what his horror would reap.” She plucked a rib and nibbled on it. “I was there when the mountains split, and the horde poured through. Droktin’s Bound One had died, and the action killed him, but Halok—I mean Wrath—had cursed the horde with his mania. I fought them with the others. Men, elves, dwarves, centaurs, and nymphs; all of Balamora against the vengeful remains of the orc empire.” Her eyes became distant. “Have you ever walked Droktin’s pass from end to end?”

“I rode through it in a cart once.”

“I flew… once,” Astrid muttered, apparently still embarrassed about being captured.

“It takes nearly a day to get through it without breaking stride,” Gloria said, cracking the rib between her fingers. “After the first day, it was so choked with bodies that the sides were piled five stories high from end to end. The ground ran with blood like a river, and the flies swarmed like black clouds over it all. They were so thick that they blotted out the sun. It didn’t matter what time of day it was when we fought between the mountains, it was always under a humid golden twilight that filtered through the buzzing clouds, all the smells marinating in that hot chasm. You’d crawl on top of a mountain of the dead all by yourself, not knowing where your friends just went, then a brute with red manic eyes would jump out of the corpses, rotten limbs and guts all spraying out of the steaming hole he’d made, and he’d charge you down even if you’d cut his legs off. On the third day, the bodies were so high that they overfilled the end, and created a ramp into the pass. I remember the faces of the fresh men and women that came up from the rear. They heard stories, but you can’t believe it until you see it. There wasn’t even really any army anymore; just a bunch of broken men and women with officer symbols on their helmets sending Balamora’s youth into that boiling grinder. For weeks, we just kept adding to the pile until the pile was done.”
She let the rib drop from between her fingers. “We never knew when the war was over. The days blurred together until we came out of the other side. There was no one there waiting for us. Just a few dozen tents and some spoiled food carts. I remember the way the wind whistled over the desert, playing with the golden dunes, washing away any footprints that might’ve been there. It was like we’d been fighting a ghost.”

A tear ran down her cheek, and she wiped it neatly away. “There was one man we found. An old orc, chopped to pieces, guts hanging out. His eyes were so red it looked like they were bleeding. He was the carrier of Wrath. I had my doubts, you know, about what Sentients were. I couldn’t believe that Halok could become… that. But that old orc, whoever he was, he just kept trying to stab me with the sharp end of his snapped-off arm. When I looked into his eyes, I knew that there was nothing behind them that belied humanity. There was just madness.” She looked up at me, “This time, no one is going to hold the line—not against her. When the orcs sweep through that pass, they will wash over Balamora like a surging tide, and there will be nothing left standing. Their hatred runs deep, and their memory is long, but they won’t fight for restitution or reclamation. The legacy of Furok, Droktin, Gratora, and Hektin is gone, and these children they’ve left behind only know savagery. They will burn it all down unless someone stops them.”

“I know what I have to do, Gloria. You don’t have to keep trying to convince me.”

“I’m trying to remind you. Convincing takes one word; conviction takes a lot more than that.”

“If she said she’d do it, then she’ll do it,” Astrid said firmly and wrapped her arm around my shoulders.

Gloria smiled thinly at Astrid. “As long as you will, she will.”

TERA

It was dusk when the procession halted. Julia lit a great black fire in the bowl of a large dune, painting the world in violent hues of white and black. She summoned the white-robed Breytans, and they dutifully flocked to her side and watched me with unmasked contempt in their eyes. That contempt turned to horror when I snapped my fingers, and the winged women were hauled out from the audience. They dragged their iron balls behind them, leaving deep grooves in the sand. They had been stripped of their red robes, and only wore the metal collars, cuffs, and shackles that bound them to their burdens.

Valkyries were strong. The iron balls had to weigh in excess of a thousand pounds to burden them sufficiently, but still, they dragged the great black weights toward their daughters. Only it wasn’t to their daughters they went, for I had tormented these women for hours in advance of this ceremony, and what drove them to drag their great burdens was the row of naked stud-bull orcs that had stepped between them and their daughters. When they could no longer walk, they crawled in the sand, and their daughters gaped as they watched their uncaring mothers thrash like desperate animals to get to the organs they so craved. When they finally reached their men, they had devolved into such states of depravity that they took the organs deep into their gullets without even pausing to catch their spent breath.

Never had I seen my venom work to such great effect. The impure valkyries worshipped the men they pleasured, some of them weeping with joy as they licked the shafts, cradled the balls, and consumed with relish. With a snap of my whip, the rows of men proffered the keys I had given them and detached the iron balls from the women’s chains. Still wearing the iron clasps of their slavery, the mature winged warriors of Breyta willingly got to their feet and exchanged lips and tongues with their partners. The men grasped them by the waist per my instruction and turned the valkyries around.

Before the bulging eyes of their daughters, every impure woman willingly spread her legs, grasped her cheeks, and peeled open her crack for the throbbing organs beneath them. The looks of utter shame that the women wore were portraits of art to me, and the comingled expression of whorish surrender that crossed their faces when they were anally penetrated was even greater. One by one, the women opened their sinful apertures around the immense rods that threatened to impale them, and one by one, they willingly slid the men deeper, deeper, deeper. I could see the pain contort their faces, but the pleasure was too great, and my venom confused pain and pleasure to the point that they sought both. They took them all the way, crying out and singing to the sky, the monochrome flame painting their faces in stark contrasts, showing the euphoric lines about their smiling lips and bulging eyes, showing the light of pride die in their succumbing gazes.

It was only then that I dared to turn around and grin at Aiko. Tears were running down her face, but she kept her lip stiff as she watched her mother being ravaged. Aiko finally turned those beautiful almond-shaped eyes on me, and I saw what I was looking for. Oh, such hatred. The expression made me so lusty that I nearly joined the women before me, but I stayed my compunctions. I had to show Julia that this wasn’t about me, even though it most certainly was. All of this rape and torture had to at least appear to be ceremonial, and I had to seem like just another servant of the Holy Mother performing her stoic duties. But Julia could not hide the erection that quivered between her legs, nor could she conceal the way her eyes darted to me from across the fire. I just smiled at her. She would come crawling to me tonight, and in a worse condition than these whores had been dragging their iron balls. I turned my gaze from her to the woman standing at her side. Jade Tao watched me with her dead implacable eyes. I shivered and looked away.

JULIA

I was quivering from head to toe when I walked up the steps to Sister Tera’s wagon, Jade following dutifully behind me. The orcs guarding Sister Tera’s door bowed their heads and blessed me, but I hardly noticed them. The steps creaked beneath my feet as I ascended, and I raised my shaking fist to knock on the door. I waited. She always made me wait. For tortuous seconds, I simply stared fixedly upon the cracked wood of the door. Though I was cloaked and hooded, I could still feel all the eyes around me as though they could see through the fabric. I felt their questioning looks; I heard their accusing thoughts. Sinner. Hypocrite. False prophet. I needed to be cleansed! Oh god, why did she make me wait so long?!

The door creaked open. I was greeted by a pair of smirking black eyes, the violet irises laughing at me, the heavy lids beckoning me in. The room was smoky and rank with indulgent sin. It was the kind of room I would’ve sprinted right out of when I was a nun. Pillows lined the walls, cushions covered the floor, satin sheets and velvet drapes adorned every hard surface. An opium pipe burned in the corner, incense burned in the window, and a cigarette burned from a long holder plucked delicately between her lush purple lips. There were two pairs of shackles on the floor. They were hard and rusted, the metal crude and jaggedly cut, the chains thick and coarse. My knees trembled at the sight.

“Wrists and ankles together, Sister,” Sister Tera said softly, thick smoke cascading from her lips. She was wearing one of the white pure priestess’s robes, but she’d mangled it for her blasphemous tastes. The white cloth was bound in black leather straps, and she’d cut the fabric for her breasts, midriff, and buttocks to protrude, making a mockery of my piety. She’d donned a nun’s headpiece but had poked holes in it so that her horns showed from the top. Perhaps it would’ve driven me to rage outside of this wagon, but within this wagon, there was only one voice for the Holy Mother. In this wagon, the queen of sin was the priestess, and I was the unwashed whore needing to be cleansed from the inside out. I dropped to my hands and knees, and shackled the abrasive cuffs to my wrists and ankles, binding me leg-to-arm so that when I knelt, my hands were brought behind me.

“Bless me, Sister, for I have sinned upon this day,” I whispered up to her.

Sister Tera selected a dagger from her belt and eyed the keen blade. “Confess your sins, Sister,” she said softly. So softly.

“I lusted for a man,” I whispered.

“You wanted to sodomize him?”

“At first, yes,” I muttered, “but the more I watched him, the more I wanted him… as a woman.”

Sister Tera crouched before me and touched the point of the blade to my throat. “Tell me very specifically what you wanted him to do to you,” she said, her voice sonorous and calming, so disarming that it made my shoulders ease back, presenting my chest.

“I wanted him in my anus,” I shuddered when the point of her blade dragged gingerly down my collar. “It is disgusting to garner pleasure from such a place, but it is my weakness. But I am weak in other places, Sister. In my fantasy, he brutalized me from behind, ramming his phallus into my rectum until I was blubbering like some animal, but then he became tender with me. He picked me up off the ground, laid me on a bed, extracted himself from my filth, and entered my sanctity.”

“That almost sounds romantic, Sister Julia,” Sister Tera mused, letting the point of the knife slide easily down my left breast.

“It was,” I gasped. “What does it mean? What wisdom does the Holy Mother give you?”

Sister Tera drew the knife to my areola and stayed there. She slowly circled my taut moist nipple, and gradually applied more pressure. So expert she was, that I did not even feel the slice into my flesh. I only felt the wonderful intensity of the point until it cut seamlessly into my dark areola, and a droplet of blood rolled down the bottom of my milky breast and splashed between my thighs.

“You miss Diamond,” Sister Tera finally said, but I was so drunk with the sharp focus of her pain that I hardly understood the words she said.

“Yes,” I muttered when my thoughts aligned themselves.

Sister Tera slid her knife along the black patterns that swirled my nipple, drawing the point precisely so that it cut only through the surface. She was a surgeon with that knife, an artist with it, and the entire focus of my being followed the edge of her blade as it delivered such an exquisite form of pain. It wasn’t even really pain at all; it was… a heightening of sensation. I wasn’t even breathing. I was just staring into her eyes as she watched her artistry with fascination, painting me with my own blood, opening me with barely a graze. My organ was engorged and throbbing; my womanhood was pulsing and salivating; my anus was winking and flexing. My sexuality was laid bare before her, and when her cruel black eyes finally connected with mine, I saw my enraptured and supplicant expression reflected in her lenses.

“You have more sins to confess to me, Sister,” she sang with her honeyed voice.

“I have none,” I murmured back, possessed of her.

“Oh, but you do,” she hissed, and flicked the knife away from my flesh, “and I will peel them out of you.” She slid the knife back into its scabbard and proffered an iron collar with her hooked hand. A heavy chain trailed from it, and she made a show of wrapping her hand in the links and pulling it taut before my eyes. “Woof-woof, doggy,” she grinned. I bowed my head and sobbed.

She clasped the collar around my neck, so large was it that it touched me from collar to chin, holding my posture rigid. She stroked my hair like the good doggy I was, and I whimpered like a guilty pup and nuzzled my face into her crotch. My teeth gently bit into the damp fabric of her panties, and I slid them aside, dipped my nose and mouth into the heavenly miasma between her legs, and wetted my snout with her nectar. She purred as my tongue dutifully lathered her folds, and she eased back on the cushions to let me please her. She wrapped more and more links around her hooked hand and she drew me ever deeper between her thighs, pressing my muzzle into her slit until the lips gripped me. With each of my dutiful licks, she stroked me along the spine, raking her sharp fingernails so pleasantly, so possessively, down my backside. I had to inhale the pungent aroma of her femininity just to breathe, and it saturated my sinuses with its intoxicating odor, driving me mad, making me consume with boorish relish until I was lapping her pussy like a dog, slobbering through her folds, consuming her slit, smooshing my face deeper to deliver my lips and tongue until she went rigid with a gasp. Her orgasms were so subtle. I could feel the immense pleasure teeming through her, but she always maintained control over herself, and so she maintained power over me.

“Dinner time’s over, little doggy,” she said huskily and pulled me up sharply by the leash, making me squeak out a choke. “Confess to me, you mangy mutt.”

“I like watching women get raped,” I choked out, my eyes bulging.

“I know; that’s why I put on such a show for you tonight,” she tenderly stroked my face. “You don’t care if it’s divine justice, do you? You just want to see whores get put in their place.”

“Yes!”

“No,” she giggled teasingly, “no, no, no, because if that were true, then why would you be so aroused to see your disciplined, loyal, prim, and proper samurai women get fucked into slovenly sluts, hmm?” She asked with a raised brow. “Your encampment is filled with whores, Sister Julia. Even with the crescent burned between their brows, they sell their bodies in thousands of wagons every day, yet so few of them are punished. Why is it that you hurt those that are the most loyal to you?”

“Because my priestesses should be held to a higher standard!” I croaked, savoring every second of my strangulation.

Sister Tera touched her brow to mine, and stared deeply into my eyes, her violet irises swimming with amusement. “You just want to watch someone’s innocence get raped away. I get it. I love it too. There’s nothing quite like watching one of god’s pure children get fucked until their mind breaks!”

She tossed me backward, and with my wrists bound to my ankles, there was nothing to stop my momentum from carrying me end-over-end. She stopped my roll with a jerk on my chain, holding me so that my buttocks were pointed to the ceiling, and my rigid cock was pointing accusingly down at my upturned face. Sister Tera examined my predicament and grinned evilly. She tightened the leash, grabbed my cock, and tightly wrapped the heavy chains around my manhood, circling to the base until all but the purple bulging head was visible. My back already ached from the position I was forced into, but I dared not stretch it now. I could only whimper up at Sister Tera with my eyes full of surrender, and plead for mercy I knew would never come.

“Oh, how I love it when a guilty dog begs,” she chuckled evilly and slid her hands along the domes of my spread buttocks. She pressed her thumb and hook along either side of my favorite hole, and stretched my rim open. Her long reptilian tongue came out, and circumnavigated my coiled center, loosening the taut resistance, opening me, making me whine and whimper with need until my pelvic floor was popping with my sporadic clenches. “You are so, so desperate…” she crooned around a wicked smile, “…oh, so, so, needy, aren’t you, doggy? Will you woof for me, little puppy? Woof-woof?”

“Woof-woof!” I wailed, and Sister Tera cackled with delight, pinched her fingers together, and with naught but the spit she’d lathered me with, she pushed into my anus. I cried out in abject delight. Deeper and deeper she went, her fist disappearing inside of me, stretching my hole with her knuckles, popping each one in until I was clinging around the torturous girth of her hand. She held me there, keeping me stuck between heaven and hell, making me weep for pain and pleasure until she finally pushed through. Her hand squished through my clenching innards, her knuckles scored along my thin rectal flesh, and her fingertips opened my sphincters until they found the filthy heat deep within me. She twisted and turned inside of me, her malevolent gaze cast down upon me, and she made my hips move with the motions of her hands, sending me screaming in ecstasy as she passed along my tortured prostate. I was coming. The pleasure lanced through my loins, shot up my shaft, and slowly dribbled to a viscous halt within my constricted pipe. Sperm bubbled from the swollen tip of my cock, and a single droplet splashed onto my lips.

“Please, Sister!” I whined desperately.

“Please… what?” she giggled. “Please let you come all over your own face?”

“Yes!”

“I want to hear you say it, Sister!”

“Please let me come all over my face!” I bawled.

“Mmmm…” Sister Tera pondered me for a moment, then said, “…no,” with a giggle, and pushed my crotch forward. My back screamed in pain, my mouth opened to sound it, and the head of my own cock pressed against my lips. The muscles on my back strained, my hamstrings tightened, my eyes shot to hers, wide and trembling, begging her not to make me do what she was going to. She savored my pathetic expression, unwound the chain that constricted my shaft, and mercilessly pressed me forward. My objections were muffled as my own cock opened my lips, drooling my own filthy cream onto my tongue, touching the insides of my cheeks, stretching my mouth open to wrap around its girth. Sister Tera eased me ever forward, heedless of my protests, grinning sardonically with her malevolent eyes dancing in the candlelight.

My breasts squished against my chin, my belly folded in rolls of fat, and my penis reamed the opening of my throat. From such an angle, I could see Sister Tera’s wrist being consumed by my taut white anus, stretching so terribly to accommodate her. The horrific sight aroused me, the sensations aroused me further, and the very idea of my terrible debasement aroused me even more. Forced to suck my own cock, twisted in a pretzel of bondage so that my grotesque shitting hole was presented to me as it birthed and enveloped Sister Tera’s thrusting fist. It was what I deserved. After a day of piety, I had earned this abhorrent sin, this indulgence in my terrible truth.

“God, this is beautiful,” Sister Tera whispered heatedly as she pressed hard against my prostate, expelling thick gouts of precum onto my tongue that dribbled down my opened throat. She ran the dull petal point of her hooked hand over my taped nethers, sliding it back and forth through the damp membrane until the tape was so wet that all my vaginal features were easily discerned. I could do nothing to stop her, and I didn’t want to anyway. With a hedonistic moan, I rolled my eyes back and surrendered everything. I savored the way my cock tasted, and I relished the way my mouth felt. I sucked my own cock as Sister Tera ravaged me from within; pressing and prodding, rubbing and kneading, squishing my anal clit until ecstasy was lancing up my shaft, and bursting from my tip.

“Don’t you dare swallow!” Sister Tera snarled, milking my convulsing prostate fiercely, hovering over me with her teeth bared as I sobbed, mewled, and sputtered. Tears of shame ran down my cheeks, and the shame only elevated my euphoria, turning my brutalized nethers into a gelatinous sponge for her fingers to squish into. I filled my mouth with my nectar, and I hated and loved the taste of it. When Sister Tera was satisfied with my humiliation, she lowered my pelvis, hooked her metal hook through my leash, and brought me to her lips. She fed from me with gluttonous avarice, and I kissed her with compassion, giving her everything, enjoying every flick of her tongue and press of her moist lips until my mouth was empty.

“Have I been cleansed, Sister?” I whispered upon her lips when we parted.
She smiled cruelly at me. “Not even close.”

She was very cruel to me that night. So horribly, wonderfully, cruel. Once my anus was sufficiently stretched by her fist, she invited a dozen of her slaves in to punish me. Bound as I was, and helpless to her sensual mastery over me, I could only pray that the blindfolds they wore obscured their vision well enough. I was put into stockades, and fucked from behind, one man after the other pounding into my rectum, bringing me to violent orgasm as they hollowed my tender innards and deposited their seed into me. Only the first man used lubrication. All others afterward used the hot milk of the man previous to grease his violation of me, pounding the slick nectar into a foamy froth that dribbled down my taint. There, the piece of tape with the crescent symbol drawn over it barely held my chastity, and Sister Tera tempted me tortuously with her skilled fingers caressing the sopping fabric.

After the fifth man was done with me, my legs were quivering so terribly that I couldn’t stand upright. After the sixth man, my legs gave out. Sister Tera had to release me from the contraption, and shackle my wrists and ankles together again. In such a position, it was easy for her men to pass me around in a circle, bouncing me off their crotches as I screamed and sobbed, my cock spewing sperm into Sister Tera’s awaiting mouth as she relentlessly tortured my pussy. By the time they were done with me, my anus was prolapsed and would not close, and nectar leaked continuously down my trembling thighs. Sister Tera planted her face between my cheeks and drank from my reservoir.

“Shit it all out, you slut,” she whispered so tenderly, “give me what I’m owed.”

Though the orcs that surrounded me were blindfolded, they could still hear the wretched sounds of my ass sputtering, squelching, and farting to expel the thick volumes of cum into my priestess’s mouth. It aroused me terribly to be so debased. I reached back and spread myself to give her easier access, and though I wailed and sobbed at my humiliation, I enjoyed every second of it until the last gout was shot from my rectum. Sister Tera never stopped caressing my pussy, and the tape had become so damp that it was suffused to my flesh.

“Now, Sister, you are clean,” Sister Tera whispered, in my ear, and kissed me, making me taste the decadence of my own filth. Her disciples left the wagon, and I lay exhausted in the damp cushions, now rank with my lust. Sister Tera gently undid the shackles of my wrists and ankles and guided me with hook and hand to grasp her about the waist. She took me into her sucking purple anus, and rode me into the late hours of the night, sating herself with the last droplets of my sin until she collapsed beside me, and bid me to leave.

I had to crawl out of the wagon, for my legs had no strength in them. My cloak dragged on the sand, and I eventually discarded it completely. There was nothing to be ashamed of anymore; my sin was gone. I crawled to the front of the caravan, where Jade was waiting for me. She bowed her head as I crawled past her, and I blessed her. The sand was cool upon my flesh when I snuggled into it, and I sighed contentedly to feel its abrasion against my soft skin. I lit a protective orb around me, extending the fire so that it did not melt the bed of sand I made, and I let the tides of exhaustion take me to slumber.

Late in the night, I awoke. At first, I thought I had become a victim of incontinence, but the water that pooled around me was not warm. It was cool and salty, yet the sea was hundreds of miles away. I smiled and looked up. Through my dome of flame, a pair of black and green eyes was staring at me from above a childish grin. I knew she would return. She stepped through the fire, and without a word, she dropped to the sand beside me and snuggled into my embrace.

Interlude One: Wrath

CORRUPTION

I pushed my hand into the astral soil and fished around in the dirt. My hand came upon a stone, and I pulled it out. The rock was pleasurably coarse against my palm, and I enjoyed the rough grain of it as I took its measure. This was not a real rock, and yet, it was more than just the idea of one; it was the understanding of a rock. Wisdom would’ve had to create a thousand trees of knowledge just to capture the surface complexity of this thing, but I knew it intimately for all its wonderful simplicity. Petranumen had been an Earth Former—the very first, actually—and she was the sentient embodiment of rock. She understood it because she was it. I turned the rock over in my hand, and by my will, it took the shape of a lamb, then a panther, then a whale. I formed a rake from it, then a shovel, returned it to the form it was most comfortable in, and set it in my carrying pouch. I ran my hand through my black hair and looked out at the vast calm waters. The stone paths branched from the water to show me the scope of the work yet to be done, and the lone mountain pointed to the starlit sky above, seeming to signal the heavens to me.

“Wrath,” I muttered. The sky rotated upon the axis of the mountain peak until a deep red star settled above it. All the stone paths sank back into the water, but one remained. I took a steeling breath and reassured myself of my omnipotence and my purpose. I stepped into the water. Diamond appeared in her center. She was already crouched in a sprinter’s position. She shot from her stance like an arrow and made a beeline for the iron box. Xaya yawned from her perch on a cliffside, stretched like a basking lioness, then launched. She tackled Diamond in a cloud of dust, and Diamond’s shriek of frustration sounded from the underbrush.

“Get out of my head!” she screamed at me. “I hate you! I hate you—” and her voice was cut off.

“I love you,” I whispered back, and wiped a tear from my cheek. I turned back toward the reflecting pool and stepped through the threshold.

I passed other realms on my way to Wrath. Justice’s wall was built of limestone with trimmed hedges lining the balconies and alcoves. Confidence had built his walls with garish flowers that created daring works of art. Honor had built her wall with proud grey stone and had filled her ramparts with stoic oak trees that wound together in a knotwork of wood. Right next to Honor, was Wrath. It was the smallest realm I had seen thus far, but what it lacked in size, it made up for in sheer intimidation. The black iron walls stood a mile high, the towers barbed with jagged hooks that seemed to stab at the sky, the ramparts filed to points. Enormous ballistae lined the top of the wall, but from such a great distance, they could only be discerned by their black gleam in the astral sun. The shadow of the wall darkened me, and its blackness became complete behind the dim solar luminance. The gate was wrought iron and imposing, flanked by soldiers that stared down at me with enraged snarls. I touched the handle. A deep boom sounded in the distance. I closed my eyes, took a long deep breath, and I opened the gate.

Wrath’s world was one of contrast. The shadows didn’t form a gradient but were immediately black beyond the garish red luminance of the astral sun. The only color here was red, and everything else was a monochrome of that hue, moving from white to black. The landscape was of dramatic rolling hills, all of them festooned with black iron fortresses that seemed to be tossed haphazardly upon the earth, for they did not stand upright. Countless statues of warriors littered the hillsides, all of them engaged in a still and silent battle. I stepped inside.

My foot touched the soil, but it wasn’t soil at all. It was empty and void of nutrients, and it sank beneath my foot with a dry crack. No life flowed from the soles of my feet. No Corruption grew to uncage this mind. I felt a creeping horror move up my spine. Even in the most barren desert, one could find an abundance of life just beneath the sand. Not here. This place was dead. The sterile monuments of battle that decorated the hillsides were an homage to something their creator did not understand, for their faces were waxy and expressionless, contorted into mockeries of rage. It wasn’t just that this place was dead; this place had never been alive. This place did not know what life was. My hand shook against the gate, and I squeezed it as though to juice the terror through my sweat. I lifted my backfoot from the watery oasis outside and stepped wholly into the realm of Wrath.

The gate slammed shut. A drum sounded. The statues shifted at once and stared at me. The drum sounded again. Wrath stood before me. He was a hulking beast, his flesh black, his muscles bulging with too many bellies and veins to be anatomically correct. His teeth were filed to saber points, and his eyes glowed red and without irises above his leering grin.

“Hello, Holy Mother,” he said with a deep voice.

“Hello, Wrath,” I answered back.

He cocked his head, stretching the veins and tendons that seemed to connect his ears to his shoulders. “I always knew the day would come when my creator returned to me.”

“I am not your creator.”

He grinned wolfishly. “On the third day, The Holy Mother birthed Wrath. ‘You will be my forge,’ The Holy Mother said to him, ‘you will be the rage that sharpens man to my purpose. You will be the divider of the strong and the weak. You will be the wind of war.’ That is what it says in the book of books.”

“The woman who gave you that lie is dead.”

Wrath cocked his head to the other side. “I know all who step foot in my domain. Whatever you think you are matters naught. I know the truth in you.” He ran his eyes up my body and grinned. “Those who visit me are always tied to the plane below this one. It is their safeguard against the brutality that I deal with such relish, for their minds can sustain the punishment if their bodies are intact. But you, Holy Mother, are wholly of the mind.” He inhaled through his wide nostrils and blew out a gout of smoke. “What a day this is. Today, I kill God. Ah, but where are my manners? I have a guest, and I have not offered her food, nor drink, nor bed! Forgive me, Holy Mother.”

I was in a dining hall. Great platters of succulent chicken, moist turkey, and heaps of steak were piled atop each other in a mountain of dead meat. Wrath tore through his fifth helping of food and looked fondly upon me from across the table.

“How did I—”

“Long have I wondered how the Holy Mother would do battle,” Wrath interrupted. “Tell me, are you a nimble little fighter like the Untethered One, or are you a slasher like her mother? Do you hoist the morning star like Sun Man, or do you wield a greatsword like me?”

“I don’t know what you’re—” I was standing in an arena. The stands rose around me, the stone crowd cheering silently, their faces fixed in the manic fervor of the contest. Wrath stood on the other side of the arena, each of his footfalls causing dust to erupt from the sand. The scraping sound of his greatsword against the sand echoed through the arena until he whipped the enormous blade up with lightning speed, and it sang out a pure metallic note.

I was encased in black leather armor, and holding a rapier. I’d never held a sword in my life, and nothing about it felt natural to me. Nothing about it was natural at all. Even through the torture of fire and hammer, I could still feel a connection with the rock in steel, but this sword was not steel. It was a poor idea of steel; the dull luster, the weight, the sharpness, but there was no substance, no understanding. I could do nothing with it.

Wrath let out a roar and thundered across the arena. His rippling thighs propelled him five yards a stride, and he rocketed toward me behind a cloud of dust, his red eyes narrowing hungrily. I screamed and jumped out of the way just as he brought down his sword. It crashed into the wall of the arena, splitting three of the audience members right down the middle. I rolled awkwardly out of my dive and sprinted away. Wrath came charging after me, bringing his sword overhead for another strike. He swung down, I shot to the left, and his blade nearly clipped my heel. I stumbled into the sand, and my sword shot from my grip and slid away. Wrath’s footsteps were much less urgent now. His thundering footfalls sounded slowly behind me, echoing in the arena until his shadow was cast over me. I curled into a fetal ball and whimpered.

“What is this?” he growled above me. “Why do you blubber and weep like a babe? Are you not omnipotent? Are you not GOD?!”

“No,” I hissed.

“Get up!” he roared and sent a kick to my ribs. I shot into the air, spinning like a ballerina before landing with a sickening crack onto my side. I spat blood into the sand, and Wrath paced back to the far wall, got into position, and charged me. I could only lie there and watch him through my blurred vision; a black shape thundering ever closer, kicking a great cloud of dust in his wake. His greatsword flashed above his head, and he reared back to deal the final blow. I grasped around me for something—anything—to defend myself with, but my sword was lying in the sand twenty yards away, and there was nothing else. My desperate fingers fished into my pouch and brushed something coarse. The rock. As Wrath towered over me to cut me in half, I pulled the rock from my pouch and thrust my hand toward him. A thin line formed between my fist and Wrath’s eye. It was barely the width of a needle. Wrath stared at me for a second, then his halves peeled away from each other. His bisected brain tumbled from his skull, his collapsed lungs hung from his split chest cavity, his intestines unraveled from his cloven midsection and piled onto the sand. The halves of his face held their smile for a moment, then parted to rest in the puddle of red he’d formed beneath him.

I stood up and groaned as I touched my ribs. I had been fortunate to only have three of them broken, but it would still take me a long time under Xaya’s care to recover from this. I closed my eyes, and shuddered at the prospect. There were two other Sentients who I would have to kill, and both would be much more dangerous than Wrath. If killing him had caused me so much damage, then surely—I was sitting in a hot tub. Wrath was across from me, enjoying a horn of ale and laughing boisterously.

“…and that act you put on!” he hollered as though in the middle of a long story. “What a tactic! I have faced warriors who feigned weakness before, but never one who would risk so much to do so! Bravo!”

I blinked at him. “I killed you.”

“INDEED YOU DID!” he roared happily. “Dissected me like a lab rat!”

“Why aren’t you dead?!” I screamed.

He looked amusedly at me. “Am I not?” He took a deep swig of his ale and sighed. “It was a good match, Holy Mother, but I will not let you get off so easily next time. I always learn from my errors.” He held up my rock and examined it curiously. “What weapon is this? I have not seen one of its like.”

“It’s a rock.”

He snorted. “It is much more than that.”

“The weapon doesn’t matter.”

Wrath gave me an approving smile. “Indeed, Holy Mother, it is the one who wields it,” he said and handed me the rock. I took it from his massive hand, but his fingers caught mine before I could retract them. I looked into his horrid red gaze, and he leered at me. “I believe it’s time for bed.”

Part Two: Hello Again

DIAMOND

The iron box was only ten feet away, but I could barely see it behind the entropic hedges of thorns and branches that walled my realm into nonsensical paths, turning it into a delirious maze. Xaya held my hand loosely and sang to herself. Her melody was a discordant nonsensical thing, and no lyrics gave any meaning to it. She switched keys without thinking, followed no scale or harmony, but it was beautiful nonetheless. It was a wild song, some upwelling of her soul that poured from her mouth and announced the current state of her heart. When she was amid an intense crescendo, I seized the opportunity to run away from her.

She snapped her arm and wrapped me once again in her embrace. Her lips found the hollow of my throat, her fingers found the thing between my legs, and I sighed. Xaya was a creature of instinct, and I was her prey. Once she’d sated the desires of hunting, more carnal instincts took hold. She rode me on the floor of our conjoined minds and filled the hunger within her. I hated how much I enjoyed it. When she was done, she pulled me to my feet, held my hand, and began singing as we strolled aimlessly through the jungle. Her grip loosened on my hand, and her keen eyes snuck to their corners and dared me to try and run again. I had tried five times already, and I was getting quite sore. I didn’t fall for it this time.

“You know you’re all alone right now,” I muttered to her. “You’re just floating by yourself in Voda. All your followers left you. The ones that survived, anyway. The worst of them.”

Xaya just smiled. Though she was without language, it was obvious she could understand me.

“Oh, you think it’s funny?” I mumbled. “Countless people died because of me, and it’s just a hoot.”

Her smile broadened.

I sighed and nodded. “I guess I thought it was funny too. That’s what Corruption does to us.” I wiped a tear from my eye. “That’s what I did to Mom.”

Xaya pouted her lips mockingly.

“You’re just a jerk, you know that?” I growled.

She stuck her tongue out at me.

I whipped my head away and scowled at the floor. She was trying to get a reaction out of me, but I wouldn’t have it. I was done playing her games. As we walked hand-in-hand through our endless minds, I pondered how I could use this moment to my advantage. Corruption was gone longer than usual, and time always favored those with tenacity. I would find a way to gain control of myself and save me and Mom before we did something unforgivable. Well, it was far too late for that, but perhaps I could save everyone else.

TERA

I took a deep breath through my nose, and my eyes flashed open. My brain processed millions of different odors in a second, collecting them from a wide radius to alert my primal mind of predators and prey. As a succubus, I had very few predators and a great multitude of prey. In this horde, I only had one true predator, and I’d managed to tame her. Now there were two, and there was no taming the young lioness. Perhaps Julia needed someone to validate her insanity at every turn, but Diamond Gendian wholly embraced her madness. My time in this biblical exodus of morons was at an end. I snatched my bag from the wall, stuffed the treasure I’d collected within it, and opened my wagon door.

I was greeted to pandemonium. Every orc was surging toward the front to catch a glimpse of the foretold messenger of God, the Enlightened One, the Water Dancer. Julia had hyped her daughter up so much that Diamond had become a messianic figure before even meeting her flock, and now the sheep rushed right for the wolf while the crafty fox ran the other way. I pulled on a cloak, obscured my features, and disappeared into the crowd. Moving against the current with expert steps, I sinuously flowed between the orcs, making my way toward the end of the vast mass of people where no one would ever look for me. I’d select a few stragglers to enslave, hijack a wagon, and ride for the coast. After buying my passage overseas, I’d find a band of cutthroats and begin my new career as a pirate; shit, I already had a hooked hand. I just had to maneuver my way through the endless stream of orcs and kill the stupid Breytan who dropped right in front of me.

“Where are you going, Good Sister?” Aiko asked me with a grin full of venom. Five more Breytans dropped around me, their hands resting on their katanas. “Sister Julia requests your presence immediately. Either you will come with us, or I will inform the good sister that you have denied her command, and are abandoning this holy journey like the heretic we all know you are.”
“Abandoning? Me?!” I scoffed. “I have been blessed by the word of god! Who are you to call me a heretic, you snot-nosed little ant?! I’ve proven myself a hundred times over!”

Aiko glanced down at my shaking hand, and her grin broadened. “There is no need for a true believer to prove herself, Director Autumnsong. Have some faith in the Holy Mother.” Her gaze fell upon my dagger, just a few inches away from my fingertips. “Do it,” she whispered.

“So that your buddies can stab me in the back?”

“I will stab you in the belly first, Sister Autumnsong,” Aiko hissed. “Before you even have a chance to touch your weapon, I will empty your bowels into the sand. You are no Jade Tao, Death Kiss.”

I assessed my situation, subtly reached my hooked hand into my pocket, and selected the pin of a terracotta hand-bomb. I knew I hardly stood a chance against one Breytan, and I stood none at all against six. Perhaps this was the end. Perhaps it was time to close the book on this long and twisted life and bring six angels with me on my way to hell. But no… no, I would find a way to weasel my way out. I always did. I was Death Kiss.

I sneered at Aiko. “Fine then. Bring me to Julia. By tonight, I’ll be warming my hands in the fire she makes of you!”

Aiko just smiled her polite Breytan smile. “I will sleep soundly to the song of your screams, Sister Autumnsong.”

They made the wise decision of escorting me by foot, not taking chances on flying me lest I enslave my steed. The stream of orcs became a stagnant sea of bodies all pressed together, and the white-robed priestesses parted it just for me. The closer we got, the damper the sand beneath my feet became until I was sloshing through deep puddles of saltwater. We trudged through the muck for what felt like forever, and then emerged into a clearing. The orcs surrounded the bowl of a dune. In the center of the dune, Julia was weeping over the body of her daughter. For a moment, I felt a great upswelling of hope that the crazy bitch was dead, but that hope faded when I heard her slumbering snores. Julia looked up at me, black tears streaking from her black eyes.

“She won’t wake up,” Julia whimpered. “She came to me in the night, but now…” she trailed off, and looked down at her daughter’s content face. “…it’s like she’s in another world.”

I stepped past Aiko and the rest and walked down the bowl of the dune. Within my cloak, there were over two dozen odorless and vaporless poisons. I selected one that would induce a fatal cardiac arrhythmia, and deftly unscrewed the cap. I stopped ten paces from Julia and awaited her invitation to come forward. I didn’t dare look at Jade Tao, but I could feel her eyes watching my every move.

“You are said to be an expert in medicine, Sister Tera,” Julia said to me. “If there is a reason for the Holy Mother’s blessing upon your sinful soul, then it is this. Please heal my daughter.”

I kept my face as impassive as possible, though I was trembling on the inside. “Good Sister, the Holy Mother brought me to help you cleanse your flock, not to—”

“DO NOT SPEAK TO ME OF THE HOLY MOTHER’S INTENTIONS, YOU SINNING WHORE!” Julia screamed, and erupted into black flame. I was blown backward onto my ass, a shockwave pulsed through the crowd, and the vultures overhead were sent reeling off course. The fire melted the very sand beneath the Heat Bringer, but it did nothing to the slumbering god at her knees despite the lack of patterns on her flesh.

“You will heal my daughter before dawn,” Julia hissed, “or I will know that you have been nothing but an interloper in my flock, and I will BURN YOU ON THE CROSS FOR WEEKS BEFORE I SEND YOU TO HELL!”

“Did I deny that I would?” I squeaked, cowering before her. “I was only confused as to my purpose in your holy movement! I was not made aware of the change!” I groveled before her blackened sand. “The Holy Mother does not speak to me as she speaks to you, Good Sister. Forgive my ignorance!”

Julia’s flame quelled, but it did not die on her body. It wreathed her like a black aura as she stepped toward me. “The Holy Mother does not speak to me, Sister Tera, but she tests me. She has tested me every moment of my journey upon the Maternal Path, and though I have been led astray, I have never failed.” She knelt before me, her heat radiating threateningly from her. “You have been led astray all your life, but now you have found yourself upon the Maternal Path. This is your test.” She reached out and touched my brow. Hot agony seared into my brain, but I dared not move as Sister Julia drew the crescent upon me. I only could grit my teeth through the pain, and hiss out the scream I blocked behind my teeth. When she was done, she let her flame die.

“I pray that you pass this test, Sister Tera,” she said softly. “I pray that I have not been led astray this whole time by one of the devil’s shepherds.”

“You haven’t!” I hissed.

“We will see.” She stood up and addressed her audience. “Why have you stalled?” she asked them. “This holy journey waits for no one! Walk with me, brothers and sisters! We will reach Droktinar before nightfall!”

Julia turned around and walked away with Jade following closely behind. She parted the crowd, and with her posture stiff with resolve, she continued her journey toward the mountains. A cart pulled up, and Aiko reverently lifted Diamond into it, then looked up at me, and beckoned with the smallest smile for me to get in.

“You will ride behind Sister Julia so that she can always turn back to see you,” Aiko said.

“I need my tools. Medicine, ingredients, syringes—”

“We can pull your wagon along behind you,” Aiko interrupted. “Just tell one of us what you need, and we will procure it for you.”

“I need to—”

“The Good Sister does not want you to be distracted by the novelties in your wagon. You will ask one of us to get you something, you tell us where it is, and then we will procure it for you, Director Autumnsong.”

Aiko tittered musically, then snapped her fingers, and a few muscle-bound orcs picked up the handles of my cart and wheeled me behind Sister Julia. Twenty Breytans flanked my sides, all of them watching my every move. I looked down at the comatose deity and whispered a prayer to the Holy fucking Mother.

JUSTINA

During my stay in Iona, I had much time to take in its beauty. The snowcapped peak shadowed the enclave, which sat upon the last pasture before grass could no longer grow. It was easy to become short of breath this high up, and indeed, many adventurers who had dared to scale Iona had perished on the way up, but this high pasture contained special grass planted by Ofan himself, and it released enough oxygen in the surrounding area to make it livable. I walked through the grass, my fur-lined boots padding softly in it, and I made my way to the lookout. The world opened up beneath me, the spine of the Gratoran Wall sloping down to connect with Breyta in the distance, the sheer drop of Droktin’s Pass creating a dizzying perspective right to the ground below. Clouds blanketed much of the landscape, but from this, the highest of vantage points, I could see east and west for hundreds of miles.

It was like seeing two different worlds collide, and the result of their collision was this wall. On one side, lush rolling hills cascaded upon each other, becoming small mountains that clashed against the shear wall; on the other side, great dunes as tall as their foothill counterparts formed static waves that crashed upon the cliffside. When I turned around, I was always slightly disappointed. Iona was a place of legend, a place so remote and so hard to get to that it was almost a myth. When Astrid described it to me, she must’ve done so through the lens of nostalgia, for there was nothing of this enclave that bespoke much majesty. Stone houses with no doors littered the village area. Horses and cattle grazed on the pastures and slumbered in barns that were pressed against the mountain. The keep of Iona was a squat castle barely large enough to be a Drastin hotel, and it was decorated with crude runes and washed-out flags. The place was the embodiment of “practical.”

I wrapped the fur coat around myself and made my daily promenade through the enclave. I smiled and greeted each woman that I walked by, and they gave me the respect I was owed. Some smiled back, some struggled not to spit on me, but most just accepted my presence without any obvious opinion and endured my praises of Brandon until I was politely told to go away. They’d made up their minds weeks ago. Despite the discouragement, I finished my duties and then departed to my quarters. There, I started a roaring fire and took off my stifling clothes. Once settled into my chair, I opened my notebook and ventured to my latest page of observation.

The Western Highland Squirrel (partium superiorum inamabilis sciuris) is a precocious creature. The female utilizes her bushy tail as a tool, a weapon, and an alluring bait for males. That was as far as I had gotten in my latest study, but I had a feeling I was going to get a little further today. I drew my eyes to the window, where a pile of peanuts was tantalizingly placed for any squirrel to see. I sat back in my chair and waited. Sure enough, the scratching sounds of a scampering rodent met my ears a few minutes later. I sniffed the air and confirmed by the tang of its scent, that it was indeed, a male. Being a scientist meant that no experiment was too bold, and no lengths too far in the pursuit of knowledge, but I wondered at my sanity when I felt a flutter of excitement in my chest and an accompanying flutter between my legs. I hadn’t even transformed yet. I hopped onto the windowsill, got into a crouch, and morphed into a female squirrel right as the male topped the ledge.

He stared at me. I stared at him. He twitched his head questioningly. I twitched my tail lasciviously. He looked one way, then he looked the other, then he hopped onto the windowsill. At first, he was much more interested in the food than he was in me, which was just typical. He devoured peanuts until his belly was distended, then he tucked as many as he could into his cheeks until his face looked like it might split down the middle. After turning over each extra peanut to ensure he had gotten the best ones, he turned to me, his gut stuffed, his face puffed out, his teeth smeared with peanut gore, and he emoted a single blink which meant, “wanna fuck?”

God, he was so hot. All those nuts jammed in his mouth… that fat belly all stuffed with food… the hunks of peanut sticking from between his buck teeth! Hnnngh! Here was a man who could survive the harsh winter, and still provide extra. Here was a man who knew exactly which peanuts were the best ones. Here was a man who could fit—not four, not five, but six whole peanuts into his cheeks. This was the apex of masculinity. This was the Adonis of rodents. I flicked my tail. “Yes, please fuck me!”

He ran off. “Bitch, don’t you see how many peanuts I can stuff in my face? You ain’t worth this dick,” emoted his flicking tail as he scurried from the windowsill. I sighed and slouched against the frame. He was right, of course. I wasn’t worth that dick. I would have to settle for a lesser male, one who could not fit nearly as many peanuts in his mouth, but I would never be satisfied with such a beta compromise. The thought made me want to leap into the fire. It took me a full minute to get over my rejection, and it took another couple of seconds before I remembered that I was actually Justina Autumnsong and not a dejected female western highland squirrel. I transformed back into my normal body and walked over to my notebook to jot down my observations.

Note: tail likely not bushy enough. Perhaps I should accentuate the pouches in my cheeks more. Create fat deposits around the thigh region to show fertility? Side note: which do male squirrels prioritize: thicker fur, or pronounced fat deposits? It is speculated that the harsh winter would make thicker fur more attractive, but perhaps the ability to endure longer hibernations would be more attractive.

“I just want some squirrel dick,” I mumbled to myself.

“Should I pretend I didn’t hear that?” Helga asked from the window.

I scowled at her. “How is it that you always manage to sneak up on me?”

“You always got your head stuck in one of your books.” Helga hopped through the window and selected a few peanuts for herself. “How’s the novel going?”

“It’s not a novel; it’s a firsthand account of the mating habits of Gratoran species,” I said, shutting the book.

“Oh yeah?” Helga mused in her thick nordic accent. “What have you got so far?”

“Field mice, chipmunks, gophers.”

“Starting small? Why not become a great eagle or a mountain lioness?”

“I tried,” I smiled bashfully. “Apparently, I don’t make a very good eagle or lioness. No, it seems that my temperament is much better suited for prey animals.”

“Yeah, that seems about right.”

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” Helga said, not understanding sarcasm at all. She sat down across from me and tossed peanuts into her mouth as she regarded me with her steely blue eyes. “You know why I’m here.”

“To pull your support for Brandon,” I muttered.

She gave me an apologetic expression. “I’m really sorry, Your Eminence.”

“That’s alright,” I smiled thinly at her, “my last relationship ended when a wolverine ate my partner mid-coitus. I can handle a little disappointment. What convinced you to change your loyalties?”

“I’m a scout. I see the force amassing in the desert every day. I see the great black flames and the banners waving in the wind,” she opened her hands helplessly to me. “Something amazing is happening down there, and I want to be part of it. I don’t care if Her Holiness carries a Sentient—well I do, but I’m willing to… you know… risk it. I can’t just sit up here.”

I nodded. “I get it, Helga. Thank you so much for sticking with me for this long.”

She nodded back. “I’ll help you pack.”

“Is Nona kicking me out?”

“Not officially, but it would be best if you left before she is officially instated.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “I know.”

I sorted my goods into files and sorted my files into my pack. After stuffing all the research that I could into ten canvas sacks, Helga and I carried the load between us to the cliffside. Thankfully, all of the Ionans were in the keep eating the morning’s breakfast, and I didn’t have to endure their glare while I made my walk of shame. I got to the cliffside and set all my bags into a pile. Helga helped me lash them together with a knot fit to be carried with my eagle talons, then she opened her arms for an awkward, yet heartfelt hug.

“I’m very glad we met,” she said into my ear, careful not to touch my flesh.

“So am I,” I said back, and pulled away from the embrace.

Something in my face must’ve given away something because Helga’s eyes flickered with confusion. “What?” she asked. She turned around, and I grabbed her before she could scream.

Native only to the northern Winged Mountains of the Tenvalian continent, the Great White Dragon (or Albus Draco Magnus to be technical) is the largest serpent of its kind, and indeed, is the largest flighted terrestrial predator yet recorded. Spanning some two hundred feet from wingtip to wingtip, and a hundred feet from snout to tail, it is the most feared skyborne predator in the world, though there have only been ten documented sightings of them. There were fifty-six of them headed right for us.

ANGELA

“Don’t you think this is a little excessive?!” Justina yelled so far below me.

“No,” I said as quietly as I could, and the force of my voice shattered the glass of every window in the Ionan keep. Justina’s Life Giver-modified body quickly recovered from the shockwave I’d uttered, but poor Helga was blown right onto her back, blood pooling from her ruptured eardrums. Such was the life of being a great dragon. We’d had to glide into Iona from a half-mile away because the force of our flapping wings would’ve leveled their enclave. It was fortunate that all the shape-shifters present had extensive flying experience, or a few of us might’ve crashed right into the mountainside. Now, our behemoth bodies rested upon the cliffs with such mass that it was like we were part of the rock itself, and our necks towered five stories above the pasture, carrying great angular heads wreathed in majestic spinal crowns, and bearing eyes so blue they looked like the depths of the ocean.

After a few seconds of thundering echoes, the moon doors of the Ionan keep flung open, and the two-thousand winged warriors poured out. For the first time in my life, I saw the fabled fighters of Iona stumble. When their steely blue eyes realized the great enormity of the beasts that surrounded their enclave, they balked. They smacked into each other, flailed awkwardly in the air, and steered wildly to avoid colliding into one of the mythical apex predators that stared down at them. Bianca made a point of looming over the keep so that her steady breaths created tornadoes of convection through the ranks of winged warriors, sending them spinning. They quickly reoriented themselves, aligned into an admirable formation given their dire circumstances, and waited behind a wall of shields and spears.

“Let me do the talking,” Brandon said on my back.

BRANDON

After a long and undignified climb down Angela’s spiny back, I dusted myself off and marched toward the keep. The Ofanians had created a dome of their joined wings above Iona, enclosing the entire enclave in a membranous shield that filtered in the soft morning light. The tactic had the intended effect on the Ionans. I could see fear in their eyes now that they realized that the sky—the plane they had dominated for so long—was filled with hostile snarling maws and teeth longer than their bodies.

“I didn’t want to do this!” I yelled up at the formation of valkyries. “I wanted us all to work together. I still want us to work together.”

“This is an act of war!” Nona screamed.

“This is an ultimatum.”

Good line.

Thanks sis.

“We will not bow to the Ofanians!” Nona screamed again.

“Did I ever ask you to?” I yelled back. “All I asked for was your cooperation against a common threat. Now I’m not asking. The Ionan Guard will bow to me.”

“Or?!”

I shrugged. “Or I’ll take the elderly, young, and sick with me, and then I’ll let the Ionan and Ofanian Guard hash out their differences.”

Bianca snorted blue flame from her immense nostrils.

“When we last met, you told me that I had failed to make the difficult choice, and so it was your responsibility to do it for me,” I said to Nona. “Well, now’s the time, High Guard. What’s your choice?”

“Do you think we fear death, Your Holiness? We train our whole lives for it!”

“I know,” I said, “but your deaths won’t even be a footnote in history, Nona Cloudwhisper. Cataclysmic events are unfolding, and they will shape stories that will be spoken of for all time. Will Iona’s story be but a page in Ofan’s epic?”

“It will be Ofan’s tragedy when the Heat Bringer comes!”

“And you will be forgotten either way.”

Nona’s face twisted in rage, but she had no retort. Though the valkyries of Iona stared ahead with steely stares, I could sense the fading of their resolve. Angela had been right, of course. Valkyries didn’t respond to humility, modesty, and subtlety. They were the servants of gods, and for the dedication of their entire species, they were owed something spectacular. Sensing the fight leave her Guard, Nona lowered her spear and dropped her shield. She flapped away from the formation and descended to me beneath the watchful eyes of the fifty-six dragons. She loomed over me, her scowl darkening her lined face.
“I will never bow to an Ofanian,” she growled.

“I will never ask you to.”

She narrowed her steely eyes at me. “We will stay in Iona.”

“You will do whatever the hell I say,” I growled. “Now get on your knees before your god.”

The lines on her face relaxed somewhat, and something akin to a smile stretched across her lips. She bowed her head, dropped to her knees, and prostrated before me. The rest of the Ionan Guard fluttered from the top of their keep, and one by one, they folded their white wings, descended to their knees, and put their brows to the grass.

“Holy Life Giver, god of flora and fauna; we are not worthy,” Nona said, and then the rest chanted along in time with her. “As winged-warriors of Iona, it is our sworn duty to serve you. We have oaths that we must speak to you and hope that you accept them. We are your sword, we are your shield, we are your armor. We are your watchers in the night, we are your wings in the morning, we are your eyes, ears, and mouth when you are not present to see, speak and hear. We will live for you, we will die for you, we will celebrate with you, and we will suffer with you. Your glory is our glory, your triumphs are our triumphs, and your life is our purpose. With these words, we pledge ourselves wholly to you. We will guide you in the ways of Iona, but we will never disobey you. We will show you the paths of righteousness, but we will not falter to enact your will. We will teach you the lessons learned by countless generations, but we will always heed the wisdom of your words. You are our light, you are our salvation, and you are our destiny in this life, and for countless lives to come. Oh Holy Life Giver, will you please accept these oaths?”

I touched Nona on the brow, and she raised her gaze to mine.

“I accept these oaths,” I said softly.

ASTRID

Iona was empty. The fires in the hearths had been doused, the lanterns were all extinguished, and the food was all gone. The nursery was empty, the field house was barren, and the keep was desolate. The bells were silent, the bandstand was void of music, and the nightly woodcutters weren’t there to add their percussive undertones to the evening song. The only sound left in my beloved home was the persistent winds buffeting against the high mountain walls.

“Where did they go?” Willowbud whispered.

I looked out at the Gratoran Desert. In the distance, we could see the lights of thousands upon thousands of fires glinting in the coming dusk. Some of the fires were black and seemed to absorb the light around them. “Where else?” I whispered.

“Shit,” Willowbud muttered.

“They didn’t have a choice. They have to serve,” I wiped a tear away from my cheek. “We were only hours too late. The lanterns were still warm.”

“I’m sorry.”

I blinked up at the pointed peak of my mountain, and it blurred in my eyes. “It is every Ionans dream to be the one who brings the Earth Former home. Do not be sorry for this moment, Willowbud.” My lips trembled horribly, and I hissed, “It is a dream come true.” I collapsed into the grass and wept into my hands. Willowbud wrapped me in her arms and gave me a chest to shed my grief into.

I didn’t want to stay another second there, but we had nowhere else to go. Gloria had risked traveling in the sunlight, and at such altitudes, it was doubly risky for her. She needed the night to replenish herself, and hunt without the sweltering cloak she kept on to conceal her flesh. As for me, I didn’t feel much like eating. My newly-heightened sense of smell carried the familiar scents of Iona into my mind and played cruelly with my memories. I’d won my first wrestling match in that ring. I was seven, and Mother had pitted me against a twelve-year-old, a big redheaded bruiser named ‘Helga Sunscraper.’ She was no match for me. I outmaneuvered her at every turn, used her own momentum against her, and tossed her clear out of the ring. Helga hated me after that; in fact, most of the other girls hated me. Mother always told me that was how I would know I was the best. My childhood was a peerless one, and my adolescence was one of fervent competition. I never lost a match; not in wrestling, nor archery, nor dueling, nor racing. I was simply the best. Eventually, toward the latter end of my teens, those who once hated me learned to respect me, but they never learned to like me. Perhaps if I’d had but one true friend, then I wouldn’t have done what I did.

I turned my gaze to the dueling ring. It wasn’t even three months ago that Mother had berated me for fighting too fiercely against my sparring partner. I remembered vividly how it had enraged me. This was the woman who had always pushed me to be the best, and she dared tell me to hold myself back?! Without thinking, I challenged my mother right then and there. I knew the moment the words had come from my mouth, that I had made a horrible mistake. Each warrior was only allowed one challenge in their lifetime, and Mother was the greatest warrior in the world. I still had so much to learn, but it was too late, and the look of disappointment in Mother’s eyes weighed heavy upon me even as she accepted my challenge.

It was right there. She was fast, but I was faster. I was skilled, but she was better. We dueled before the entire enclave from sunup to sundown, our sweat dripping from every pore, our bodies so fatigued that we could barely lift our swords. In the end, it was dumb luck that ended the match. One of the onlooking children had been stacking stones in her boredom. The stack fell over, spilled into the ring, and Mother slipped upon one. I struck the sword from her hand, and that was that; I had won. In my moment of glory, perhaps I had been too boasting—no, I had absolutely been too boasting. I lorded my victory over my mother with a grin on my face, and for the first time in a thousand years, a loser issued an objection. There was a hearing, there was a panel of judges, and it was decided that I had rightfully won the Sword of Iona, but not the seat of High Guard. The next day, I left. The next month, I killed her.

“There are some places you can never go back to,” I whispered to Willowbud. “I left myself behind here. That girl is just a ghost in this place of ghosts.”

“Seems like all we leave behind are ghosts,” she whispered back. “We killed our mothers; we can never go back home.”

“I killed my mother, Willowbud. Corruption killed yours.”

“No,” she smiled ruefully at me, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “It feels like freedom to blame everything on Corruption, but that’s how she enslaved me. The only way to take off the shackles is to carry the load.”

I looked back at the desert, at the points of black flame. “You told me Julia was stronger than you. How many times did she cast out Corruption when you kissed it into her?”

“Five times.”

“She can do it again.”

Willowbud shook her head. “The woman out there isn’t Julia Gendian. She’s the Flame of God.”

“You were Night Eyes; you came back twice.”

“My mother and father are all it cost. Julia’s parents are dead, her daughter is corrupted, and I killed the only person who could’ve saved her. Maybe Diamond could’ve done it. I don’t know.” She chewed on her lip and looked out at the desert. “She saved me, and in return, I destroyed her. I saw it in her eyes when I killed Lucilla. If all it costs the world to save Julia is my life, I’d do it, but there’s nothing to save.”

I nodded soberly. “She was a good woman.”

“That’s why she’s so evil.”

“What do we do now, Willowbud?”

She snuggled into my arms. “Get some sleep.”

WILLOWBUD

I woke up and sighed contentedly. There was no better way to wake up than between the robust pillowing tits of a raven-haired beauty. Astrid was already awake, as the half-vampire hardly needed sleep, and so a raise of my gaze greeted me to two sapphire irises with slit pupils. Those pupils shrank to normal circles as the sun crested over the eastern horizon, and cast dazzling sparkles in her eyes.

“Do you put me in this position every night, or do I roll into it?” I asked, collecting my spittle from her pert moist nipple. Apparently, I’d been suckling again.

“I guide you into it; you do the rest,” Astrid whispered. “Even when you were Night Eyes, you used to suck your thumb when you slept.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“I don’t mind,” Astrid beamed down at me. “I actually love it.”

“You’re not supposed to encourage this kind of behavior in a well-adjusted adult.”

“You spent your entire time as Night Eyes enabling my worst vices,” Astrid stuck her tongue out. “Fair’s fair.”

“Who’s enabling who? Even when you’d lost your goddamn mind, you were still trying to mother me.”

“You’re just such a cute little baby.”

“You’re such a crazy bitch.”

Astrid smacked me hard across my ass and cackled when I yelped. “You will not talk to me like that anymore, Willowbud Autumnsong!”

“Ow, fuck!”

“No cursing at me!” she giggled and smacked me across the other cheek.

“Goddamn crazy fucking…” I tried to roll out of her hold, but her strength was astounding. She flipped me over, laid me across her lap, and delivered smack after smack across my little bronze ass. She hit me rhythmically, each strike stinging and numbing, sending tingles deep into my nethers, the cadence putting me into a trance until I was humming out a moan that was punctuated by her staccato slaps of flesh. My bronze cheeks became ruby and shiny. My cock swelled between her thighs.

“Huh,” Astrid mused, patting my buttocks, “you’ve suddenly gone very quiet. Did you learn your lesson?”

I looked up at her from over my shoulder and sneered. “Fuck you.”

“You’re being a very bad girl.”

“What are you gonna do about it?”

She wound one hand in my hair and yanked it until my neck was craning. She didn’t pull to the point of pain, but to that exquisite mark just short of it. Her face loomed over mine, curious and mischievous, and she studied my features with a little bit too much of her vampiric hunger.

“Willowbud, this is a very strange place for me to be with you,” she said softly. “I’m not the huntress anymore.”

“I can be a good girl,” I whispered back, biting my lip needfully.

“I know,” she muttered, stroking my back, raking my spine pleasantly with her long nails, “I watched Julia defeat you. I watched those men take you. It scared me to see you like that.” She settled her soft gaze upon me. “It excited me too.”

“You’ll be gentle?”

“So gentle,” she whispered, sliding her hand down the small of my back, pressing fingers into my crack, moving through my delicate pelvic floor until her fingertips rested against my puckered anus. She stared into my eyes. I stared into hers. I pushed against her with my anal muscles, and she accepted my invitation and pushed inside me.

“Oh my god!” I gasped, my neck straining with tension as I savored the surrendering violation. She was infinitely tender, moving torpidly and purposefully through my tight sheath, finding my prostate with practiced ease and massaging with firm, passionate presses. I moaned and mewled for her, and her eyes danced with excitement, her plush lips opening to reveal her long sharp fangs.

“Can I have a taste?” she hissed.

“You’re not supposed to ask when you’re a domme,” I snickered up at her.

She grinned. “Then I shall take what I want from you, Pet.”

Carefully, she unknitted her fingers from my hair, wrapped an arm around my chest, and turned me over until I was seated in her lap, my cheeks spreading between her thighs so that her seeking fingers could go deeper, my cock curving backward with engorgement. Her breath was on my throat, and I pulled back my hair and bowed my neck to give her full access to the artery. I didn’t feel the pain of her bite; only the entrance of her fangs into my flesh, the puncture of the wound, and the intimate pleasure of being fed from. She sensually sucked from my throat as she painted circles into my rectum, and my hips rotated pathetically with her puppeteer’s wrist, moans and cries emanating from my pitiful mouth.

Before I could reach the precipice, she extracted her fingers from my hole and drew both her hands up my body. Her fingertips trailed along my belly on the way to my breasts, then cupped and squeezed my modest chest until I was moaning for her. Her breath quickened against my ear, and she slid her hands up my chest, up my collar, and for a moment, she dared to clasp them around my throat.

“You can choke me,” I whispered. “I trust you.”

She squeezed gently, and tingling electricity went through my body, rousing my desire once more. I gyrated against her, choking weakly around her gentle strangulation as my cock bobbed and throbbed between my quivering legs, then ejaculated violently without any stimulation. My back arched, and I croaked to the sky with my eyes rolled back.

“Become female for me,” Astrid hissed into my ear. I didn’t question her. I changed my gender, and let Astrid’s free hand wander down my breasts, slide down my belly, and slip through my hairless pubic mound.

“I’ve never touched this side of you,” she whispered heatedly, flattening my petals with her fingers as they ventured further down my blushing sex, “but I learned much from Tera and Justina. Let me show you what they taught me.”

She pushed her fingers inside me, passing each wonderful knuckle through my gripping slit, stretching me gradually open, spreading a euphoric lassitude deep into my nethers that compelled me to unclench, to let her inside me, to let her do as she pleased. My feet pressed into the grass, my legs spread out wide, and my slender thighs made a bridge of my body above her molesting hands, opening myself to give her everything. She touched her two hands through the membrane of my channels, drawing a felicitous line, forcing my back to deepen its arch so that I could tilt my pelvis forward. My head rested helplessly upon her breasts, and my mouth expired pitiful whimpers and moans as my hips moved by her compulsion. Slowly and meticulously, she violated me to perfection, her fingers becoming slick and webbed with my secreting nectar, pushing deeper and deeper into me, touching that spot in my center that made my legs quiver. My head fell back, and she took my supplicant kiss into her mouth, drinking of my pleasure as her fingers compelled me into a sobbing orgasm.

“Thank you,” she whispered upon my lips when we parted.

“You did all the work, and I got all the fun; what the hell do you have to thank me for?” I laughed against her mouth, gazing into those beautiful blue eyes.

“All the fun?” she asked. “Your pleasure was my pleasure. I came without even being touched.” She blushed and tucked her chin insecurely. “Even when you give me control, you have such power over me. I’m sorry.”

I touched our noses and brows and smiled into her predatory eyes. “Dommes don’t apologize, Astrid.”

She smiled back and stroked my face. “My pet likes to play such ponderous games, yes she does.”

Unfortunately, Gloria came back from her night of hunting, and she brought the worries of the world with her. The three of us sat in the shade of Iona and ruminated on how to proceed.

“Losing the Ionan Guard is a setback—a huge setback—but it’s not the end,” Gloria muttered and pulled a squirrel out of one of the metal traps I’d made for her. She casually snapped the rodent’s neck and tossed Astrid the carcass.

“It’s not like we had much of a plan anyway,” I said. “Just… go to Iona, and see what happens.”

“You can’t fight two gods on your own,” Gloria looked gravely at me and pulled a fox out of a trap. “Especially not two that are bound to each other.”

I frowned, recalling the vision I had in the astral plane. “Why doesn’t Diamond have Julia’s patterns if they’re bound to each other?”

“I’ve been thinking about that myself.” Gloria puzzled over the thought as she snapped the fox’s neck. “Binding is a mutual act of love, so in theory, they should carry each other’s mark. I don’t know. Something happened when Diamond went behind Corruption’s door. Tera and Angela discovered so much, and learned so little.” She stuck her fangs into the fox’s throat and sucked until the poor beast was but a furry bag of bones.

“Why are Julia’s patterns black?”

Gloria shrugged. “Corruption was trying to get you to bind to Brandon. Maybe if you had succeeded, the patterns he put on you would have been black.”

“Can a Sentient be bound?”

“Sentients have no souls; believe me.” Gloria opened the last trap, where the fattest muskrat I’d ever seen was woefully stuffed between the bars of the contraption. “What you saw in the astral plane was created by your mind. I’m fairly certain the real Corruption would’ve recognized you after the two of you had such a jolly long time together.”

“I suppose.”

“Besides that, Corruption doesn’t matter anymore,” Gloria said as she tried to shake the stuffed beast out. “Right now we’ve got two gods we have to kill, one of which is a complete mystery to us, the other of which thinks she’s preordained by god to burn everyone alive. So, if we could just…” with a mighty tug, Gloria ripped the squealing muskrat out, “…keep our eye on the proverbial ball here, and not get distracted with stupid fantasies like Tera and Justina did, then maybe we have a chance.”

“We have more than a chance,” Astrid beamed down at me, “it is an absolute certainty. It is destiny.”

“It’s at least fifty-fifty,” I smiled up at her, wishing that I could delude myself into believing I had any chance at all.

“We still have the element of surprise,” Gloria said, wringing the muskrat’s neck, “In my experience, that is the greatest advantage you can—” The muskrat turned into my cousin.

Gloria screamed and leapt about seven feet in the air, Astrid brandished her sword, and I just blinked stupidly. Justina rubbed her neck, then winced when she lifted her arm. There was a massive contusion on her ribs from where my metal bars had been pressing against her.

“Fuck,” she mumbled, “two of them broken. Good thing I didn’t try something bigger, or I would’ve been nothing but splattered goo between the bars. When I felt my rib crack, I knew who must’ve made the trap.” She gritted her teeth, and her rib snapped back into place. The contusion drained back into her body, and she let out a sigh of palpable relief. “Fuck, that was uncomfortable. Hey, did any of you see…” she trailed off when she saw the squirrel carcass between Astrid’s feet, and let out another sigh, this one full of melancholy, “… of course. All of my romantic ventures end in heartbreak.” She picked the animal up and snuggled it against her breast. “Goodbye, Mister Peanut,” she whispered, and a tear ran down her cheek.

Astrid elbowed me, and whispered from the corner of her mouth, “Willowbud, I believe I’ve just lost my mind.”

“Nope,” I muttered, “I’m seeing it too.”

JUSTINA

Angela and Brandon, get your asses over here right the fuck now! I broadcasted from my mind as I stared fixedly at the point on the horizon where Ofan was. Gloria Titus had extracted herself from the wall she’d climbed up in her fright, and was flanking me on the side. I didn’t care. I was much more interested in the woman across from me. Astrid’s hair was black, her wings were that of a raven, her incisors had become fangs, and her pupils transitioned from slits to circles as the sun’s rays flickered between the conifer tree behind us. Her body was as beautiful and athletic as it had always been, but now it was decorated with intricate glowing markings shaped like geology.

“Jade has your sword,” I said after we were done staring at each other.

Astrid nodded. “I have read the papers. I was so saddened to hear what happened to your mom.”
“I don’t think you’re getting it back, is all I’m saying. Jade said she’d give it to Freydis, but Freydis… I’m sorry, Astrid, but Freydis never returned.”

“I am aware of that,” Astrid said stiffly.

There was a pregnant pause between us. Astrid assessed me with stiff posture and a face that belied shock so overwhelming that she couldn’t emote it properly.

“So…” I trailed off, “…what’s… what’s going on with the… new hairdo and… stuff?”

“I was near death. Gloria bit me to save my life, and Willowbud bound me to heal me, but I am no longer wholly valkyrie,” she swallowed. “That is why it is good that the sword is in the Heat Bringer’s army. At least then an Ionan may carry it.”

“The Ionans all moved to Ofan yesterday.”

Astrid raised her brows a fraction. “To invade them? We weren’t planning to do that for another three years.”

“Ah… no. They uh… they swore their oaths to Brandon.”

Astrid’s brows raised another fraction. “His Holiness is alive?”

I blinked at her. “Did you not just see me transform from a rodent?”

“I thought you had learned it from a book. Books are amazing things, and you are very smart, Justina Autumnsong.”

“Change your hair color all you want, Astrid, you’re still a blonde,” I muttered to myself.

Willowbud snorted.

I turned my gaze on my cousin, and her smile faded. There was another pause, this one even longer, but there were no words for me to say.

“Good to see you’re OK,” Willowbud said, breaking the silence.

I just nodded.

She shifted uncomfortably. “I guess we didn’t part on the best of terms.”

I shook my head.

She knitted her fingers together. “I’m uh… I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. Trying to… you know… take responsibility for the things I did. Otherwise, there’s no growth. Otherwise, I’m just a kid fresh off the streets of Drastin. When Corruption’s in you, it’s easy to pretend you’re someone else, but once you’re in the clear, you realize… or I realized, anyway, that uh… well, there’s a lot of Night Eyes in Willowbud.” She looked up at me, then rapidly looked back at her fingers. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry… for whatever that’s worth.”

“It’s not worth much,” I whispered.

“Yeah…” she nodded, and splayed out her fingers helplessly, “…but it’s what I got, so take it or leave it.”

“How did you survive, you pathetic worm?” I hissed.

“I went underground, as worms do.”

“I saved her,” Astrid said, putting an arm around Willowbud, “and you saved me from the Breytans, Justina, so that means you saved her.”

“Just my fucking luck.”

“Um, excuse me?!” Gloria said shrilly. “Did we just gloss over the fact that BRANDON IS ALIVE?!”

“I’m starting to think Julia’s explosion didn’t kill anyone at all,” I grumbled.

“Being a god certainly raises your survivability rate.”

“So does having wings,” Astrid added helpfully with a flap.

“Why am I the only one who’s freaking out right now?!” Gloria yelled.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about; I’m losing my shit,” Willowbud muttered.

Astrid nodded. “I too, am quite shaken by these revelations.”

“I guess we’re just used to being in a perpetual state of fucked up,” I said.

“Is there any other state of mind?” Willowbud laughed brokenly.

“For you? No,” I said and looked to the north. “But we’re all starting to catch up to you, dearest cousin.”

ANGELA

Making the Ionans comfortable in Ofan was an exercise in restraint. For a people that had pledged themselves mind, body, and soul to my brother, they certainly had a lot of conditions. Firstly, Brandon had to make sure the Ionan living trees were exactly as tall as the Ofanian trees. Secondly, Brandon had to spawn a herd of elk for the Ionans to hunt so that they could eat their traditional meat. Thirdly, Brandon had to erode the soil around the mountain stream so that Ionans could have their own source of water free from Ofanian contamination. Brandon, having spent all of his aggression just getting the Ionans here, acted upon their every request. As he eroded the soil, me and Bianca took a stroll along the new river and dumped all of the Ofanian chamber pots upstream of the Ionan camp.

“This is not going to work out,” Bianca said as she pissed in the water.

“Give it time,” I said, crossing her stream with mine.

“His Holiness does whatever they wish! They have no right to make demands of him!”

“He’s just trying to be a good host.”

“They swore their oaths! They’re his slaves!”

“Are you his slave, Bianca?” I asked, raising a brow.

Bianca tilted her chin proudly. “It would be my honor to be shackled and collared for His Holiness.”

“I can arrange that.”

Bianca’s stream suddenly sputtered out. When I glanced to the left and saw her veiny compass pointing true north, my stream suddenly sputtered out as well. We looked at each other’s members for a moment, then drew our eyes up the feminine curves of the other until our gazes were locked. It was at that inopportune moment, that I received a telepathic message from Justina, and my world was once again turned on its head.

An hour later, I was standing in front of the Ionan keep. Brandon was to my left, Bianca was to his left, Justina was to my right, and Nona was to her right. I wasn’t all that surprised to see Gloria Titus—I knew she’d show up eventually—but the other two women who stood before me were supposed to be very, very dead. Astrid had gotten a sexy vampiric makeover and had made herself a Bound One to boot. Willowbud looked no different than the last time I saw her (sans the black eyes) but her transformation was an order of magnitude more dramatic than Astrid’s. It was the way she carried herself. Instead of having her shoulders thrown confidently back and her weight shifted on one cocky hip, she was slumped forward with her arms crossed insecurely over her chest. Instead of smirking at the lot of us like we were a punchline, she struggled to maintain eye contact with any of us for more than a few seconds. And when she spoke, her voice carried none of the sultry danger it once did. It almost sounded like a child’s voice.

“Hey, Brandon,” she smiled shakenly. “Bianca, what’s up? And uh-oh, I’d recognize those eyes anywhere. It’s crazy Angela!” She laughed uncomfortably. “So, you finally stole my boyfriend, eh?”

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

“So are you. Why is everyone so disappointed when they find out I’m alive?”

“I’m not disappointed,” Brandon said.

“I am,” I said.

Brandon stepped cautiously forward. “Willowbud, what the hell happened in Drastin?”

Willowbud twisted her lips. “I killed Lucilla; Julia killed everyone else. Not much more to say.”

“There’s a great fucking deal more to say!” I snapped.

“And it will all be said in good time,” Gloria said, stepping forward. She smiled at Brandon. “You cannot know how great it is to see you, Your Holiness.”

“You bailed on us, you blood-sucking cocksucker,” I growled.

“Angela,” Brandon said, turning to me, “you’re not being very helpful right now.”

“Oh, am I supposed to be Miss Friendly to this batch of mass murderers?!” I exclaimed. “Not you, Astrid; you’re cool.”

“I am also a mass murderer, Bound One, and many times over,” Astrid said, and smiled at me, “but it is good to see you finally in the flesh.” She turned to Bianca. “And you, High Guard. It is good to see that you are in good health, and pregnant as well! Congratulations.”

Bianca raised her brows. “How did you know?”

“I can smell the change in you,” she wrinkled her nose with a smirk. “There are many changes in you, High Guard Blackwing. Perhaps you will show me them later.”

“I would be honored to demonstrate my blessings to the Bound One,” Bianca said with a respectful bow of her head, “but I believe I’m going to have to kill you very soon.”

Nona drew her sword in a flash and marched over to Astrid’s side. “You will have to get through me first!”

“Bitch, didn’t you just swear your undying loyalty to my brother?”

“I did not have the authority to do so,” Nona said and planted her sword in the ground before Astrid. “The true High Guard has returned. All oaths made under my command are nullified.”

“Since when did valkyries deal in contingencies?!” Bianca snapped. “Have some honor, you wretch!”

“She’s right, Nona,” Astrid said gently.

“But—”

“If you swore yourself to a god, only a god can free you from your oath. Go back to him.”

Nona bowed her head, her face burning with embarrassment, and she picked up her sword and marched back to the other side.

“Willowbud,” Brandon said, “why did you come here?”

“To get the Ionans, obviously. I guess you got granted custody in the divorce though,” Willowbud laughed awkwardly.

Brandon offered a congenial smile. “Arbitrators don’t show as much gender favoritism when the woman’s got a big fat cock.”

“Don’t blow yourself up too much, wifey.”

“Hardy-har-har.”

“We both know who wore the pants in that relationship.”

Brandon just chuckled and nodded. He laced his fingers behind his back and stepped toward Willowbud. Willowbud winced and took an insecure step back. Brandon made his posture as unthreatening as possible, but he continued his walk toward the Earth Former until he was barely a foot away.

“That’s far enough, Your Holiness,” Astrid said.

“I think we’re on a first-name basis by now, Bound One.”

“Not at this distance.”

“We’ve been much closer than this.”

“And you will come no closer.”

“She’s the god of rock, and we’re on top of a mountain range; what am I going to do?” Brandon said and turned back to Willowbud. “So, what’s up?”

“Not much,” Willowbud said, trying to hide the way she was cringing back from my brother. “What’s up with you?”

“Oh, not much either,” Brandon sighed, “just trying to save the world from two corrupted gods is all.”

“Huh. Me too.”

“Really? Well, what a serendipitous coincidence.”

“Fuck no!” I yelled and stomped over to them.

“Angela—”

“Don’t you fucking ‘Angela’ me, Brandon!” I snapped. “This bitch put everyone through hell!”

“We need her.”

“The hell we do!” I yelled. “What we need is a stone-cold killer! This bitch can’t even look me in the eye!” I glared down at the cringing Willowbud. “I guess Corruption took your balls with her.”

“Bound One, that is enough,” Astrid said.

“What the fuck are you gonna do about it, butterfly?” I snared, blowing dragon fire from my nostrils.

She rested her hand on the pommel of her sword. “Transform into any beast you wish; none of them will be faster than me.”

“That thing would snap against me like a toothpick.”

She smiled thinly. “It would cut through you like air.”

“Guys, guys, guys,” Brandon said, stepping between us. “This is stupid. We’re all on the same side.”

“Are we?” I snapped. “Because we don’t even know this bitch! How can we trust her at all?!”

Brandon gave me a bemused look. “Angela, are you sure this isn’t about something else?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

“You’re just acting a little jealous is all—” And I punched my stupid brother right in the nose. He went down flat on his ass, Bianca and Nona came rushing over to his aid, and Gloria came sprinting over from the other side. The two valkyries drew their blades before the approaching vampire, Astrid drew her blade against them, and I used the distraction to test if my theory about Willowbud’s testicles was true. I kicked the Earth Former right in the groin, and Astrid’s fist smashed into my face with such force that five of my teeth exploded before my jaw snapped. I crumpled to the ground next to my brother, Willowbud fell groaning beside me, and Bianca swung at Astrid’s neck. Astrid blocked the attack easily, and the blade of Ofan was shorn from its hilt like it was butter by Astrid’s weapon. Bianca’s scream of dismay sounded for a millisecond before an enormous hippopotamus with Justina’s head came charging into the group, and trampled everyone.

BRANDON

After I was done healing the broken bones Justina had dealt to Gloria and the valkyries, as well as the wounded jaw and pride of my sister, Willowbud and I ordered everyone to leave for Ofan. Everyone was naturally incensed, and Angela was down-right belligerent, but Bianca and Justina managed to wrestle her away. Astrid didn’t object, but she gave me a look that made my blood run cold as she departed with Gloria in her arms. We watched them fly off into the horizon, and when they disappeared behind a distant mountain peak, I turned to the Earth Former.

“It is good to see you,” I said.

She nodded without looking back. “Your sister’s right, Brandon. You have no idea who I am.”

“It’s still good to see you.”

She smiled back at me. “It’s good to see you too.”

“How have things been for you since… you know?”

“They’ve gotten better,” she shifted against the stone bench she’d made for us. “They couldn’t get much worse.”

“Things always get worse before they get better.”

She snorted. “That’s a load of horseshit. Things always get worse, and then you get used to it.”

“Circumstances deteriorate, and we become stronger.”

“We become number.”

“You’re just a ray of fucking sunshine, aren’t you?”

“No, that’s Julia, and now her sunshine is black.”

I rolled my eyes. “So, the real Willowbud’s the emo kid in class.”

“I never went to school.”

“Neither do emo kids. Do you like to write morbid poetry and cut yourself?”

“I barely know how to read, and I’m clinically suicidal,” she muttered into her lap.

I dropped my head against the bench. “I’m an insensitive douchebag.”

“You’re just so used to talking to Night Eyes. She never had any self-pity. I am nearly consumed by it.”

“Sorry.”

“Eh, I was trying to make you feel bad, you insensitive douchebag.”

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “There’s still a little Night Eyes in Willowbud.”

“There was always a little bit of Willowbud in Night Eyes,” she said, smiling at me. I snuck my hand over to hers, and she withdrew it sharply when our fingers touched.

“Fuck, I’m an idiot,” I muttered.

“It’s OK,” she said hastily, folding her shaking hands tightly in her lap, knotting her fingers until the knuckles were white. “It’s just…” she struggled to catch her breath, “…it’s just…” the earth quivered beneath us, “…it’s just… fuck, I’m having a panic attack!”

I quickly touched her brow and quelled her adrenal glands, then retracted my fingers just as rapidly. Willowbud’s breaths subsided into a steadier cadence, and she swallowed the last of her panic. “It’s just…” she started again, “…what we had, Brandon, it wasn’t between you and me. It was between you and her, and those things I felt for you…” she swallowed again, and looked at her palsying hands, “…I am no stranger to rape, and that love I felt for you was the very worst kind.”

“I understand.”

“How could you?” she laughed at the sun and wiped a tear from her eye. “Good god, I am pathetic. A boy tries to hold my hand, and I almost throw a mountain at him. What will I do against the god of fire?”

“Throw a mountain at her.”

She snorted and blotted her eyes with her shirt. “Well, let’s talk business then. What was your plan?”

“I… don’t really have a plan yet. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about it, you know, it’s just… there’s a lot of factors at play, and—”

“You’ve had weeks to prepare for this, so naturally you fucked away every second and hoped the problem would solve itself,” Willowbud sighed. “At least one of us hasn’t changed.”

“Look, the problem isn’t just Julia; it’s Tera. She can literally smell us coming from a mile away, and she’s never far from Julia.” I looked side-eyed at Willowbud. “Say, how far can you throw a rock?”

She picked up a stone from beside her, and with a flick of her wrist, she launched it over the adjacent mountain.

“Holy shit.”

“I can hit a stationary target just fine, but a moving target would be an issue.”

“Not at several thousand feet per second.”

“My aim’s not that good. I don’t control it once it leaves my hand.”

“Throw a mountain at her.”

“Oh, she’ll never see that coming. We already fought head-to-head, Brandon, and now she’s bound again. She will turn my mountain into a molten puddle, then boil me alive in it.” Willowbud shook her head and sighed. “And then there’s Diamond to deal with.”

“No one’s seen her in weeks.”

“So I guess we don’t have to worry about her then. Out of sight, out of mind. Yay, we saved the world.”

“Look, I don’t have all the answers—shit, I don’t have any of them.”

“Between you and me, there are about three working brain cells, so don’t feel too bad.”

“Yeah, and you’ve got all four of them.” I looked her levelly in the eyes. “We’re gonna have to talk with the team on this one.”

“Probably not a good idea. I get the strange feeling that your sister doesn’t like me very much.”

“She’s hotheaded, but she’ll come around.” I opened my hand, and an enormous griffin appeared before us. “Care for a lift?”

She gaped at the miracle I’d performed, then smirked at me, and for a moment, she almost looked like she used to. “I’m not riding bitch.”

“I can ride bitch. Between Angela and the Ofanians, I’m getting kind of used to it.”

She snickered and shook her head. “Make another one, Brandon. My dick isn’t going to be anywhere near your asshole, no matter how hard you try.”

I smirked back at her. “We’ll put a pin in it,” I said, but made her another beast.

JULIA

The gates of Droktinar stood before me. Though the city was underground, Droktin spared not an ounce of humility in creating its entrance. The threshold was polished obsidian, and it flowed without a single chisel marking or mortar line, an unbroken masterpiece displaying orc symbols, statues of resplendent emperors of the old empire, and gargoyles crafted with such precision that the hairs on their heads were discernable. The gates were iron and polished to perfection, each of them made with great speared bars that ascended in perfect perpendicularity to the threshold. The immense black entrance was a thousand feet wide and half again as tall and was formed into the side of a large red sandstone mesa. Given the proportional size of the entrance to its parent rock, I intuited that most of the structure of the city was subterranean and that this mesa, as large as it was, only served as the atrium for what came after. It was a miracle to behold, but there was no awe in me. I only felt the tug of terrible anxiety, and the urge to look back at Sister Tera as she worked on my comatose daughter. I stayed that urge, for that urge would beget more pain, and even an ounce of pain compelled me to violently relieve myself of it. I needed to maintain control. I was not a tyrant who dealt out death with impunity. I was not a murderer; I was a savior. I took a deep breath through my nose and exhaled slowly through my mouth.

Patience. Peace. Purpose. Sister Tera will find a way. It was why God brought her to me. I assured myself of the succubus’s skill and focused my energy on the task at hand. A great crowd of orcs had formed a semicircle around the gates of Droktinar and were waiting for me to do something. Yuntok stood beside me, standing ceremony as the first orc citizen to have joined my crusade.

I turned to my audience. “Brothers and sisters, we have all traveled far and wide to reach this place. All of you sacrificed much; some of you sacrificed everything. It is by God’s will that we have made it this far, but it is by your courage and perseverance that we will make it even further. Let us pray.” I got to my knees, and the great multitude did so as well.
“Holy Mother above, thank you for giving us passage to this most sacred place, the first holy city of your new kingdom. Provide us with joy and sustenance in the days to come. Above all, please awaken your messenger so that she may guide us and speak your honest word.” I looked up at Sister Tera and whispered. “Please, Holy Mother, save my daughter.”

Sister Tera looked back at me, her black eyes belying her terror, and she redoubled her apparent efforts to mix concoctions and crush herbs before administering them to Diamond. I would give the whore until morning before she was proven a fraud. It was evening already.

I stood up, and my flock stood with me. “Open the gates,” I commanded, a cheer arose from the orcs. Two long ropes had been tethered to the handles, and hundreds of males took up the lines and began to pull. The metal groaned deeply, but even though the hinges were millennia old, they did not have a single bit of rust to make them squeak. Still, the gates would not budge. Ten more lines and hundreds more orcs had to be added before any progress was made. The gates suddenly shifted with a low boom, and an immense cloud of dust was released into the air. The orcs cheered and pulled harder. A monstrous roar sounded from Droktinar. The cheering orcs went silent. The gates burst open, sending the pullers arcing into the air, their broken bodies splattering onto the sands in thousands of gory pieces. Blood smeared a wide arc across the sands before the threshold from where the gates had dragged the pullers beneath the bottom. The entrance to Droktinar stood as a monolithic black maw, gaping and depthless. A pair of massive spiny legs held the entrance open from one end of the doorway to the other, but the monster itself was obscured in the darkness. The legs retracted from the inside of the door and disappeared.

“Droktinar is not a home,” Yuntok whispered.

“Nonsense, Brother Yuntok,” I said, and stepped toward the entrance. “It is clearly the home for something.”

“Sister!” Yuntok yelled.

I smiled over my shoulder at him, then continued my measured pace toward the threshold. When Jade tried to follow me, I bid her stay, and watch the entrance. This was a journey I was meant to endure alone. I stepped through smeared puddles of gore, my feet sizzling into the sand and blood, wafting the scent of cooked orc into my nostrils as I wreathed myself in black fire. Droktinar had not seen the sun for thousands of years, and its blackness was so complete that there wasn’t even a gradient to its shadow, but my fire still absorbed the minuscule remnants of light that danced in the derelict annals, completing the desolate vacuum. I passed under the threshold, where the guardian gargoyles sneered down at me, mocking me like some damned soul plodding her way to perdition. I smiled back at them and stepped into the darkness.

Though the western sun shone behind me, there was no shadow before me. My fire ate the light that would be my aura, entombing it within the confines of this great hollow. My feet rested upon stone so smooth that it felt like I was walking upon ice, and when I burned my footsteps into the ancient obsidian rock, I felt a faint connection with the stone. This stone was born of fire, exploded from the belly of a volcano, and sent raining from the heavens to reach this place. Though an Earth Former had molded it, this stone belonged to me. I could see through it with a strange ethereal vision, sensing the great pillars of rock and the voids between them, much like how Willowbud claimed to have seen the earth. I was standing in an enormous atrium.

Archways formed a dome overhead, and sloped away from each other in cathedralic fashion to go down, down, down into the depths below, thousands of feet—miles of space. The footstones of the arches were so far below me that I could barely sense them at all, and I realized that this atrium was but the landing of a great staircase. The staircase’s breadth was that of the entrance, and the enormous steps would take twenty strides to span before the next descent. After several thousand feet, the staircase split and spiraled in on itself to descend into the vast hollow below. Each staircase split dozens of times, spiraling ever downward and reaching outward, encompassing the hollow from end to end until hundreds of staircases touched the very bottom miles beneath me. The city was beyond my comprehension. The whole of Drastin could have fit within it, and there would still be room to spare.

“Hello?” I called out. My voice echoed interminably, becoming lower and more distorted until it was a discordant roar in the deepest belly of the hollow. I waited for a minute, but nothing answered. I frowned and pushed my foot deeper into the rock, trying to get a clearer picture of the behemoth that had laid claim to this place. Such a monster surely couldn’t hide very well, and yet, I could not see it. Even as I concentrated more of my focus on the feedback my heat was giving to me, even as I discerned the patterns of scripture carved into the wall a mile below me, I could not see the thing that had opened the door. I could see other things though. I could see the great multitude of squirming, writhing horrors that scuttled upon the subterranean floors of Droktinar, wriggling upon each other, tearing each other limb from limb in an orgy of death. They were spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and worse, all of them larger than a wagon—some larger than a house. And yet, these things were but the food of the guardian who had granted me entrance to this place. God’s caretaker for this, the holiest of sites.

“I am Sister Julia Gendian, the Flame of God,” I called. “I am giving all of the Holy Mother’s creatures who reside in this place a fair warning. Leave before I come to you, or I will send you to our creator. And to you, holy guardian,” I pressed my foot deeper, “please do not bar my path. Go in peace, and go with God.”

No one answered. I sighed and commenced my journey into the blackness.

Interlude Two: Prisoner

CORRUPTION

Wrath was a brutal lover. He pierced me with his cock like he was trying to spear me through the guts, he bent me over and arched my back like he was trying to snap me in half, he choked me like he was trying to tear my head off. I enjoyed every second of it. As spit leaked from my gasping lips, and ecstatic tears poured from my sobbing eyes, I backed into him, squishing my ass against his driving pelvis, clenching my knuckles about the bars of the bedframe, growling and snarling with his animalistic sounds. He forced orgasm after orgasm out of me, and in those blissful moments of pure intensity, I could forget the horror of my situation for a moment.

When he was sated with me, he would pull his shaft out of my loosened netherlips, and slop the comingled juices that coated him onto my thighs. He would kiss me rapaciously, disgustingly, dominatingly, and I would savor it for the residual heartbeats of carnality that still thrummed within my chest. But then the moment was gone, and I would be back in the dining hall, staring at piles of meat for a few seconds before I was transported to the arena. How many times had I slain the orc? Dozens? Scores? Hundreds? I had lost count. I killed him dispassionately, decapitating him before he even had a chance to open his mouth, and then we would be back in the boiling tub, reminiscing upon the glory of a contest that never was. After Wrath drank his fill of ale, he would take me to his bedchambers, and we would begin again.

If there was any value to this interminable hell I’d gotten myself stuck in, it was that I could study a Sentient up close. Wrath was capable of learning, he was capable of knowing, and he was even capable of ingenuity to some degree. There were times when I almost forgot he wasn’t alive at all, but then I was reminded by the patterns of his mannerisms. It wasn’t that he was a machine who would react identically to repeated situations, for he was wholly capable of remembering and adapting to those memories, but I knew instantly how he would react to whatever situation was presented to him. He had no ability to grow past his confines, no room to evolve and change. He was stuck forever in this caricature of emotion, ceaselessly trying to mimic an idea that he could not ever understand. He was ‘Wrath,’ but he had no concept of what wrath was. Because the astral plane was on a higher echelon than the physical plane, Wrath vividly understood pain and pleasure, but devoid of a soul to occupy him, he could never comprehend the suffering and joy that accompanied such sensations.

I had tried to take him to his center, and to show him his origin. He would walk no further than the first painting, and even when I tore it from its stand and shoved it before his face, he could not see the portrait of the vampire woman. When I picked up the bible at the very origin of his realm, he did not react, nor could he see the book that was in my hands. When I tried to write over the story Petranumen had given him, the ink simply dripped off the page without taking hold in the paper. I was the god of the astral plane, and yet, only a mortal mind could change these things. Wrath would be Wrath until some poor melded soul changed his nature.

“Why do you exist?” I asked him over a horn of ale.

He snorted. “Because you made me.”

“Furok made you.”

Wrath rolled his eyes. “This again.”

“I’m just trying to understand how you occurred.” I frowned into the foam of my horn. “A Life Giver’s power is manifested in the physical world, so why would it not perpetuate there after his death? Why does something need to be bound or tethered? A mountain stays a mountain even if the Earth Former dies. The fires of Breyta burn for thousands of years after the woman herself died. Even the beasts and plants the Life Givers have made still thrive in the world, but the souls they try to keep are lost? If a Life Giver can create a dog and can endow that dog with unnaturally long life, and that dog outlives the Life Giver, the dog or cat does not become Sentient.”

“Life Givers do not make life; God does—YOU DO!” Wrath bellowed.

“Indulge me for a moment. Please, Wrath.”

Wrath sighed and adjusted himself in the tub. “It’s in the name. Sentients are made from those with sentience. A dog is alive, but it cannot think beyond its primal cage. A man can create worlds within his mind.”

“Of course,” I muttered, “abstractions. The enemy of pure thought. The thing that made the cognizant winds lethal are the very things that gave animation to a shelled dead man.”

“We are all abstractions, Holy Mother. Even you.”

“No. I have understanding.”

“Do you?” Wrath grinned horribly at me. “When you tear down the last wall of the astral plane, and the world beneath us is laid to ruin, and even the very last word of language is silenced forever, what will you do when the planes of the mind and body do not knit?” He leaned toward me and blew smoke from his nostrils. “For there will still be one person who carries abstractions in her mind, and so spreads them into the astral plane to perpetuate its separation.”

“I will die when my bind does,” I said, touching the patterns on my throat.

“Then how will you know it worked?” he asked with a terrible leer. “When your final breath leaves you, your final thought will be one of doubt. You will never know peace.”

I smiled back at Wrath, shielding the tremor that went through me. “I have faith.”

He laughed and eased back into his side of the tub. “We all have faith in God, but God is faithless. I know a lie when I see one.” He yawned mightily and rested his eyes upon me with a greedy expression. “Come, Holy Mother, let us go to bed.”

Part Three: Project Management

ASTRID

Angela flew beside me, a pair of gold-streaked Ofanian wings flapping from her back. She was absolutely stunning now that she lived in the flesh, and she had no compunction about showing it, for she was naked.

“I’m sorry that I broke your jaw,” I said to her.

“I’m only sorry that I didn’t manage to pop Willowbud’s nuts.”

“I hereby retract my apology.”

“Too late,” she giggled. “Don’t worry, if she and Brandon are fucking right now, I’m not gonna go after her; I’m gonna cut Brandon’s cock off.”

“I would be very upset if you did that!” Bianca yelled from above.

“It would probably solve a lot of the world’s problems though,” Justina chuckled beside me. “It’s really great to see you, Astrid.”

“It’s good to see you too—all of you,” I beamed at the lot of them. “Even you, Bianca!”

Ofan erupted into pandemonium the moment we arrived. News of Willowbud spread like wildfire through the Ofanian and Ionan camps, and all members of both clans came rushing out for answers. There were two things I noticed immediately—well, three things, actually. The first thing I noticed, was that the Ofanian Guard no longer wore gilded plate armor, but instead decorated their brown bodies in various cuffs, garters, chain-link bras, and panties. The black women made no attempt to hide their masculine organs, and quite a few of them wore golden rings around their shafts. They looked delicious. The second thing I noticed, was that the Ionans all looked… well, exactly the same as I remembered them. The third thing I noticed, was that I felt much more immediate kinship with the Ofanians than my own people. I could see the way the Ionans loathed their neighbors, I could smell the hatred simmering in them, and I could hear the disgust in their voices when they shouted their imperious insults at the Ofanians; words like ‘whore,’ ‘slut,’ ‘oath-breakers,’ and ‘anathema,’ and I felt every single one as if it were directed at me, but despite my obvious sin, there was nothing but reverence for me. My black wings, raven hair, and fangs would’ve made me an abomination in any other situation, but the patterns on my flesh made me holy, and the name ‘Skyborne’ made me legendary.

“Our High Guard! Our Bound One!” Rachel Skyshield proclaimed and dropped to her knees before me.

“I am neither, Rachel,” I said, and gestured to Nona and Angela beside me. “She is your High Guard, and she is your Bound One. You have sworn oaths.”

“Our oaths were forced upon us under threat of death!” Annie Aurora objected.

“And if you are true Ionans, then you would have chosen death if honor demanded it.”

“Our matron god has returned! Surely there is something in the Codes that supersedes the will of one god to the true god of rock!” Shayla Starlight shouted.

“I have read the Codes forwards and backward a hundred times, and there is nothing. Your life is sworn to His Holiness, and you should all be grateful to serve him.”

“He puts penises on women!”

“His sister throws shit in our water stream!”

“The Ofanians masturbate outside of our windows!”

“You are our rightful High Guard!”

“Show us the way!”

“Free us from this bondage!”

“Nona,” I growled, “control your guard. They are making fools of themselves.”

“They will never respect me with you present, Bound One. You are their High Guard no matter what you say.”

“This is going to be a problem,” Bianca scowled. “Bound One, you must do something to make their loyalties known, or fractures will form, and violence will follow.”

“Sisters,” I called, “I am not the Astrid you remember—I am hardly a valkyrie at all. I have whored my body, killed for glory, cheated friends, and betrayed loved ones. I killed my mother with our people’s sword, then I lost it to our enemy. I am a wretched, lecherous, murderous creature, and if you place yourself under my leadership, I will not forsake your oaths to His Holiness. In fact, I will place you below his Ofanians, as they have a higher claim to the Life Giver than you do. I promise you this, and you know it for certain, for I cannot speak untruths.”

“You are not wholly valkyrie any longer!” Helga Sunscraper pointed out from the crowd. “Perhaps you can now speak an untruth!”

“Do not forsake your duty, Astrid!”

“You are the rightful High Guard!”

“Show us the way!”

I sighed and turned my eyes to the heavens. “Forgive me for this, Mother,” I said under my breath, then dropped to my knees, pulled out Bianca’s thick cock, and consumed it all the way to the base. I was shocked at how large she was, but not nearly as shocked as the thousands of valkyries watching me, and none were more so than Bianca herself. I smiled up at her with my lips wrapped around her base and moaned as she grew hard down my throat. Oh, she was truly blessed. I enjoyed her for an indulgent moment, savoring the crowd, angling my face so that they could see all the gritty details of what was happening. It felt like a lifetime since I’d last performed before an audience—and I supposed it technically was—but it was still just as exhilarating as the first time I performed in the Screeching Siren. I pulled out Bianca’s spit-sheened gift and nestled it against the side of my face as I knelt worshipfully at her feet.

“I have never spoken a lie in my life,” I whispered huskily, saliva stringing from my chin. “If you follow me, I will make certain that you all worship the superior race as I do.” I planted more loving pecks upon Bianca’s nuts, and hissed so that all could hear, “Please High Guard, put a black child in me right now! Make me your breeding whore! Show my sisters what pleasures await them if they choose to join me!”

“That’s enough, Bound One,” Nona said with a shaky voice. She turned back toward the stunned faces of the Ionan Guard. “Everyone, go back to your quarters. There is nothing to see here.”

I watched as my people showed me their backs, and flapped to the treetops toward the peak of the mountains. I had once been their favorite daughter, destined to rule them for glorious decades, but it would not be so. It was strange to me that the revelation hurt them more than me.

“Bound One,” Bianca said breathily above me, “I must inform you that I cannot sire children! I am sorry to disappoint you!”

“Great Creators above, Bianca, I was lying.”

She blinked at me. “You can do that?”

“I picked it up from Gloria. It is quite a useful tool.”

“So… do you still want me to…”

I grinned up at her. “Only if you invite me into your treehouse to play with your friends.”

“Only if you will teach me how to consume man-flesh as you do,” she touched her thumb to my lips. “I have had the pleasure of many women’s mouths, but I have never felt anything like that.”

“You can’t teach natural ability; us Ionans are just born better.”

“This is an interesting time to tout your racial superiority, Bound One,” Bianca sneered back, sliding her cock across my face. “Are you going to finish your meal?”

“Guys, we get it, you’re horny and competitive,” Justina sighed, and split us up, “but as crazy as this sounds coming from me, there are more important things than fucking. Come on.”

WILLOWBUD

When Brandon and I arrived, I was hounded by the Ionan valkyries. They collectively ignored the god they’d sword their lives to and circled me like a pack of puppies yipping for their returned master. I tried to paint on a smile and wave away their affections, but they were relentless. It wasn’t hard for me to imagine what Night Eyes would’ve done in this situation, and I shivered. I wasn’t anywhere near ready for a leadership role; it was best if Brandon kept them. The pair of us walked side by side through the tropical wonder of Ofan, and then promenaded into a large hollowed baobab tree. Brandon sat in a chair between Bianca and Angela, both of whom were giving me dirty looks—though I suspected Bianca was just doing it because Angela was doing it. I held their gaze with a forced smile for a few excruciating seconds, then walked quickly to the safety of Astrid and Gloria.
Brandon cleared his throat. “Willowbud and I have decided that we know nothing about battle planning, and will open the discussion to the group.”

“How do you even plan a battle against a weapon of mass destruction?” Justina asked.

“War is psychological, and Julia is but a woman,” Bianca said.

Astrid nodded. “She has raised an army for a purpose. She will not lay waste to her soldiers just to kill the enemy.”

“Unless she thinks that is the only path to victory,” Nona said.

Bianca walked to the center of the floor. “Your Holiness, please produce a map of the eastern Gratoran Desert.”

Brandon touched his big toe to the wood floor, and the rings of the baobab tree rose in shape until a perfect topographical map of the Gratoran Wall, Droktin’s Pass, Iona, and the desert leading to Droktinar was formed. Bianca stood in the breadth of Droktin’s Pass and worked her strong jaw contemplatively.

“The Pass will be a choke point, and so it will be the killing field. Our reports tell us that Julia leads her army at the front.” Bianca looked up at me. “A great opportunity presents itself, Your Holiness, but there is something we must know. Everyone in the world believes you were slain by the Heat Bringer, but does the Heat Bringer herself believe it?”

I nodded. “No one should’ve survived her parting attack. If Astrid hadn’t stepped in front of the fire, I would be dead.”

“Julia must remain ignorant until her last moment.” Bianca touched the sides of Droktin’s Pass. “We will never get a better opportunity than when she is here, surrounded on all sides by rock. The pass is miles long; well out of Tera’s range to detect you. Once Julia is beyond the point of escape, you slam the pass shut.”

“It’s a good plan,” Gloria said, “but it’s contingent on Julia walking through the pass in a timely manner. We don’t know how long she’ll stay in Droktinar, and every day that passes increases the likelihood of Tera selling us out.”

“Tera isn’t loyal to Julia,” Angela said. “She still hasn’t told her about Brandon and me, or we’d all be dead.”

“Tera is a cunning opportunist; Corruption would only magnify that in her. She will use that information when she deems it necessary, and it’s more likely than not that she’ll use it to gain Julia’s favor, not to help us.”

“My mother’s not a religious fanatic,” Justina said. “Once Mom’s done with her fun, she’ll look to cut and run.”

“Unless she feels that her life is on the line.”

“Maybe we can give her an opportunity,” Angela said and looked at Gloria. “You’re right that Tera won’t help Brandon—no offense, Brandon, but Tera thinks you’re kind of a pussy.” Angela turned to me. “But if Tera hears that Night Eyes is back…”

“No,” I said flatly.

“Hear her out,” Brandon said.

“If Tera hears that you’re back, she might consider changing sides. She’ll at least think there will be enough havoc caused between the two of you that she can slip away when everyone’s distracted.”

“You’re putting all your eggs into one very precarious basket,” I said. “Tera’s loyalties are to herself, and herself alone now. Believe me; I know what it’s like.”

“So do I,” Angela narrowed her eyes at me. “You breathed Corruption into me when Julia was torturing Lucilla. Don’t you remember?”

“What are you…” I narrowed my eyes back at Angela, “…why can’t you just stay in one body?”

“Her Holiness is right,” Nona said. “We cannot trust so much valuable information to one treacherous succubus.”

“That’s my mom you’re talking about!”

“I knew her for hundreds of years, and Tera was never anything but self-serving,” Gloria said. “Before we deal with Julia, we must deal with her.”

Justina stared daggers at Gloria, her jaw working. “And what do you mean by ‘deal with her?'”

“Kill her, of course.”

Astrid snatched Justina before she could rush the vampire, and struggled to hold the thrashing succubus in her arms.

“Gloria!” Brandon yelled.

“There is no cure for Corruption’s sickness. If the Sentient is not in the host, then there is nothing to exercise from the mind. A strong-minded person can withstand the decay for a while—maybe even months, but the disease will lead inevitably to madness. Tera is lost, and it would be a mercy to relieve her of her mind’s cage before it crumbles completely.”

“I’ll relieve you of your fucking face, you pale cunt!” Justina hollered.

“The vampire is right,” Bianca said.

Justina whirled in Astrid’s arms and swung at Bianca. “You always hated her!” Justina snarled. “Now you want to—”

“I admired your mother, Your Eminence. Perhaps I was laden with prejudice when I met her, but I never denied her ability. Do you truly think I am speaking from hatred when I say that she must die? Do you think I want to hurt you?”

“Fuck you!”

“We cannot plan for the future with such a great unknown,” Nona said. “His Holiness and his Ofanians were frozen into inaction for weeks because they could not think around the conundrum Tera Autumnsong posed. Now we reach the same impasse.”

“No one asked you, Nona!”

“Your Eminence—”

“Enough!” Brandon yelled. “I won’t be a party to any plans that involve killing Tera, and that’s final!”

“Agreed,” Astrid said. “Enough mothers have been lost already. Justina, Brandon can surely remove the ailment of Corruption from Tera.”

“He can’t, Astrid,” Gloria said. “The Life Giver has no power over Sentients.”

“That doesn’t mean she deserves to die.”

“Deserves’ has nothing to do with it,” I muttered. “She needs to die because we all want to live.”

All faces turned to me.

“What?!” Justina hissed.

It was hard for me to look at her, but I managed to do so from the corner of my eye. “You should’ve killed me when you had the chance.” I turned to Angela. “Same with you.” I turned to Brandon. “You too. Julia had all the chances in the world, and she never took her shot until it was too late. All of it was too late. How many millions of people did it cost to save me? How many millions more will it cost to save Tera?”

“You of all people…” Justina hissed, “…you have no right! NO RIGHT AT ALL! You keep your fucking mouth shut, you miserable shit!”

“Willowbud?” Astrid queried softly, looking at me with a confused expression. I hated to see it. God, I hated it.

“Maybe I’m a coward,” I said softly. “I know I don’t deserve to be here right now, but ‘deserve’ has nothing to do with it. None of you deserved any of this, but here we are. If we keep trying to hold onto what we’ve lost, we’ll be dragged down with it.”

“You’re right, Willowbud,” Angela said. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

“Enough, everybody,” Brandon said. “This is not something we are going to discuss. We came here to strategize against Julia, and we have enough great minds in this room to plan for every contingency.” He stood up and walked toward the wooden depiction of Droktin’s Pass. “I like Bianca’s idea. Julia has to walk through this pass no matter what. This is the inevitability we need to plan for, not a hypothetical about what Tera might do.”

I snapped my fingers. “That’s how long it will take for Tera to decide to give you up, Brandon. It won’t take much longer than that for Julia to get here. Maybe a half an hour. Your scouts won’t see her coming. She would just be the blackest point in the night sky. A shadow moving across the stars, and then…” I snapped my fingers again, “…she’s here.”

“Tera needs to die,” Nona said.

“Someone does,” Justina snarled, staring a hole through me.

“There is another option, Your Holiness,” Bianca said. “One that would remove Tera from the equation without killing her.”

“What?”

“Neutralize the threat she poses. Reveal yourself.”

Angela gaped at Bianca. “Bitch, have you lost your goddamn mind?”

Brandon looked just as bewildered as his sister, but then he scratched his chin and nodded. “Set a trap,” he said.

“As I said before, Your Holiness, war is a game of psychology,” Bianca took her reforged blade out and slipped it into the gates of Droktinar. “Yes, Tera can sniff out a shape-shifter, but that will be of very little use if thousands of them have infiltrated the horde. Once you transform the Ionans—”

“We would never!” Nona exclaimed.

Bianca rolled her eyes. “Once you bless the Ionans with this gift, we will have a force so large that it cannot be extracted from the horde. We will sew chaos into their ranks, we will hit them hard, fast, and viciously, and we will drive them to the pass.”

“It’s not that easy,” Justina said.

“Nothing about it will be easy,” Astrid said. “Many of us will die by the Heat Bringer’s hands. Some of us will be captured by her.” She twisted her lips. “It was unwise of us to reveal ourselves to so many, Willowbud.”

“There is no torture that will make a valkyrie betray her god,” Nona said.

“You say that now, High Guard,” Astrid replied darkly.

“The first thing we’ll need to do is extract Tera,” Brandon said. “Get her as far away from this as possible; that’s number one.” He turned to Justina. “You, me, and Angela will take care of that personally.”

“You cannot put yourself at such risk!” Nona objected. Bianca gave a concurrent nod, but she said nothing.

Brandon held up his hand. “I’m not asking for suggestions, High Guards. The only way we’re getting Tera out is if we can lure her out, and there are only two people here who are worth her time. Willowbud has to remain a secret, but I’m the bait anyway. Yes, it’s a gamble, but we have to bet on ourselves.” He looked at me. “What do you think?”

I chewed on my lip, decidedly not voicing my objection. I knew Brandon well enough to know that his heart was even bigger than his dick, and there was no changing his mind about my doomed aunt. “How long do we have?” I asked.

Bianca worked her jaw contemplatively. “We need at least two days to train the Ionans in the basics of shifting. We should wait no longer than that.” Bianca looked up at me. “Three days from now, we make our move.”

“Exit strategy?” Gloria asked.

“Our best chance of survival is to stay embedded into Julia’s ranks. If we are apart, she need not be cautious with her flame. There will be no exit strategy. We will harry her all the way to Droktin’s Pass.”

“That could be days—weeks even,” I said.

Bianca just smiled thinly. “We may have ample opportunity to get a kill-shot on the Heat Bringer during this time. Every warrior here can hit a deer’s eye from a hundred yards. Perhaps all of our attempts will be in vain, but a shot not taken is a shot missed all the same.”

“A shot taken and missed means a great deal when you’re trying to kill a god,” I said. “Brandon’s first idea was for me to throw a mountain at Julia, but that plan doesn’t account for what happens when she catches it.”

Bianca shrugged. “You are too important to risk, but every valkyrie here is a weapon, and we must be used.”

“Only if you have a clean shot,” Brandon said sternly. “I don’t want any martyrs in my army.”

Bianca bowed her head, stepped away from the contoured map on the floor and sat in her chair, leaving Brandon alone in the center of the room.

“Why do we have to wait until Droktin’s Pass?” Angela asked, and looked up at me. “Can’t you just kill her in the desert? Sand is just a bunch of little rocks; it should be a cakewalk.”

“I uh…” I shifted uncomfortably, “…I can’t really do anything with sand.”

Angela gave me a frank look. “You’re fucking joking.”

“It’s kind of a singular focus thing. I can move a mountain because it’s one big piece, but if I want to build a sandcastle, I’m gonna need some water and a bucket.”

“Willowbud is our secret weapon,” Brandon reiterated. “We can’t reveal her until the end. If we get lucky with a bowshot from a valkyrie, we get lucky, but this plan isn’t based on luck. We’re setting a trap.”

“A bear trap,” I muttered with a smile.

Brandon touched his toe to the floor, and the wooden Droktin’s Pass slammed shut.

JULIA

Through great annals of stone, I walked. My feet burned a path down thousands of steps, and each imprint carried the impression of darkness that surrounded me, giving shape to the vaulted obsidian ceiling that cascaded along great gothic pillars which descended into the swallowing depths below, a throat to the bowels of the earth where God’s creatures scuttled and squirmed upon the black plane, devouring and writhing in a primal contest for the scraps they tore off each other. There was a singular torch on the far wall. It shone like a dark orange twinkle in the air and reflected off the millions of writhing carapaces, centipedal legs, and bulbous arachnid bodies that shimmered together in an orgy of death. They had not heeded my warning.

“Please,” I called to them, “go now!”

I could feel them turning toward me. Millions of little beedi eyes searching for the inkling of radiance in the darkness, millions of pincers clicking, millions of spiny legs shifting into position. I could see all of the monsters beneath the earth through the ancient molten rock, but I felt no repulsion.

“Please,” I whispered, “don’t make me do this.”

They came for me. Upon their millions of legs, they charged over each other to feast upon soft flesh, their feet clicking against the stone floor in a percussive chorus of horror. A tear fell down my cheek. I opened my palms and erupted. The torchlight vanished. The world was black and infernal. I felt their bodies crisp and pop, I felt their carapaces crack and snap, I felt their soft insides burst and bubble. They evaporated from the planar floor of Droktinar, becoming ash, and then becoming nothing. The great convective winds of my flame blew the remnants into the immense void of the atrium, sending it high into the lightless heavens above. But the heavens above were not a void. There were no heavens above me. With my infernal winds carrying my heat upward through the columnal space, I sensed an immense blockage. It was a shape larger than any other in this chasm, but it was not of smooth walls, ornate balconies, or winding staircases. I opened my palm and dimmed my fire. A white aura appeared around the blackness of my flame and revealed a gargantuan arachnid body suspended above me in a web that spanned the entire atrium. Its legs spanned thousands of feet, its abdomen was larger than the largest ship, its mandibles were longer than a house, and they clicked above me before a great multitude of blind compound eyes that reflected me in their pale milky mirrors.

“That’s why I couldn’t see you,” I gasped, admiring the network of webbing.

The Guardian clicked its mandibles, and slowly descended toward me. This is not a place for you, Heat Bringer. A female voice whispered in the back of my mind. This is the tomb of a people you murdered, of an empire you laid waste to in your fear of its majesty. In your fear of the truth.

“That wasn’t me.”

The Destroyer is the Destroyer, the immense spider said, settling into her web. It matters not whose name you carry. You are the descendent of Hatred, and so you must kill Joy. It is your nature. She gestured to me with one of her great spiny legs. You have burned your footsteps into this rock and besmirched this temple. You know naught of your insult.

“You are mistaken,” I said. “I bring the people of Droktin, Furok, Hektin and Gratora back here.”

Those people are dead, Destroyer, she hissed. Those people were titans of mankind. They could make marvels that would rival even the creations of divinity, instruments that could see worlds beyond this one, cities so magnificent they would bring tears to the eyes of the beholder. They captured lightning within metal, built horses of fire, moved water into spires that touched the heavens. They were true disciples of Vitanimus, chosen by him to carry the burden of knowledge into the great beyond, and the jealous men of lesser lands found their champion in you to destroy them. No, Heat Bringer, the people you have brought here are not the children of those names you blasphemy; the last of those people died between the walls of Droktin’s Pass in their final moment of defiance against the hordes of ignorance.

I cocked my head. “Who is Vitanimus?”

You know him by a different name. The spider crawled with surprising fluidity down a thick strand of webbing. She stopped just above my head, her thick pincers nearly grazing my hair. Her head was so massive that it encompassed my entire field of vision, and my reflected visage seemed to be magnified in her many eyes. Before your ancestor melted Hektinar to the ground, there stood within the city, a great university. Within that university, there was a magnificent library, and within that library, there was the truth. Only a few students were ever allowed there, and only after swearing themselves to secrecy on pain of death. I was one such student by virtue of being Furok’s sister. Arbitrus Gen was another such student by virtue of being a god.

“There is only one god.”

The spider clicked her pincers. That was what Arbitrus thought as well. So entrenched was he in that perception, that even when shown the naked truth, he still denied what his eyes and mind could see plainly, and was so terrified of it that he tried to erase it from memory. He melted Hektinar. He scorched those truths to ash, and he killed all who knew of them. All but me.

“Arbitrus melted Hektinar because the orc empire was too powerful.”

Arbitrus will say anything to justify his atrocity. Even the ruins of Hektinar are a grander display of civilization than the hovel his people climbed from. Jealousy and fear governed him, and so it governs you.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re a tethered one, aren’t you? Just like Passion. Only God should have the power of life. You are an abomination made by the devil. That’s who Vitanimus was, wasn’t he? Just some devil like Brandon. Arbitrus was right to burn those satanic lies, along with all of those who would spread them!”

The spider bristled, and the sound carried down her immense body to echo in the annals above us. Do you know why I am here, Heat Bringer?

“To rot in darkness.”

This darkness is the tomb of my people, and within it, dwells our ghost. Only those who survive the horrors of this tomb are allowed entrance to his realm, for only a warrior fit to survive such horrors is fit for his audience. I called him ‘brother’ once, but now he is the embodiment of our dying rage. He is entertaining a guest now—a very special guest. The great spider’s blind eyes seemed to focus on me somehow. You have been touched by her—I suppose you think that means you have been touched by God, and I suppose you are right. Perhaps if you see the naked truth for yourself, you will believe it, but I know in my heart of hearts that you are just like your ancestor, and your faith blindfolds you.

The spider pointed one long leg across the expanse of the atrium and gestured to a door. It was so far away that I could hardly discern it with my eyes, and yet my mind had not seen its heat trapped within the stone. Unlike the rest of Droktinar, this door was not made of obsidian. It was not made of anything. I could sense the frozen molten rock that should’ve encompassed its threshold, but there was no void there. The wall of obsidian continued right through the plane of the door like the door was an apparition. The only reason I could see it with my naked eye, was because it was wreathed in a garish crimson aura.

“Wrath,” I whispered.

You have proven yourself worthy, and so I must let you pass, the spider said. I could have killed you a hundred times along your descent to this place, but some of us still know honor. Honor is my name, after all.
“I am sorry, Honor,” I muttered, “but there is no place for you in heaven.”

I sent a single pulse of flame through the abyss. It washed over the obsidian pillars, burst through the vacant corridors, and blasted from the entrance so far above. The great architecture of Droktinar was revealed to me in the form of glowing red rock that stretched the entire breadth and height of the atrium, illuminating the immense void above me, the spiraling staircases now iridescent red, the balconies and ballrooms all luminous with heat. The behemoth outline of Honor was shown in all her wondrous size, her legs spanning from the top of the atrium to the very bottom. The black outline crumbled and flaked away, then dissolved into ash that floated upward with my convective winds. The radiant heat glowed from the obsidian for a moment longer, then dimmed slowly until the shadows consumed the last features of the magnificent hall. Only blackness remained. Only blackness, and the iron door at the end of the hall, embedded into the last depths of Droktinar’s belly, wreathed in garish reds that painted the shining floor with its warning hue. I walked toward it. My footsteps plodded upon the smooth obsidian until the red luminance cast an aura about me, penetrating even the black fire that wisped from my flesh. I reached out and touched the iron handle. My hand passed through it.

“This is astral,” I said to myself.

I closed my eyes and hovered my hand over the handle. Grab, I thought, and felt cold iron wrapped in my fist. I opened my eyes. I had two right hands. One hovered before the door, the other grabbed it. My astral hand was devoid of the flame that wreathed my physical one, and when I tried to think “fire,” nothing happened. I would be without my gifts in there. I glanced down at my astral hand. The markings of Diamond still painted my astral flesh, assuring me that God would protect me in this place. I pulled with my astral body, and the iron door screeched open.

Interlude Three: A Helping Hand

CORRUPTION

Wrath and I stared at the horizon. Beyond the jagged peaks that marked the boundary of his realm, there was an immense column of black smoke. A second ago, the astral plane seemed to have been sucked into an infernal void. The horizon had blackened, the sun had dimmed, and a great wind had rushed through the world, toppling fortresses and sending stone men flying like autumn leaves. Wrath and I had been slammed against the wall of the arena as the front half of the risers was torn away like paper, and the audience was catapulted into the heavens. The infernal patterns on my body had illuminated, cutting through the maelstrom of dust and debris that was kicked up by the shockwave. I thought the hell would never end, but then it was over, and Wrath’s realm righted itself like nothing had happened.

“Honor!” I gasped.

“The Destroyer,” Wrath clapped his hands. “What a beautiful thing that was! Never in all my years have I seen such a display of POWER!” He laughed jovially for a moment, then the drum sounded, and he snapped toward the east. A grin slowly crept across his face. “Holy Mother,” he said, “we have a guest.”

I launched myself upon him. With my stone in hand, I stabbed through his back, through his spine, and through his heart, but to no effect. Wrath wasn’t interested in me any longer, and the wounds I dealt him meant nothing at all. He walked toward the east even as I slashed his heel tendons, cut through his bone, and rendered him an amputee. He continued without so much as a grunt, walking upon air with his stumps until the illusion of his legs came back into being. There was no body to wound.

“Stop!” I screamed. “She belongs to ME!”

Wrath looked back at me with a bemused grin. “You’ve already claimed your mortal, Holy Mother.”

“She is soul-bound to me!”

“I’m not interested in her heart.”

“Do you know what she will do if you meld with her?!” I screamed. “I have tasted her mind, and have seen the mania of her rage! If you take her, she will not leave you another soul to claim!”

Wrath laughed boisterously. “Excellent! Then I shall finally have the warrior to end all war!”

“You can’t—”

“Why can’t I?!” Wrath roared, reeling on me. “Who are you to tell me that I cannot meld, and know life once more?!” He thrust a finger down at me. “You, who knows how to feel? You, who knows how to love and hate? I can only touch the surface of life, scratch, and claw like some rat through the trash, searching for scraps that I once tossed away with such nonchalance! Do you think I am ignorant of what I am?!” He kicked me away like I was nothing. “What can I do, but move toward life like a moth to flame? I am devoid of desire, a slave to compulsion, a prisoner of an idea that I must endure in perpetuity! You speak to me as if I have a choice! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHAT YOU CREATED?! Wrath turned away. “I free you from this place, Holy Mother. Go back to the Untethered One, and whittle away your precious life with whatever purpose suits you.”

He took one step forward and was gone with the boom of a drum. I scrambled to the top of a hill and scaled the walls of a fortress until I was atop the ramparts. Even from such a height, I could not discern the detail of the distant jagged mountains, but I could still hear the drum boom like thunder across the sterile landscape.

“The Destroyer!” Wrath’s voice sounded from hundreds of miles away. “Welcome to my home! I have—”

Darkness. Heat. Someone was screaming. It sounded like an animal. Energy rushed past me, moving with the force of suns, disintegrating the very fabric of the plane beneath my feet. The soldiers melted like wax candles. The fortresses collapsed like they were made of snow. The soil turned to dust, and the hills were flattened. I was falling. Down, down, down I went, plummeting into an infernal hole, my hair floating in the void where air once was.

I was standing on a black plane. There was nothing above me, nor below me. There was no astral sun, nor was there the barren wasteland of Wrath. There was simply… nothing. Just me. Just me, and an open doorway. Julia Gendian stood on the other side of that doorway and stared at me. The symbols on my flesh were more radiant than they’d ever been, and they luminated the darkness, painting the Heat Bringer in monochromatic whites, contrasting the depthless patterns that touched her pallid skin. We stared at each other from across planes of existence.

“Corruption,” she whispered and dropped to her knees.

I just stared at her, my mouth void of moisture, my heart beating high in my throat.

Julia touched her head to the floor of Droktinar and began to pray. “Praise be to God, for letting me bear witness to her embodied word,” she whispered. She raised her head and looked at me. “Why do you carry my patterns?”

“Because we are bound,” I said back.

“I am bound to a Sentient?” she whispered and looked at her flesh. “I thought it was just Diamond’s meld that gave my patterns their hue. I thought God had left her unmarked, but I am not even bound to her? How am I…” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Forgive me, Corruption, but how can a soulless thing bind?”

“I am not soulless,” I whispered back.

“If you are not the word of god, then…” she slowly raised herself to a kneeling position. I could practically hear the iron box in Diamond’s realm creaking open. “…then…” Julia pondered, and her eyes lit up, “…then you are a seraph.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to emote as little relief as possible.

Julia’s face broke into a radiant beam. “I am soul-bound to an angel?”

“To God’s messenger, my love.”

A black tear ran down her cheek. “Has a woman ever been so blessed as I?”

“Not blessed; chosen,” I said and stepped toward her. “Chosen by the Holy Mother herself to carry out her purpose.”

“To build her holy kingdom on earth! I have worked so hard! I have done so much! I have proven—”

“No,” I whispered. “That is not your purpose.”

“What?!” she hissed. “How?! I have done everything in my power to—”

“Shh, my love.”

I stopped just outside of the threshold, reached through the planes of existence, and touched her cheek. The euphoria opened upon her face when my astral flesh met hers; her pupils dilated, her eyes streamed, her mouth fell agape with orgasmic pleasure. I brought her receptive ear to my lips and spilled my prophecy.

“You are not a Creator, Julia Gendian. You are the Destroyer. God did not put such power in your hands to build.”

“What does she want of me, seraph?!” she whined, struggling to maintain her prostration as ecstasy coursed through her.

“This world must be renewed,” I whispered. “Raze every city, flatten every temple, and burn every written word. Leave nothing of the old world but ash, and Diamond will breathe my blessing into those chosen few who are left.”

“But—”

“Are you questioning God’s will?” I hissed.

“No!” she whined back.

“Will you do her bidding?”

“Yes! Always!”

I released her, and she fell gasping forward, her hands breaching the threshold between planes and reaching for me.

“Don’t leave me!” she cried and looked up at me through a tangle of red hair. “Do not go back to my daughter! She is unworthy! She is a nonbeliever! I have always been the Holy Mother’s most faithful servant! Meld with me!” She blubbered up at me with worshipful eyes. “We are already bound in love! Make us whole!”

I frowned down at her, and she quailed like I’d struck her.

“Forgive my blasphemous jealousy, seraph,” she whimpered. “I know that I am unworthy of your vision.”

“You are forgiven.” I stepped back from her and wrapped my hand around Wrath’s iron door. I waited until she raised her trembling gaze to mine, then I pointed to her patterns on my black flesh. “Remember that your daughter may have received my vision, but not my heart. I fell in love with your pain, Julia. I saw that it was holy.”

“I understand,” she hissed, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

I looked around the plane outside of the door. “Why did you kill Wrath?”

“Because he terrified me.”

“As he should. He was a hell-spawn made from the satanic Life Giver. All creatures who make domiciles of this plane are servants of the devil, and must be touched by God’s black truth, or sent back to where they came. Do you know where Fedar’s Gate is?”

“No.”

“Once you pass through Droktin’s Pass, follow the Gratoran Wall south until you reach the old mines. There is another demon, a far more dangerous one that lives beyond that portal. I will need your help to kill her.”

“Why wait? I will go with you now to kill this interloper!”

“No,” I said, holding my hand out to stop her. “There is no realm on the other side of this door. This plane is not meant for mortals; it is a raging sea with only a few islands, and those islands are owned by the devil.”

Julia blinked up at me. “You mean Vitanimus?”

I heard the hinges of the box creaking open once more. “There is no one named Vitanimus, Julia. That is a lie,” I said and shut the door. There was no realm now; only the endless jungle and immense sky of stars. I dropped to my knees, pushed my hands into the familiar soil, and let out a long, shuddering breath.

Part Four: Party Time

DIAMOND

I blinked awake. The night sky blanketed the world overhead, the darkness broken by millions upon millions of stars that formed an immense belt across the sky. I’d never seen the desert sky before. Looking up at the sky from the Drastinar countryside had been akin to looking up at an enormous domed ceiling, for the humidity made it nearly impossible to see anything but the brightest of dots, but looking up at the sky from the desert floor was akin to looking through a window. That was, until Tera’s stupid face got in the way of it.

“Oh, thank god!” she cried, threw her hands up to the sky, and called to the heavens, “you really are real, aren’t you?”

“The Water Dancer has returned!” someone yelled.

“Praise be to the Holy Mother!”

“Praise be!” someone else shouted.

I groaned and climbed to my feet. Gosh, I was tired. I might’ve been out cold for the whole day, but I’d been getting my mental butt kicked by Xaya for the duration. I was in no mood for people, but I knew I would be later, so I rubbed my eyes and assessed the world around me. My immediate surroundings were filled with white-robed Breytans, and there were quite a bit less of them than there had been when I left Drastin. None of them seemed all that happy to see me. Beyond the immediate ring of valkyries, were thousands—no, millions of orcs stretching across the desert dunes, their fires twinkling to the horizon. They were becoming louder by the second as news of my awakening traveled backward, and their excitement began to shake the very ground beneath me.

“Holy smokes, Mom’s been busy,” I muttered, then raised my voice. “Hi everyone! I’m Diamond the Water Dancer!”

An unintelligible roar swelled from them, filling the desert with the voices of millions. The only time I’d ever heard a sound comparable to it was when I was out at sea in the midst of a hurricane. How the heck was I going to get any sleep tonight?!

“Shut up!” I yelled, and row after row went silent until the last echo faded. “OK people, I’ve got two rules! First rule: nobody interrupts my nap time! Second rule: I want tiramisu at hand at all times. Who has any tiramisu?”

A few desert frogs croaked.

I rubbed my brow. “Tera, find a chef for me.”

“You got it, boss,” she said cheerily and strolled into the crowd.

I turned to Aiko. “Aiko, if Tera tries to run away, cut her legs off.”

Tera paused at the perimeter, clenched her fists, then stomped into the crowd with a growl.

“Hey,” I said, turning to a gawking male orc, “what’s that thing everyone’s got between their eyes.”

“It is the crescent symbol of the Holy Mother, Sister Diamond,” the orc said.

“Hmm…” I frowned, pulled the scant amount of moisture from the air around me, and sent an arrow of water through the man’s eye. He collapsed, and so did a few hundred people directly behind him. I overshot a little.

“Ok, new rule everybody!” I yelled. “If anyone calls me ‘Sister Diamond,’ I am going to kill them and everyone behind them. My name is ‘Water Dancer,’ OK? It’s a really cool name that I thought up all by myself. Also, the Holy Mother is a made-up bedtime story old people tell themselves before they die. Dead is dead, there is no afterlife, everything just goes black, and then you’re gone. The end.” And with that, I hopped from the wagon and marched over to the Breytans. “Rika, Micah, and Hina,” I called three of them. “Make me a featherbed with your wings. Oh, and pull your boobies out so that I have something to play with.”

ASTRID

I fished through my pouch until I found it: my second-most precious possession. My cigarettes. It seemed that nearly dying, losing my mind, and becoming a different species hadn’t erased the bad habit I’d formed in the Screeching Siren. Perhaps I would’ve kicked the addiction if Gloria wasn’t there to constantly enable it. She carried a sack large enough to fit an elk carcass in, and as far as I could tell, it was filled with nothing but wine and tobacco. I flicked the flint lighter with a little too much urgency, then let out a deep sigh of relief as I filled the air around me with smoke.

“I know that feeling,” Willowbud chuckled behind me.

“Shit!” I yelped and punched out my smoke against the bark.

“You think I didn’t taste it on you every time we kissed?” she laughed and leaned against the tree with me. “I don’t care if you smoke.”

“If you quit, then I should quit too.”

“I only quit because Corruption was the reason I smoked in the first place. You don’t have to quit for my sake.”

“It is a disgusting habit.”

“Eh, it depends on who’s doing it. A ninety-year-old grandma hacking up a lung? Yeah, that’s gross, but a sexy vampire-valkyrie lighting up? Hot as hell.”

“I one day plan to be that ninety-year-old woman, and I do not want to be hacking up a lung.”

Willowbud laughed. “You think we’re living past next week?”

“I always enjoy your optimism.”

“I’m starting to tire of your sarcasm.”

“I quite like it,” I grinned at her. “It’s such a fun form of lying.”

A sound came from the west. It was a sound I once coveted, but now it sent a chill up my spine. Millions of voices had risen from the Gratoran Desert in a great roar, then settled into silence.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Willowbud muttered.

“Nope,” I said, fished into my pouch, and pulled out another cigarette.

“What happened to ‘I don’t want to be hacking up a lung when I’m ninety?'”

“Yeah, but you said it looks sexy now,” I said with a square between my teeth, “and besides, we’re not living past next week, so what’s it matter?”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Willowbud said and reached up for one.

“Remember that whole speech Gloria gave you about convincing versus conviction?” I sneered, wagging the cigarette just out of her reach. “I think you failed that test just now.”

“Eat my ass,” she growled and snatched the square from my thumb and forefinger. “I just need an excuse to get out of that room anyway.”

I glanced back into the tree. The scene of solemn strategy had given way to revelry. Bianca and her Ofanian captains stalked the party in lascivious golden garb that highlighted everything and concealed nothing, Angela wore a dress with a scandalous neckline that reached her pelvis, Justina wore a pair of thigh-high socks and a skirt that didn’t come close to covering her ass, Gloria wore an elegant gown that had the back cut out all the way past her perfect pale buttocks, and Brandon had on a bathrobe which didn’t quite cover is saggy balls. It reminded me of many of the nights spent in the Screeching Siren, and I felt a pang of nostalgia for those terrifying days.

“It’s gonna be an orgy real soon,” Willowbud chuckled.

“Then we shouldn’t delay,” I smiled at her.

She just shook her head and smiled ruefully back. “You should go in. I’d just ruin the atmosphere.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Everyone in there loves you. Half the people in there want to kill me.”

“That never stopped you from a good party before…” I sighed and rested my head against the bark. “I’m sorry, Willowbud, I didn’t mean it.”

“Yeah, you did,” she replied, lighting the smoke between her lips. “It’s OK, I get it. Night Eyes was just more fun than I am.” She pulled the cigarette from her lips and coughed. “Fuck. No reason to start now if I’m not even going to live long enough to enjoy it.” Stamping the cigarette out on the ground, she sulked away from me with her hands in her pockets. “Go have some fun. Don’t worry about me.”

I rolled my eyes. “For someone immune to guilt only a month ago, you sure are laying it on thick now.”

She turned around and shrugged with a smile. “Brandon tried to hold my hand today, and I had a panic attack. A little birdie told me that you sucked off the High Guard of Ofan in front of everyone just to prove a point. Don’t let me limit you. You’ll just resent me if you do.”

“You made me this way, Willowbud.”

“Should I apologize?”

“I’ve got half a mind to drag your whiny ass in there.”

Willowbud let out a long sigh and glanced at the tree behind us, the windows aglow with warm light, jubilant shadows, and laughter emanating from within. “I would rather face down Julia right now than walk into that room,” she said.

“Then that’s why you need to do it.”

“Why, Astrid?” she asked me. “What’s in there for me?”

“The closest thing to family either of us has left.”

“Yeah, well neither of us have a great track record with family, do we?”
“Fuck you,” I growled, marched over to her, and snatched her into my arms. “You can sit at the bar and sulk for all I care, but you are coming with!”

“Let me go, I mean it!”

“Oh, I know you too well now, Willowbud Autumnsong!” I growled. “You want me to run off with you so we can have a melancholy romp by the river. Well, the Ofanians dump their shit in the river, and if you think your penis can replace dozens of valkyrie hermaphrodites, a shape-shifting Bound One, a god of life, a vampire gangster queen, and a succubus biologist, then you’re delusional!”

“You’re supposed to tell me all of them together couldn’t add up to one of me!”

“I’m not that good a liar!” I exclaimed, marched into the tree, and propped Willowbud onto a barstool that was so large she looked like a child on it.

“You’re being a real cunt right now,” she snarled at me.

“And you are being a petulant little baby,” I snarled back, and slammed a massive tankard of ale in front of her. “Now, you are going to drink this until you feel like participating in group activities.”

“Then I’ll drink myself to death!”

“It takes hours for alcohol poisoning to kill you. I’ll make sure Brandon resuscitates you after the party’s over.”

ANGELA

“She can’t do it,” Bianca muttered.

“There’s no way,” Gloria concurred.

“Bet on it,” I said to Gloria.

Gloria reached into her purse, dropped a sack of gold onto the table, and sneered at me. “That’s enough to buy all of Towerhead twenty times over, with a little extra to pay for the demolition of that rundown shithole you call home. Match it.”

I blinked at the king’s ransom the vampire had nonchalantly tossed onto the table. It didn’t matter that I was bound to a god; I was born poor, and that much gold was magical. “I’ll uh… I’ll write you a check,” I said.

Gloria’s blood-red lips grinned to show her fangs. “I don’t want your money, Angela.”

There was something about the look of utter predation on Gloria’s face that made me shudder and blush simultaneously.

“My, my,” Bianca chuckled, and ran her fingers over my burning cheek, “it is a rare thing to see you flustered, Bound One.”

“No witty comebacks?” Brandon snickered.

“I’ll come on your—”

“Angela!” Justina hissed. “Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate!”

Justina was on the table. In a feat of flexibility only she was capable of, she’d managed to twist herself into a knot that brought her pelvis just below the level of her chin. With her skirt hiked up well past her hips, the entire party watched as the succubus locked her ankles behind her head, and brought her face forward until her chin rested just above her slit.

“Hello friends, what’s going on—” Astrid stopped when she got to the front row of the circus and gasped. “Oh my gods, is she doing the—”

“Shh!” I hissed.

Bianca glanced at Astrid, then at me, then reached onto the table, and pulled her golden cock-rings from the pool. “I am changing my bet.”

“You can’t do that!”

“But now there are two confirmed witnesses. If I had more information, then—”

“That’s not how gambling works, Bianca!” I snapped.

“Gambling is forbidden by the Ofanian Codes anyway. This is stupid. I’m—”

“You’re in too deep now, sister!” I growled.

She frowned and returned her rings. “Fine then. Show us, Justina.”

With the utmost concentration, Justina leaned forward, took a deep breath, and held it. Her face began to redden; the veins on her temples began to show. Her purple eyes were fixed upon her pelvic floor as she expired small breaths of exertion. Then, her purple anus opened up and birthed a striped thirteen pool ball. The crowd gasped. Justina tilted backward in her pretzel contortion, and the pool ball rolled down her taint and was swallowed by her pussy. The crowd applauded, but the trick was not yet over. Justina’s mauve netherlips unfurled like a blooming flower, and the pool ball rolled from her ovule, down her chin, and into her awaiting mouth. In a feat of jaw distortion, Justina consumed the pool ball wholly. Then, before the screaming adulation of the crowd, she spat out the ball, consumed it with her pussy, birthed it, then took it into her anus once more before farting it out onto the table. Brandon had performed deific miracles before this very crowd, but they had never applauded with such wonder as they did for Justina’s depraved party trick.

I smirked at Bianca and extracted her rings from the table. “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”

She sneered back at me. “I’ll have them back by the end of the night.”

“You’ll have to earn it, you peasant!” I cackled and snatched Gloria’s sack from the table. “Look, Brandon, we’re rich!”

“We can finally buy shoes and nice hats!”

“Oh, there’s much more that money can buy than shoes and nice hats, dearest brother,” I said, smirking crookedly at Gloria and effecting a posh accent. “Do you smell that, Brandon? It’s the smell of poverty. I do wonder what this desperate little mosquito will do to get her pennies back.”

“Careful, Angela,” Brandon said warningly. “She’s a really sore loser.”

“She certainly will be after I’m done with her,” I grinned at the vampire.

A second later, I was pressed against the wall. A pair of large crimson eyes filled my vision, and a pair of heavenly lips opened my mouth to deliver her devilish tongue. Her milky bust squished against mine through our bodices, and the entropy of bulging domes carried our breasts from the constraints of our clothing. I felt a cool hand wrap around my shaft, and the other slide easily below my balls to sink into my tight feminine heat. All I could do was grasp at her backside, filling my hands with her succulent cheeks beneath the fabric of her satin dress, dragging the skirt up her legs until my palm touched warm soft flesh. Once her dress was around her hips, my fingers slithered into her crack, traversing the delicate flesh of her crevasse until I felt her hot aperture pressing back against me.

“That’s where I like it,” she whispered against my lips, her breath rapt and heavy. “How do you like it?”

“I guess I’m more of a traditionalist,” I gasped back, squeezing her wrist between my grinding thighs to savor the depth of her penetration.

She chuckled huskily and curled her fingers inside of me. “Just an old-fashioned country girl, huh?”

“Old fashioned country girl?” I laughed breathily. “My balls are pressing against your forearm.”

“That hardly changes the situation, does it?” Gloria asked, wrapped her hand around my throat, and pressed the back of my head into the wall. She caressed my neck as she choked me, her red eyes alight and ravenous, seeming to draw me ever into their depths as her other hand rubbed possessively from within. My nectar ran thickly through her writhing digits, and my cock throbbed against her pressing tummy. “Teenage country girls, all the same,” she crooned, her fangs flashing with her blood-red grin. “You’re hardly more than the sheep you used to shepherd.”

“You wanna bet against me again?” I croaked.

“Most certainly,” she hissed from beneath her dramatic brow. “Go ahead, Bound One, tell me I’m wrong.”

“Is it wise to play chicken with a dragon, Gloria?” Astrid asked, lounging against the wall beside me. Her words were punctuated with moans, for Bianca’s face was planted firmly between her thighs.

Gloria squeezed my throat harder and grinned broader when I became wetter for her. “Something you need to know about being a vampire, Astrid, is that people expect something sexually from you. They think we’re all high-libido sadists who do nothing but engage in ritualistic orgies.” She smirked back at her blood-daughter. “They’re not wrong.”

Astrid giggled through a moan, then turned her sapphire gaze on me. Her round pupils changed to predatory slits, and her lush lips peeled back to reveal long, white fangs. My back arched by itself.

Gloria laughed musically, and tilted my face upward with a press of her thumb, exposing the entire column of my throat. “Maybe you are a shape-shifter of immeasurable power,” she hissed, “but all you are to me is just another victim.”

“Yes!” I gasped to the ceiling, my body writhing uncontrollably beneath me.

“Astrid, dearest blood-daughter of mine,” Gloria said, her voice dripping with seduction, “won’t you share this meal with me?”

Two mouths opened about opposite sides of my throat, two sets of plush lips formed around my flesh, and two pairs of fangs punctured me. The wound wasn’t painful at all, for the venom they injected within it was so disarming that it turned every muscle within my body to jelly. I went limp in their arms, and they pressed me against the wall as they fed from me, their hands joining between my legs to exploit my every weakness, churning my insides until the pleasure made my legs give out. I slid down the wall with a gasp, and they descended with me, sucking my life into their fangs and lathering my throat with the tips of their tongues.

When they were done feeding from my throat, they shared a blood-red kiss before me, watching me from the corners of their eyes before they moved down my body. They bit into my areolas and sucked my nipples to throbbing points, and I whimpered, presenting my chest to them with my arching back. They licked their way down my belly, then pressed their lips together around the base of my shaft. Still kissing each other, they exchanged tongues around my girth as they moved up and down, never taking their eyes off me, watching me from smirking irises as I dangled my fingers before agape lips, and whimpered my pathetic tones. Gloria took me into her mouth, slurped her way up my shaft, then relinquished my sheened cock for Astrid to taste. Astrid did the same, expressing her God-given talent with such tender rapaciousness that I nearly came from just the second suck. She grinned at me knowingly and pressed against my prostate to send a bubble of milk frothing from my tip.

“Bite it!” I cried, wholly enslaved by my desire, driving my pelvis upward to present my waggling organ.

Gloria chuckled and took me deep. She injected me around my base and poured such sweet poison into me that the ecstatic lassitude suffused me from tip to anus, passing through my occupied pussy that was sweltering about her kneading fingers. My eyes rolled back, and I slouched against the wall. I heard Gloria’s sardonic laughter coming closer as she retracted her fingers from my nethers, took an indulgent moment to suck them clean, then began to climb up my body. When my eyes rolled forward, they were filled with the vision of the voluptuous vampire smirking at me as she forked her fingers through her hairless crack, opened her pink little anus, and settled slowly down along my girth. Her rim opened around me, sucked me in inch by inch, and squeezed me in a squishing vice that left no room between us. I felt her tender sheath stretch around me, and she moaned splendidly all the way down, rubbing her pretty little pussy with her long black nails.

“Take me!” I hissed, my lower lips quivering, my voice wavering with terrible desperation.

“Country girls, all the same,” Gloria smirked, sliding her body onto mine so that we pressed belly to belly, breast to breast, lips to lips. Her crimson eyes encompassed all of my vision, and they drew me into the depthless centers of her pupils, pulling me into the abyss of her perverse and terrible mind. “I’m not going to be gentle with you, Bound One,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” I whimpered back.

JUSTINA

My heels were behind my head, forcing my face down so that I had to stare at my horrific violation. Thick gleaming brown cocks moved like pistons into my holes, reaming my anus to a gripping white circle, stretching my pussy into membranous petals that squeezed about the column of man. As exposed as I was, there was no way to stop them from plunging as deeply as they wanted into me, and they could go very, very deep. Deja held my thighs from behind, Alecia leaned into me from above, and I wrapped my arms around myself, gripped my jiggling bronze cheeks, and spread myself wider.

“Oh gods above, Your Eminence!” Alecia grunted, the sweat gleaming from her athletic body as it flexed and heaved against me. “You’re so tight with Deja’s cock in your ass!”

“You feel like heaven, but you certainly don’t belong there,” Deja mused huskily into my ear. “Not when you let us do such terrible things to you.”

“Don’t stop,” I mumbled stupidly between my ceaseless moans, “fuck me straight to hell.”

Alecia and Deja giggled musically, and slid their hands upon my body, cupping and squeezing my breasts, gently kneading my trembling thighs, entangling their fingers into my hair.

“I love how helpless you get when my cock’s inside you,” Alecia smiled against my mouth. “You make me feel like such a man.”

“Such a generous lover,” Deja concurred, planting a possessive kiss on my throat. “We can do whatever we want to you, can’t we?”

“Yes!” I croaked.

“And you’ll love it,” Alecia snickered.

“More than anything,” I whispered drunkenly, enraptured by the way their cocks entered me so brutally, contrasting the tenderness of their hands and voices.

“What a cunning predator she is,” Deja laughed to Alecia, “to make her prey feel they are the hunters.”

“Who knew little succubus teen pussy would be so addictive?” Alecia asked against my lips as she wrapped her hands around my throat. “You’re such a dangerous little rat, Your Eminence.”

“What else can a rodent do against eagles?” I smiled back against her.

“You better be careful,” Deja’s tongue painted my ear. “Eagles are very possessive.”

“We don’t like to share,” Alecia growled and began to choke me. “I want you all to myself!”

“A little too possessive, Alecia,” I said gently as her eyes turned my violet.

“Master?” she queried with a hopeful smile on her face.

“No need to stop what you were doing,” I said, and she continued so without further ado.

“She’s not the only one smitten by you, Your Eminence,” Deja said as she began to pump harder into my squeezing rectum. “Erica and Nakeisha watch your every move.”

“I appreciate their interest, I really do,” I gasped, “but why is it that every valkyrie who shows romantic interest in me is so… crazy?”

“We are taught to despise your kind. It is why everyone is so rough with you even though we like you.”

“Look, I love getting roughed-up and treated like a sloven whore—I am a sloven whore—but why can’t the ones who are interested in me be, you know, normal about it?”

“What exactly is normal about this situation?” Deja tittered musically and licked the inside of my ear. “When you remove the constraints of gender and code from hyper-competitive warrior women, you create a competition of lust. Valkyries always seek mates outside of the clan, and since His Holiness has the Bound One, you have become the most prized mate on the mountain. Those who want you struggle to reconcile their prejudices with their desire. They do not know how to court you.”

“They could try asking me out.”

“Will you go out with me, Master?!” Alecia yelped excitedly between her pleasured growls.

“Um… suck my toes, and I’ll think about it,” I said, hoping I would never have to answer that question. Alecia could force my heels behind my head and fuck me like I was a toy, but having dinner with her felt a little too intimate.

“That was cold of you,” Deja whispered.

“Excuse me if I don’t want to get tied down, OK?!” I growled back at her, savoring the way her tip split me open so deeply. “There’s no such thing as a monogamous succubus. I will not be held emotionally hostage.”

“I would never do that,” Deja crooned softly, and gently pinched my nipples.

I glanced over my shoulder at her. “What?”

“Just so long as I know I’m special to you, it will be enough for me,” Deja rolled my nipples between her thumbs and fingers, sending tingles deep into my chest, joining the chorus of my thumping heart.

I actually blushed a little. “Deja, are you… are you asking me out?”

“Does the caldera lake at ten tomorrow work for you?”

“I… uh… I… don’t know?” I smiled, crawling with anxiety and butterflies to accompany the violent orgasmic tide that was swelling within me. I’d never been on a date before.

“There’s a unique species of nighthawk that nests there,” Deja whispered softly. “Accipiter Noctis is its scientific name, I believe. I know the mating call that will rouse it from its nest, and we can observe it together.”

I looked back at her, failing miserably to hide my furious blushing. “I’d like that.”

ASTRID

As Gloria rocked back and forth atop the subdued Angela Sorensen, I enjoyed the taste of the Bound One’s pretty little slit and continued my gentle violation of her anus. Once Gloria got into her rhythm, there was no more room for my face in the violent jiggling of pale ass fat, and so I turned my attention to the vaginally-feasting hermaphroditic valkyrie behind me. Bianca’s face was planted firmly between my cheeks, her broad nose was pressing into my anus, and her mouth was wholly around my petals so that she could deliver her tongue in and out of me, dipping then sliding to upend my engorged clit. I lifted one leg and rotated to my back, enjoying the new angle of her tongue and the new view of her face. Her luscious brown lips quirked into a smile then pursed around my clit, and sucked it.

“Great Creators above!” I moaned, wrapping my thighs around her head and trapping her face between them. “Don’t stop!”

Bianca winked and devoured me. I knitted my fingers into her woolly hair as I rode the orgasmic wave she provided, cresting with an arch of my back and an exaltation to the ceiling. When I regained my equanimity, I unwrapped my legs from her head, and let her climb up my body.

“There, now we’re even,” I grinned against her lips.

“We are far from even,” she smiled back, painting my mouth with her tongue. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to finish what you’ve started.”

“Only if I get to play with your friends too,” I snickered.

Bianca’s brown eyes alighted. “I am very curious about your proclivities. I’ve delved into some dark and strange perversions while serving His Holiness, but the tales of the Screeching Siren have become legend, and you were often the star.”

“Is that so?” I giggled, then reached between us, and undid my belt from my hiked-up tunic. I cinched it around my neck and handed Bianca the lead. “I would hate to disappoint.”

Bianca led me by my train through the devolving party. The uptight and rigid Ofanians I had once scorned were now languid beasts who sprawled about the room in various conditions of sex, but this was not the Screeching Siren where whores enacted the wishes of their patrons; this was a lioness’s den, and the felines created a hierarchy of dominance within their orgy. The sexuality of each woman was individual, but how they expressed it depended upon their rank within the clan. Some women had wholly adopted their newfound masculinity, but the submissive among these “males” would be mounted from behind by more dominant “males” and ridden hard by more dominant “females.” Dominance in the hierarchy was decided by who was participating. I watched a dominant male railing into the spread legs of a submissive female, only for the male to be touched on the shoulder by an older Ofanian. Upon seeing who had beckoned her, the dominant male wilted against the submissive, bit her lip in a show of supplication, reached back, and spread her ass to be entered by the new alpha. As Bianca led me through the group, I saw the eyes of all the clanswomen track her. None of them bore any sort of challenge in them, and even the most dominant of her captains would adopt a pose of vulnerability for her if she so desired to take them.
“Which are you, Bianca;” I asked her, “male or female?”

“It’s fluid for all of us,” she replied over her shoulder. “Somedays I’m a gay man, somedays I’m a gay woman, somedays I’m straight, but most days…” she grinned at me. “…I like everything. I am curious to see what you will be.”

“What?”

“His Holiness must bless all of the Ionans. They are not as open-minded as you are; they will choose to stay as they are unless combat dictates it, but I know you too well, Bound One, so you will be blessed here and now, where you will be able to make the most of your… gifts.”

Bianca stopped, then stepped aside. Brandon was lounging like the god he was in a featherbed of winged women. The black beauties seemed to want to taste every inch of him, for ten of them were sucking his fingers, toes, nipples, ears, and… well, everything else of course. Bianca circumnavigated the perimeter of women that had formed around me and took her place between her god’s legs. She lifted him reverently by the thighs and planted her face into his buttocks to feast from his anal halo.

“A new bird enters the flock,” Brandon mused with a drunken smile.

“With all due respect to the Ofanians, Your Holiness, I believe I was your first bird.”

“Yes, and that’s kind of a tender spot for them,” Brandon laughed.

“Careful, Your Holiness,” Bianca said with a smack of her lips as she pushed one finger up his ass, “I know where all your tender spots are.”

Brandon’s eyes rolled back as the bed of women slid their hands beneath him, and hoisted him reverently up. Bianca extracted her finger and made herself into a holy throne for her god. With rapt eyes, I watched Brandon Sorensen’s puckered pink rim expand wholly around Bianca’s black cock, then descend slowly while she wrapped her loving arms around him, kissed his throat, and gently guided him to sit. Her smooth hairless balls rested against his, and the god of life let out a splendid sigh as he eased into his violation.

“You can pick your jaw up off the floor, Astrid,” he sneered, “I know you’ve seen me like this before.”

Bianca framed her wings around him and held him dearly as she began to slowly thrust. “The Bound One has been reborn, and so she is a newcomer,” she whispered into her god’s ear and looked at me. “If she wants to join the flock, she must prove her worth first.”

Arya Blackwing slithered beneath her mother’s perverse joining and began licking Bianca’s shaft clean with every steady rise and fall. My jaw dropped a bit lower, and Bianca’s smirk turned a little eviler.

“Yes, I share the flesh of my daughter,” she whispered as she gently ravaged Brandon. “I know no boundaries in my love and lust. I am as my god made me, and I am proud. I think in this way, we finally understand each other.”

“We do,” I said softly, my voice so tense with arousal that it barely came from me.

“The High Guard has spoken, Astrid,” Brandon smiled, his eyes intoxicated with pleasure; his cock pointed at me. “Prove your worth.”

“We all know how much you love to be the center of attention,” Bianca sneered. “Put on a show for us, you little white fairy.”

The perimeter of hermaphrodites closed in on me, their fleshy swords aimed right at me, their eyes wrought with avarice so great that they looked like wolves circling downed prey. I understood why their gazes were steeped with such desire; I was not just an Ionan—I was the Ionan. After millennia of getting their faces pushed into the mud by my people, they finally had a champion surrounded. I knew what they wanted to do to me. I grinned internally. I wouldn’t disappoint. I dropped to my knees, wrapped my arms around myself, and bowed my head. My black wings drooped in a display of submission, and I affected a quiver that I would never have been able to feign if I was still wholly valkyrie.

“Please, sisters,” I whimpered, “have mercy on me.”

A strong fist knitted into my raven hair and ripped my head back. I stared upward at the snarling visage of a beautiful black woman, her braided hair framing her muscular shoulders and robust breasts that shadowed the contours and bows of her feminine body, her masculine organ hovering just above my face, stinking so sweetly of some other woman’s insides.

“No mercy for white whores,” she snarled down at me, her eyes alight with a hypnotic concoction of avarice, tribal hatred, and awestruck desire.

I opened my moist lips around her pulsating head, and with my gaze so full of surrender and submission, I took her all the way. I watched the pleasure rise in her expression, and I whimpered around her delicious grotesque dark meat. I could’ve swallowed her into a knee-buckling orgasm, but I let her do her worst instead. And oh, she did. Squelches and slurps emanated from my lips as strained tears began to well in my eyes, pouring down black rivulets of Gloria’s liner that gave us vampires such a dramatic appeal. There were more women then, a veritable buffet of throbbing organs presented to my face, all leaking their desire from pulsating tips and aggressively gesticulating their need. They rubbed against my cheeks, nose, and chin, tangled in my hair, besmirched my pristine portrait, and smeared their lust across my flesh. I felt strong hands move down my body, grabbing my hips, squeezing my breasts and buttocks covetously, sinking into the succulent parts of me so that they could spread my fat open to reveal the vulnerable holes and swaths of pink flesh. I beckoned them to enter me, to violate me, to take me so wholly and hatefully that I would be rendered a leaking ruin for their sickest fantasies. They did not disappoint.

My trembling thighs were forced apart. My buttocks were peeled open. Hot bodies pressed against me, hot breaths serenaded my flesh, hot organs throbbed against my most sensitive places. I screamed around the cock bulging in my throat as two women pressed their throbbing rods against each other, and stretched my moist netherlips open. They entered me slowly, making me feel their combined girth for every excruciating, wonderful inch, pressing against the fluttering walls of my sanctity until my toes were curling back, my spine was arching, and they were nestled together against the dilated entrance of my womb. My membranous sheath wrapped lovingly around them, my erogenous muscles milked them with covetous rolls of pressure, and when my thighs began to relax in ecstatic acceptance of their brutal invasion, they began to thrust.

OH GODS! I screamed internally. I was raised and lowered by their strong hands, dragged against their muscular feminine bodies, forced to feel every vein and contour of their shafts that plunged into me. My nectar leaked from me in strands that bridged our pelvises, glimmering in the firelight and greasing our sinful joining, signaling my terrible pleasure. There were four strong hands squeezing my flank, and two women wrestling for who would be the first to enter my pink aperture. As they rubbed together against my rim, the flesh there began to raise with anticipatory goosebumps, and its center dilated to accept their invasion. One woman finally pushed inside me, and my eyes rolled back, my clogged throat sounded my ecstasy, and my body flushed from toes to scalp. She reamed me beautifully, stretching my filthy hole into a gaping circle with her invasion, pushing deeper to rub alongside her brethren and torture the division of my holes until her crotch was molded into the fat of my backside. Then she pulled out, sliding through me to leave me loose and vacant where I had once been tight and full, and before I could bemoan the ejection of her lust, her partner took her place.

Yes! I cried tearfully as I consumed my meat. From the corner of my eye, I could see that a line had formed behind me and that my anus had become the shared property of every woman who so desired to taste it. I savored the uniqueness of each organ that pierced me, relishing the texture and size, imprinting it into my rectal flesh and memory so that I would know the woman by her cock before I even learned her name.

Many women were not so patient, and with my holes all occupied, they made creative use of my body. The valkyrie before me was beckoned to mount my face so that another could slide her shaft between my breasts, the organ greased with the juice of a previous victim. My hands were occupied with columns of masculinity, and I stroked them with dutiful passion, squeezing and massaging around a loose grip. Still, there were evermore masters to accommodate, and they made do with what flesh I had available, rubbing themselves against my shoulders and back, sating themselves with my supple creases before I could give them the service they were owed. As I rose and fell to the hellish impaling of my holes, the buffet of delicious black organs pulsed and throbbed against my face, leaking cum on my nose, eyelids, and cheeks.

“Disgraceful whore,” they hissed.

“Ionan slut,” they snarled.

“White slave,” they labeled me. Yes, I was all of these things. These epithets were not insults to me, but honorifics. The cocks pumped harder and harder, faster and faster. I rose and fell to the fervent rhythm, constrained in my prison of hot bodies, tortured endlessly by the instruments that pierced me, stabbed me, choked me, and stretched me open, leaving me raw and used, soaking in my own fluids. The first orgasm came to me not as a wave, but as a violent torrent that coursed from my savaged nethers, lanced to my nipples and throat, then radiated out to my extremities, bringing me past the brink of insanity. Every part of me seized in ecstasy, and as I endured the aftershocks, the Ofanians cheered their victory, and more importantly, lauded my defeat. Oh, they made me pay for it.

They came inside of me, crying out feminine tones of ascension as their masculine rods pulsating violently before belching great volumes of molten nectar for my vaginal and rectal flesh to soak thirstily in. The woman in my throat gripped my hair and yanked my head back, giving me an excellent view of her expression succumbing to the prowess of my greatest talent, her eyes wide, her mouth agape, her brow knitted in wonder. She pulled out at the last moment, and expelled her milky syrup across my face, splattering my lips, nose, cheeks, and eyes, marking me as hers. The two women in my hands did the same, their organs thrumming violently until they launched their fluids onto my portrait, filming my entire face with their delicious filth, painting me in love. Never did I feel so beautiful as when I was splattered with my opponent’s blood on the sands of the Pit, nor so radiant as when I was glossed with the fluids of my many exploits. As the orgy breathed a collective sigh, I began to feel an old exhilaration bubble back to the surface. I grinned up at the forest of brown cocks throbbing above me. I could no longer pretend to be the victim. I was the Avenging Angel.

BRANDON

“After everything I’ve heard about Astrid,” Bianca mused with a smile in my ear as she gently penetrated me, “I must say, I’m disappointed.”

Arya popped my cock from her mouth and grinned at her mother over my shoulder. “Typical Ionans; all bluster and bullshit.”

“Careful, Arya,” I said, running my hand down her cheek. “If Astrid hears you, she’ll make you eat more than just your words.”

“I could use a nice snack,” Arya snickered back, undaunted.

I chuckled and looked at the valkyrie in the center of the room. The innocent facade Astrid had put on slowly melted from her face. In its place was an expression of lechery so ravenous and wild that the mask of semen glossing her features looked wholly natural upon her. I was the only one who noticed it. The Ofanians surrounding Astrid seemed to have forgotten who she was.

Before Jala and Illian could extract themselves from between Astrid’s legs, she clamped down on their joined thighs with a muscular flex of her own and buried them deep. Instead of crying out at the double piercing of her womanhood, she growled like a lioness, her teeth bared in exhilaration, her fangs sparkling, her pupils turning to reptilian slits. Illian and Jala gasped at their sudden reentrance, then moaned in harmony as Astrid tightened her erogenous muscles, trapping them inside of her, her pelvis tensing with the burden. Tiana-who had been happily fucking Astrid’s bosom-was unceremoniously thrown to the floor, violently spun onto her hands and knees by the hips, and then eaten alive from behind. Her face distorted and she let out a cry, but there was nothing her comrades could do for her. Astrid gripped her brown cheeks and squeezed until the fat creased, and with them spread open, Tiana was left wholly vulnerable to the Bound One’s merciless tongue. She tensed for a moment of prideful struggle, then let out a defeated whimper, and surrendered with a deep arch of her back. As Astrid’s lips smacked gluttonously, Ciara spread her pale patterned cheeks apart and drove into Astrid’s anus.

“Ionan fuck-slave!” Ciara growled and began thrusting forcefully, plunging the full length of her nine inches deep into Astrid’s opened bowls.

Astrid’s pupils dilated, and from above the spread domes of her meal, she looked me right in the eyes and winked. With a violent shift of her hips, she drove her ass back against Ciara, clamping her cheeks in a pillowing vice. Ciara tried with all her will to extract herself, but Astrid subdued her with a lithe draw of her pelvis, sliding her tight sucking rim down the length of Ciara’s shaft, sheening it with a mixture of cum and anal lust before shifting back again, and consuming it whole. Ciara was helpless. She let out a groan of pure pleasure and rested back on her haunches to make a seat of Illian’s face.

In less than a minute, Tiana was rendered a sobbing wreck on the floor, grinding her thighs together pathetically and clawing at her hair. Astrid licked her lips above her felled quarry and grinned up at Erica, whose half-hard cock was still glistening with Astrid’s spit.

“Give it to me, Ofanian,” Astrid sneered. “You were so cock-sure only a minute ago; why do you wilt before me now?”

“Make the white pig gag!” Tiffany yelled, stroking her cock against Astrid’s face.

“Put the sow back in her place,” Sia growled, daring to rip Astrid’s head back.

Astrid’s fanged grin only broadened, and she clenched below the hips, prompting a chorus of submissive moans from those trapped inside of her. She opened her mouth wide and wrinkled her nose in a challenging snarl. Erica gripped Astrid by the crown and plunged her spent organ deep. I watched in fascination as Astrid took it down her throat and swallowed continuously, her gullet rising and falling, the imprint of Erica’s cock growing more pronounced until I could see its rigid profile bulging from Astrid’s pale neck. Erica gasped, and Astrid’s leaking lips quirked. The Ofanian’s knuckles went white around Astrid’s crown, and though it would’ve taken very little force to extract herself from the swallowing hold, it took an insurmountable will. Astrid’s eyes shined with the thrill of the kill, and she hummed indulgently about her fleshy seal, rotating her lips and swallowing, swallowing, swallowing, coaxing the nectar from the balls whose last expulsion still glistened upon her face. Erica’s rigidity left her posture. Her legs began to quiver, her grip became lax, her spine arched so that she could deepen the press of her pelvis. With a whine, she slowly descended to her knees, and Astrid consumed her all the way, swallowing until she had compelled her prey to ease back upon Jala’s face, and share in the lust of the surrendered.

“Who’s next?” Astrid beckoned with a smack of her lips. “Is that all Ofan has to offer? Give me more! I need more cocks inside of me! Give me them all!”

They descended upon her, and she rose to meet them, splaying her great black wings outward in a show of dominance, stretching her tight netherlips around the joined shafts of Illian and Jala until they plopped free, swollen and ruby, spent and exhausted. Ciara’s rod exited Astrid’s anus with a wet schlock and was left equally useless. The felled women commingled beneath their conqueror, grasping at her legs worshipfully, moaning for her attention, but she no longer cared for them. There was fresh meat.

The Ofanians forced Astrid onto her back, and she gleefully opened her legs, displaying the gaping abused holes still leaking with white froth. Tiffany pushed her cock into Astrid’s ass from beneath, Shauna joined her from above, and Sia straddled Shauna’s lap to drive her thick shaft between the loose curtains of Astrid’s cunt. Astrid let out a howl, and with a flex of her pelvis, everything that had been relaxed became tight, gripping her sexual meal and swallowing with every hole. The Ofanians simultaneously moaned, their postures belying their weakening confidence. Astrid locked her legs around Shauna’s waist and oscillated in a violent wave, driving from hips to breasts, taking the two cocks deep into her sucking anus, and sliding Shauna through her gripping lips. Her partners could do nothing but dance with her, following the commands of her body, grinding incongruence, enslaved so easily.

“Give it to me, you black cunts!” Astrid snarled. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to fuck me?!” She grabbed Shauna by the throat and brought their faces together. “Well, little girl? Are those balls of yours just for show?”

Shauna began to thrust, but not by her own volition. Upon Astrid’s beckoning, all the women inside her started driving their hips, reaming Astrid’s fleshy holes with their immense girths, piercing her tender depths with their lengths, but no matter how ferocious they were, they could not tame the lioness. None could. They all swarmed upon her, plunging themselves into her mouth, driving between her breasts, choking her, pulling her hair, slapping her ass, and twisting her nipples. Their heaving black bodies contrasted her jiggling white form, surrounded her, and encased her, but she was in control, her undulations directing their every motion, her pleasure turning their minds against them.

“Come inside me!” she cried over and over, and they did, taking turns between her legs, unloading their milky lava deep into her starving womb. Her vampiric smile broadened with every deposit, and her body took nourishment of the fluid, adding a healthy flush to her complexion, removing the small blemishes from her flesh, filling out her curves and muscle with the energy she sapped from her victims.

She sucked through the forest of wobbling brown members, transitioning between them, taking two at a time down her throat and then spitting them out, leaving them swollen and spent so that she could taste more of them. They tried working in tandem, moving from her ass to her pussy to her mouth, making her taste the vile concoction of her holes, but she loved the flavor, and those who had made the journey of her three holes were left enslaved and useless, just more bodies to slither into the pile of surrendered Ofanians. When Astrid peeled the last whimpering Ofanian from her face, there were none left to challenge her. She rose from the pile of flesh like a depraved phoenix, her skin running with rivulets of white nectar, and set her gaze on me.

“Since none of you black whores can satisfy me,” she crooned, “I’m going to turn your precious god into my little fuck-toy in front of all of you.”

Arya slurped my cock to the tip and gave me an impish grin. She ascended lithely from between my legs and turned her slender body toward her voluptuous doom. “It is my sworn duty to defend His Holiness no matter the cost.”

Astrid cocked her head with amusement, letting some Ofanian cum drip from her chin and onto the floor. In the time it took me to blink, Astrid had closed the distance between them, grabbed the poor teenager by the hips and crotch, and flipped her upside down so that Arya’s legs were splayed in the air. She calmly clamped Arya’s face between her thighs and peeled Arya’s supple cheeks apart to reveal the delicacy between them. The trapped teenager thrashed and squirmed until Astrid ran her tongue across her anus and pussy in one lick, and then the Ofanian suddenly lost her will to fight. Astrid took an evil moment to look up at Bianca from over my shoulder and grinned before she began torturing her daughter.
Oh, she was cruel. She first started with Arya’s little anus, spreading it with her thumbs so that she could lather the rim, then dip her tongue deep. Arya screamed a muffled orgasm after a mere minute of anal pleasure, but Astrid was far from done. Keeping her eyes fixed on Bianca, she pushed two fingers from each hand into her daughter’s ass and spread it to expose the pink within. With her grip secured against the teenage anal walls, she licked her way to Arya’s blushing moist pussy, and began to feast. The sounds that came from Arya were guttural and deep, emanating from between the press of Astrid’s muscular thighs as she tried in vain to retaliate. Though I could see the twitches of pleasure moving up Astrid’s abdomen, she was far from deterred. She orally tormented Ayra’s flower until the teenager’s back was flexing wildly in pleasure. With a stifled squeal, Arya blasted her urine-filled orgasm across Astrid’s face. The Bound One licked her lips and sneered at Bianca. Perhaps Bianca was incensed by the desecration of her daughter, I could not know, but I did know that whatever surface emotion she displayed could not hide the raging arousal she expressed inside of me.

“So easy,” Astrid mocked Bianca and took Arya by the hair. “Come little sparrow; you’re going to watch me break your mommy.”

I squatted off Bianca, groaning as I felt her vacate me.

“Any advice?” she whispered as she climbed to her feet. “She must have a weakness.”

I just shook my head with a smile. “She was trained by Tera Autumnsong in a Drastin brothel.”

“You and your sister have trained me.” Bianca assessed her challenger. “We shall see who was the better student.”

“It’s really the teacher that matters,” Astrid sneered with Bianca’s daughter crawling beside her like a dog. “And frankly, Bianca, I don’t think you and I have been taking the same classes. Brandon’s obviously been quite easy on you.”

“My god knows how to respect his followers.”

“Mine didn’t,” Astrid giggled and dropped into a crawl. She stalked her challenger like a feline, licking her blood-red lips as her blue eyes gleamed with the reflection of Bianca’s cock. Bianca wisely slid into a similar crawl, not giving Astrid’s mouth a chance to work its magic. The two valkyries circled each other for a moment, their wings held tight above their arching bodies, displaying all the succulent curves and swaths of enticing muscle. Astrid made the first move. She leapt upon Bianca, but Bianca was ready for it. She opened up her hips and absorbed Astrid’s momentum, allowing them to roll upon each other until Bianca was on top. She pinned Astrid’s shoulders into the floor, and with a violent thrust, she pierced Astrid deep between her legs. Astrid cried out, her back arched from the floor, her chin tilted and her neck bowed to give rise to the hedonistic growl that followed her exclamation. Bianca didn’t give her a chance to recover. She planted her feet, hoisted Astrid’s pelvis up until it was in line with her face below, and she began to fuck her into the floor.

“Oh my gods!” Astrid whimpered, emanating a tone of true weakness for the first time that night. Bianca pressed her advantage and spread Astrid’s legs wide, making her do vertical splits in the air so that she could have unfettered access to the vulnerable slit she now violated. She plunged like a piston, driving with such force that I could see the reverberations of jiggling fat down Astrid’s supple flank. Astrid endured the punishment for minutes, her eyes wet with her ecstatic sobs, her mouth begging with words of abasement to encourage the assault. Bianca never relented, but I could see the signs of her spiritual fatigue. As she made Astrid’s hole weak with pleasure, her own organ was pulsing and throbbing, struggling to endure the ceaseless grip of Astrid’s tight netherlips, the squelching squeeze of her hot insides snugly sucking her with every drive.

“You feel that, Astrid?” Bianca growled. “You feel my cock breaking in your slutty little cunt?”

“It feels so good!” Astrid professed with a whine.

“Why don’t you come for me?” Bianca snarled, planting her foot beside Astrid’s head and folding the valkyrie in half with her thrusts. “Show us all your true colors, and come for this big black cock.”

“I’m so close!”

“Just let go,” Bianca drove until she was planking atop Astrid, her hips moving violently behind her to deliver each damaging thrust, “come for me, little bird. Beg for it like I know you want to.”

“Please make me come!” Astrid cried, and locked her legs around Bianca’s waist. “Make me come, make me come, make me come!” Astrid grinned up at her attacker, twisted her muscular abdomen, and spun them violently over. Bianca landed on her back, and Astrid straddled her, grinding her hips, pushing her pelvis down, undulating with such dramatic arcs that her whole body moved with the wave. “Make me come, Bianca,” she growled. “Make me come with your big black cock. Make me come, you fucking cow, and give me your milk!”

“Astrid!” Bianca gasped.

“That’s not what you call me,” Astrid giggled, pressing their bodies together, squishing their ballooning breasts, and conforming their tummies. “I’m Angel. I cut my teeth by getting gang-raped in the brothels of Drastin until I loved it. I’ve seduced gods and succubi alike, but you, my dearest opponent, are just a woman, no matter how much you pretend to be a man.”

Astrid reached behind her and pushed her fingers into Bianca’s feminine hole. Like a puppeteer, she compelled Bianca’s hips from the inside, soliciting thrust after powerful thrust, each one lifting Astrid from the floor, driving deep, pushing against her womb, and filling her stretched insides with the great volume only Bianca could deliver. Bianca was enslaved with the pleasure, enraptured by the domination, rendered to nothing but a tool for the hedonism of the predator atop her. Astrid fed gluttonously, biting Bianca’s neck and sucking of her life as her womanly mouth swallowed the beastly meal driven between her clenching white thighs. Bianca bowed her throat to give access to Astrid’s vampirism, arched her back to offer her body, opened her legs to welcome the squelching invasion of Astrid’s twisting fingers which did such terrible, beautiful things to her.

In a final act of humiliation, Astrid grabbed Bianca’s daughter by the hair and forced her youthful face into the crevice of her jiggling cheeks. Arya dutifully ate from Astrid’s gaping anus as her mother was consumed both inside and out. Bianca endured the lust for an admirable time, but her fate was sealed. With a surrendering cry, she thrust one last time into Astrid’s slit and came on command. Astrid reared back her head and roared to the ceiling, her pelvis tensing with the ecstasy that coursed through her. She reached back and pressed the daughter of her enemy into the crack of her ass, and savored the residual anal pleasure as she decelerated from orgasm, her chest heaving with satiated breaths. When she recovered, she looked down at her conquest. Bianca was staring back at her with wondrous eyes filled with submission, her lips poised into a submissive smile.

“You are the victor,” she croaked, her voice spent.

Astrid sneered back at her. “You know I’m gonna rub it in your face, right?”

Bianca’s weak smile broadened. “I hoped you would.”

Astrid turned her eyes on me.

ANGELA

It took me a while to find the willpower to free myself from the lustful prison of Gloria Titus. Actually, I never found the willpower. I gave her everything, and eventually, she let me go. She rode me until I’d filled her ass with so much cum that it slopped from her with every slap of her fat ass against my crotch, then she sucked me clean, put my cock into her cunt, and repeated the exercise. After satiating herself with my masculine side, she took her time indulging in my weaker sexuality. She ate my ass, she ate my pussy, then she joined our feminine flowers, locked our legs together, and dominated me from atop until I could no longer function as a human.

Only when I was left so brainless that language became a struggle, did she perform her final act of possession, and inject me with her transforming venom. Being a shapeshifter meant that I already had access to vampiric powers, but nothing prepared me for the three-thousand-year-old vintage of ecstasy Gloria poured into my throat. I wept with the exhilaration of it, and opened my heart to her, becoming in truth, her daughter. I guessed incest was always my weakness. My hair became black, my incisors became fangs, and my body was infused with adrenaline and power. When I opened my eyes, my vision was veiled red, and I could see clearly through Gloria’s porcelain flesh like it was paper-thin, exposing all the delicious veins and arteries she had pumping through her.

“Now, my little mosquito, you are ready,” she whispered lovingly, looking down upon me like I was her child.

“For what?” I hissed back, my voice sounding more like a serpent’s than a human’s, layered with undertones of seduction that far surpassed my brief (albeit extensive) sexual history.

Gloria looked over her shoulder. Astrid Skyborne had her fangs embedded in my brother’s open mouth and was riding him with passes of her hips that were so sinuous that the poor idiot was left staring into her eyes with an expression of worship that bordered dangerously close to love. I couldn’t feel what he was feeling, but the illumination of my patterns bespoke his paradisial pleasure.

“My prodigal daughter is making meat of your precious brother,” Gloria chuckled, then turned back to me. “Are you going to let your new big sister take him from you?”

“I’m not possessive.”

Gloria laughed.

“No seriously, we have an open…” I frowned at the sight of my blood-sister exchanging tongues with Brandon, “…relationship… That fucking bitch! Come on, Mommy, let’s go fuck that whore to death!”

Gloria tittered musically. “I’m afraid I’ve already sampled that dish. After feasting so much on you, I find myself in the mood for…” her greedy red eyes scanned the room, “…dark meat. Best of luck to you, Angela. I’ll be watching; I do so love seeing my babies fight.”

As my new mother made her way to the pile of felled Ofanians, I made my way to my new sister. She saw me coming from halfway across the room, and she winked at me teasingly as she clamped her thighs around my brother’s waist, and coerced a pathetic moan from his lips.

“I don’t remember him being so easy,” she sneered back at me.

“I don’t remember you being such a bitch,” I snarled.

She grinned at me. “Your memory’s pretty shit, Bound One.”

With lightning speed, I shot behind her, filled one of my hands with her ass, and the other with her throat.

She just giggled and drove her pelvis down, consuming Brandon to the balls and sending his head reeling back to utter a defeated groan.

“There, there, baby-boy,” Astrid cooed as she stroked his hair, “I’ve got you now. You belong to me.” Heedless of my choking hand, she dipped forward to whisper into his ear so that I could hear, “Just wait until I get my mouth around you, Brandon. You’ll forget you even had a sister.”

“Oh… fuck…” Brandon moaned. “I’m sorry, Angela… her tight little wet pussy is just so good.”

It was at that moment that all the rage left me, and I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “Holy shit, you suck, Brandon.”

“What are you talking about?” Brandon muttered. “Who even are you?”

“Astrid, the jig’s up,” I sighed, and patted her plump rump. “I’ve lost all immersion.”

She pouted her lips over her shoulder. “But I wanted a sexy Bound One fuck-off.”

“Maybe we could’ve if the divine dipshit over here could write himself a script worthy of a preschool play.”

“She’s corrupting me with her super snatch! I’ve become her slave! Oh crap, this is bad! I’m falling in love with her!”

Astrid let out a sigh. “Brandon, if your dick wasn’t holy, I would be as dry as the Gratoran Desert right now. You can stop.”

Brandon scowled back at her. “You promised me you could make her jealous.”

“I tried my best, but then you opened your mouth.”

“If you wanted two women to compete for your dick, I’d suggest you ask literally anyone else besides the one who owns it.”

“Is that so?!” Brandon growled indignantly at me.

“I just lease it out. I’m a generous dick-lender.”

“I know one way to make you jealous.” Brandon grinned and drew his eyes to Willowbud, who was sulking in the corner with a drink in her hand.

Astrid frowned at her beloved. “I thought she’d join in by now.”

“She’s fine right where she is,” I said tightly.

Astrid turned her frown on me. “You blame her too much.”

“I think I dished out just the right amount of blame.”

Hey, Angela! Brandon growled in my head. Remember that we need them, stupid!

I glowered at Brandon, then looked back at Astrid, and donned a sexy congenial smile. “But then again, I’m a world-class bitch.”

Astrid offered a reconciliatory smirk. “You’re in good company then.”

I slid myself against Astrid, my vampiric motions unnaturally sinuous, my body entwining like a snake with hers until my cock was pressed between her plump cheeks, and my mouth was hovering a breath from her moist red lips.

“You know,” I whispered huskily, “ever since I saw you getting publicly ravaged in the screeching siren, there was some evil little part of me that wanted to know what you tasted like.”

“You’ve tasted me many times,” Astrid hissed back, painting my lips with her tongue, leaving electricity in her wake. Oh, she was good. I would’ve stood no chance in the Bound One fuck-off.

“Not with this mouth, Astrid,” I breathed. “Not with this tongue. Not with these teeth.”

Our lips opened upon each other. Her tongue slithered into my mouth, and mine entangled with hers, dancing together in a serpentine joining, alighting the nerves that signaled the lust deep in our loins. Her fangs pierced my lips, and mine did hers, and as we injected our intoxicating venom, our eyes connected beneath half-drawn lids, displaying the slit pupils pulsing with the adrenaline of desire. Our hands moved upon each other, feeling breasts and nipples, pinching and squeezing, then running along the pert nodes to traverse the swaths of our bellies. She reached behind herself to spread her succulent pale cheeks, and I reached between them to guide my cock into her tight exit.

“How does it feel?” I asked against her mouth as she moaned in pleasure. “Having my cock stretch your ass and pulse right next to my brother’s?”

“So fucking good,” she grinned around my lips.

“I can feel your insides squeezing around me,” I whispered heatedly. “Hugging me so close, begging me to go deeper.” I pushed in inch after inch. “Swallowing me in,” I pressed my balls against my brother’s, “sucking me down into your sweet stinking insides. You love to get fucked in both your holes, don’t you?”

“Yes!” she whined, pressing her delicious fat around me, encasing me.

“A brother and sister inside of you, pressing into those tender spots so deep.” I kissed her bowed throat. “Piercing you in places you should never feel such pleasure, but you’re a different breed, Astrid. You’re like me. Bound One. Slut. Whore. Such a bad, bad girl.”

“Such a bad girl,” she echoed, her blue eyes looking back at me with such need.

I gently wrapped one hand around her throat, and the other, I used to fondle her swaying full breasts. “You want to get what bad girls deserve.”

“Are you gonna give it to me?”

“I’m going to give you all of it!” I hissed, licking the side of her face, then turning toward Brandon. “See, bro; that’s how you talk dirty.”

“He’s so hard inside of me!” Astrid moaned. “Oh Great Creators, nobody fucks like a god!”

“In case you didn’t understand the ‘subtle’ hint, Brandon,” I sneered at him beside Astrid, “that’s your cue.”

Working in synchrony in the way only twins can manage, my brother and I thrust as one, pulling to our tips and pushing in, filling the gripping tender insides of Astrid Skyborne. Her rectum seized around me like a vice, her back arched to navigate the overload of traffic running to her synapses, and she clamped down on my brother, sucking him for every inch, making him press against me so that our cocks throbbed together between the thin membrane of delicious flesh that separated us. We kissed over Astrid’s shoulder, our minds entwining with our tongues, delivering the messages of love and lust as we worked to bring our guest to orgasm. I daresay all of the Ofanians combined could not provide the pleasure we forced into Astrid, and to her credit, her sheathing insides surpassed them all for our own ecstasy. Heaving together with lithe motions, my brother and I interlocked our laps and drove the valkyrie between us upward over and over, and she descended upon us with such grace, swallowing us down, bringing us together, molding us into her hot wet insides until I could no longer differentiate our bodies. Brandon nursed from her breasts, and I nursed from her throat, and our muffled tones of exaltation harmonized with hers. We came inside of her, and she contracted around us, her rolling muscles kneading the nectar from our loins until we were spent. But she wasn’t done.

Astrid guided me to my back beside my brother. With her expression bordering between avarice and reverence, she joined our shafts in her hand, and gaze upon their sheened lengths. Brandon shoved his hand beneath my ass to push his fingers into my holes, and I did the same to his one orifice, pleasuring it with the same fervency that he did to me, opening him as he opened me, violating him as we watched Astrid gape her mouth, and wrap her pale lips around us. She took us all the way in. Though she gagged with the effort of it, though her eyes welled with the stress of it, though her throat bulged with the stretch of it, she consumed us, and tasted the two flavors of her insides. Rolling her blue irises back in hedonism, she performed her art upon us, sloppily sucking with spit leaking from her mouth and cum dripping from her nostrils. Brandon and I kissed again, closing our eyes to savor the myriad sensations, marveling together at the skill of Astrid’s mouth.

We came again, this time with less force. Our nectar poured from our shafts like lava, and as we thrust and mewled with the ecstasy of it, she cleaned us off, soaking in every last drop. Then it was our turn to please her. I took my position between her pillowing cheeks, and Brandon took his between her muscular legs, and with our mouths, we reciprocated our affections. Astrid swayed between us, arching her back and exclaiming to the ceiling, making a seat of my face and straddling my brother’s. With our muzzles encompassed by her succulent pale fat, we gripped her buttocks and thighs to keep her steady and brought her to a tortuous climax that left her gasping.

When she descended between us, it seemed the Avenging Angel was finally sapped of energy. Her lids were heavy, her posture was languid, and her breathing was steady and satisfied. Between her legs, lay a flaccid organ of impressive size. It was smooth and uncircumcised, only the hint of vascularity to it. I reached down to grasp my new toy, but her hand intercepted mine.

“No,” she smiled at me.

“I believe I’ve earned it,” I smiled back.

“It’s not for us, Angela,” Brandon said sleepily from across the beauty between us.

I sighed and nodded. Of course.

Astrid kissed Brandon deeply, then turned and did the same to me.

“Until next time, Bound One,” she smiled against my mouth.

“I better get my well-earned sloppy seconds then.”

She snickered. “I will train all night to make sure I don’t disappoint.”
WILLOWBUD

I weighed one hundred pounds even on a good day, and I was on my ninth drink. It seemed all those years as Night Eyes had turned my poor little liver into an alcohol processing facility because though I was very drunk, I wasn’t nearly drunk enough. Maybe ten drinks would turn me into the free carnal animal that everyone else became so easily, but I rather suspected it would just exacerbate my need to piss. How I was going to do that would be another matter entirely. While a few attendees at this orgy seemed perfectly content to use one another as toilets (and a few seemed quite happy to be toilets themselves), I wasn’t quite comfortable with dousing a woman with my golden waste. I would’ve just pissed into one of the many empty tankards I’d accumulated, but there was another problem with that. Sometime around my seventh drink, I’d lost control of my transformative functions. My gender was a slave to the sexual proclivities of those around me, which meant I was flashing between cock and cunt with such speed that my crotch was getting sore. The only way to pick one was for one of my sexualities to come to the forefront through arousal, and despite the angelic and devilish beauties all commingling their flesh around me, I was far from horny. I was in fact, doing a terrible job of drowning my anxiety with liquor.

I stumbled off my barstool and staggered my way to the casks. Grabbing another tankard from the shelf, I filled it to the brim with Brandon’s foamy ale and struggled my way back up onto my stool. A woman was smoking a cigarette there, watching me from a face that was very similar to my own.

“What’d’you want?” I slurred at Justina.

“I’ve been watching you for a while.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?” I growled and poured some cold ale down my throat.

“I enjoy observing an animal operate outside of its habitat.”

I snorted. “When we first met, you were sitting at my bar, looking every bit a fish out of water. I guess you couldn’t resist the chance for some poetry.”

“By your logic, my next step should be to fuck you brainless.”

“Do you really wanna trade places with me?” I asked, glaring at her from the corners of my eyes.

Justina opened her mouth, then glanced away.

I sighed and nursed my drink some more. “You better leave me alone before I ruin your night.”

“I’m trying to salvage yours.”

“I thought you’d be done trying to rescue me by now.”

“I’m trying to save my own ass,” she said and glowered at me. “I don’t trust you not to flake on us the moment the pressure is on.”

“Of course. Rest assured, dearest cousin, that I am fully committed to our expedited end at the hands of a vengeful god. You don’t need to fuck me to prove my loyalty.”

“You don’t have any loyalty.”

I laughed and took a swig. “You don’t know a fucking thing about me, and you’ve made it quite clear that it’s too late for introductions, so go use your tongue where it will be more useful.”

Justina twisted her lips and punched out her cigarette. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“Don’t ever be sorry. Just leave.”

“I just…” she took a deep breath, “…when I found you in that ash pile, I hated that you were a victim. I knew it then, but I didn’t realize it until it happened to Mom. It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault.”

“Fault doesn’t matter. What happened, happened, and the reason was me. Now please…” I looked into my mug, and wondered why it was already empty, “…leave me alone.”

I was glad that she didn’t. For whatever reason, she stayed with me as I downed tankard after tankard, and reveled in my self-pitying self-punishment. I was a masochist for it, but Justina wasn’t a sadist. As the orgy devolved into deeper and deeper perversions, she wouldn’t let me drown in the depths of my masturbatory guilt. She held me up until the liquor finally pulled me under, and the world went black.

“Willowbud,” Justina hissed in my ear. “Willowbud!” she hissed again and shook me. Had I traveled forward in time? Where was I? Who had puked in my mouth, and who the fuck had pissed in my pants?!

“Thank you for staying with her, Justina,” an angelic voice said. “You can go now; Deja is waiting for you.”

I opened my eyes. My head was beating like a drum, and my face was resting in a pool of vomit. Through my double vision, I glanced up at Astrid.

“You done having fun?” I croaked.

She rested a cool hand against my forehead. Oh, it felt like heaven. “I think it’s time for us to leave.”

“I’ve been saying that since we got here.”

She laughed so sweetly. Her fangs were gone, her hair was blonde, and there was not a mark on her body. Her wings were white as ivory, and her pupils were round and human. The smile that radiated from her face was the same one she’d shown me a lifetime ago atop the Gratoran Wall.

“This is another you,” I hissed. “I was never really there. That was someone else.”

“Then who is this?” she asked, and transformed. Now her body was covered in tattoos, visions of battle and lust all painted across her perfect flesh.

“The avatar of my regret.”

“I regret nothing, Willowbud,” she said and transformed back into her newest rendition, her raven hair and black wings surrounding the white patterns upon her alabaster skin. “I own what you did to me. I own your cruelty, your apathy, your spite. I am different. I am the same. I am what you made me.”

“Are you making a point?” I hissed at her. “How many times do I need to ask forgiveness?”

“It will never be enough,” she whispered and lowered her face to mine. “And there will be some who will deny your apology until the last star fades, but I have never sought it. For every second of every day that I have been with you, I have loved you. I have loved your cruelty and sadism as much as I have loved your compassion and gentleness. To me, Willowbud, every hateful and tender act was one of love, and everything I did was the same. Perhaps you owe the world everything, but you owe me nothing. We have always been even. We always will be.”

I couldn’t tell if my drunken vision was seeing two Astrids. My tears had blinded me. “I can’t be the woman you want me to be, Astrid. I’m just the drunkard in the corner watching everyone else live. Watching you live.”

“You are my life.”

“That’s so fucking sad.”

She kissed my lips and tasted the foulness of my breath. She slithered her tongue into my mouth to savor it. Her fist wrapped in my hair, she lifted my head from the table, and her other hand came around to hoist me from my stool and press my soiled crotch to her naked flesh. The world washed away, and the universe became the joining of our mouths and bodies, nothing but taste and sensation. Her cheeks were wet against mine, and her hot tears salinized my open lips. When she parted, her eyes were glazed, staring at me from those beautiful blue pools, so depthless and vulnerable.

“I love your sadness,” she whispered.

She carried me through the paradisial rainforest of Ofan, where the moonlight bathed the palm trees and shimmered off the caldera lake. She stripped me of my clothes, and bathed me in hot-spring waters, singing lullabies in a dead Ionan language. She brought me up on the beach, and she curled me into her arms. I felt something new pressing against me. Something hot, and hard, and throbbing. When I looked into her eyes, there was no desire there; only a longing so deep that it seemed to smolder from her soul. I became female for her. She opened my legs, and with the expert caresses of her fingers, she made me ready. When she eased me onto her lap, I whimpered at the intensity of the pleasure. She stole the whimper from my mouth with a kiss and laid us upon the sand. There, I rode her, shifting my hips back forth and moaning to the lonesome moon. She harmonized with me, softly chanting my name all the while until she cried it out upon her final note, ascending with me in a mournful crescendo to fill me with her molten lust. I fell atop her, panting my exhilaration in time with her thundering heart until the cadence quieted to a thrum. She wrapped her arms around me and whispered sweet words into my ear. I wept silently, though not from grief. I did not know why I wept.

With the lunar glow bathing us in soft hues of blue, I nestled my face upon her breasts. Exhaustion took me. My eyes closed, but my legs stayed splayed around her, and her organ stayed hard inside of me. We fell asleep like that and made love to each other in our dreams.

TERA

I’d assumed that finding tiramisu in an orc war encampment would be nigh impossible. I was wrong. Apparently, tiramisu was a staple of orcish cuisine, which was just my fucking luck. I’d planned to lose Aiko in the endless quest to find gourmet dessert in the Gratoran Desert, but the first fat fuck with a spatula had it on ice. So with no exit plan and no opportunity, I decided that my best course of action would be to simply fade away once I’d delivered my package. It wouldn’t be too hard. With Diamond shooting her piss like a rifle at any poor fool who caught her eye, I was sure to go unnoticed, and vanish naturally into the dark of night.

“Bullseye!” Diamond cackled, holding her cock in her hand as an orc dropped to the sand, a steaming hole between his eyes. “Saso, bring me more of Mommy’s prisoners!”

Saso dragged another condemned orc from the lineup, and Diamond leveled her weapon.

“What was his crime, Saso?”

“Loitering. Your mother sentenced him to a day’s hard labor.”

“Oh, that’s far too lenient for a crime as horrible as loitering! Rapists and murders at least get things done, but loiterers are just in the way!”

“Please, Water Dancer!” the orc blubbered. “Let me prove my worth to you! I can serve!”

Diamond cracked a smile. “Tell me a joke. If I like it, I’ll make you the king of all orcs. If I don’t like it…” Diamond shot the orc next to him through the chest, “…I’ll still get a laugh out of you.”

The orc shuffled in place, then cleared his throat. “I know one good joke, Water Dancer. An elf, a dwarf, and an orc are pissing off the side of a bridge. “The water sure is cold,’ the elf boasts. ‘And deep too!’ proclaims the dwarf. The orc puts his cock back in his pants, and buttons his fly without a word. ‘Well, orc,?’ the elf asks. ‘Have you nothing to say about the water?’ The orc just mutters, ‘the river takes a bend a few miles upstream.’ The elf and dwarf laugh. ‘Come now, orc, you take the joke too far!’ the elf teases. The orc sighs and sheds a tear. ‘Not anymore.’ The dwarf looks at him incredulously. ‘What do you mean?’ The orc gives the pair a despairing glare. ‘There are snapping turtles below the bridge.'”

Diamond burst out laughing, and quite by accident, shot a spurt of urine that blew the king of the orc’s brains out of the back of his head.

“Whoopsie!” Diamond exclaimed, then leveled her black eyes on me. “I see my waitress has returned in a very timely manner. I suppose you think you deserve a big tip.”

I glanced down at her cock. “I take it someone else is picking up the check?”

Diamond cackled. “Where do you keep those massive balls of yours hidden?” She turned to the samurai. “Kito! Aiko! Become chairs! Tera, come over here and have a nice little chat.”

I sauntered over to the Water Dancer, fearing what a ‘nice little chat’ would entail. Kito and Aiko sat cross-legged on the ground, and Diamond made a seat of Kito’s lap and beckoned me to do the same to Aiko. I made sure to grind my ass deep into her lap and sneak my tail between her thighs. She tensed and hissed when my appendage rubbed her rim, and I teased it with a leer over my shoulder before finally penetrating, and pushing deep. She held in her scream through gritted teeth, and I slowly began my way up her rectum and into her colon, savoring every twitch of her face as she tried not to react, tried to stare right past me, tried not to moan as the aphrodisiac-tipped tail squirmed in her tight filth, and rubbed between her virgin netherlips. I would’ve spent all night tormenting her until her mind broke and she gleefully threw off her white robe and joined her mother, but my desire for survival ranked just above my desire for vengeance. Kito proffered the tiramisu from my hands, and Diamond opened her mouth to be spoon-fed like a toddler as she gazed at me.

“I’ve been hearing stories about you,” she said at length.

“Not any good ones, I hope.”

Diamond grinned. “Not a one. You’re a very, very naughty little devil, Tera. I’m glad I didn’t kill you. I’ll need someone to have fun with while I’m here.”

“Julia likes to have fun.”

Diamond snorted. “Mom is the most boring person in the world. I thought Corruption might’ve loosened her up a bit, but it’s always preaching, preaching, preaching.”

“So why come back then?”

Diamond sighed and tapped her head. “The lady upstairs has an agenda.”

“And that is…?”

“Heck if I know. She leaves for a while, and then I go back up and try to free myself, then she comes back and it’s all better. To be honest, I really hate going back there.” She screwed up her lips. “I wish my non-corrupted self wasn’t such a goodie-two-shoe.”

I narrowed my eyes. “If Corruption leaves you, your meld should be broken.”

“She corrupted a Tethered One and merged our minds to keep me prisoner.” Diamond summoned the water from the air and formed the aqueous shape of a snake-haired woman. “She is so much more powerful than I am. There’s no way to escape her.”

“What in the fuck are you talking about? How can a Sentient do that?”

“Who said she’s a Sentient?” Diamond quirked her brow. “Why do you think Mom’s patterns are black?”

“Diamond… what you’re saying is impossible. Only gods give patterns to others.”

Diamond shifted the water in the air, changing the snake-haired woman into a profile of herself. “See any gods here?”

“That doesn’t explain a damned thing. What happened behind that door?”

She dissolved the aqueous figure and shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a gap in my memory. One second, I’m opening the last door, the next, I’m in Drastin. I’d say it’s pretty obvious what happened though. After a million-billion years or whatever of being stuck in the astral plane, Corruption got it in her crazy head to be the meld that held together the bondage of two gods. Why? To steal my fricken power, that’s why! Those patterns should be mine!”

I looked her over, puzzling over her explanation. It adequately filled in most of the gaps, but there was one glaring hole in the story. “Diamond,” I said, “you were never a Creator.”

Her smile turned dangerous. “I was always special. Corruption didn’t make me; I made her. She stole from me. Remember that, Tera.”

Someone shouted. Someone rang a bell. I whipped my head around. From the great maw of Droktinar, emerged a small white figure wreathed in black flame. A commotionand rose from all around, cheers and cries of jubilation, trumpets, and drums all sounding at once.

“She has done it!” Yuntok exalted, tears streaming down his face as he held his wife and daughter. “She has brought us home just like she promised!”

“Praise be to the Holy Mother!” shouted a cleric.

“Praise be to Sister Julia!”

“Praise be!” thundered the crowd, and the sound echoed across the desert as the news swept through the millions, carrying the euphoria of an orphaned people who had finally found their place in the world. Julia raised her arms to greet them, then turned around, and exploded like a black supernova. A great wall of heat shot from her flowed into the mouth of Droktinar, and then erupted from beneath the earth like a volcano, sending the shattered bowels of the orc city miles into the air. The shockwave blasted through the crowd, sending everyone careening to their backs with the force of the infernal gale. In the wake of the deafening roar, there was only stunned silence. The citizenry of the Gratoran Desert stared at the black mushroom cloud that had once been their last hope for civilization, then down at the god who had led them there.

“Holy cow!” Diamond giggled at me, sprawled out atop the toppled Kito. “Now that’s more like it!”

The ash began to snow upon us as Julia turned around, and raised her arms. “Children of Gratora!” she called. “We have journeyed long together, but I have journeyed alone for far longer.” She paused and set her eyes upon Diamond, and though a smile broached her red lips, she did not stall her sermon a second more. “My journey began when I was a child, and stood over the ashes of my mother and father. It was then that I first felt the Holy Mother. When I was in Sister Septina’s orphanage, I joined the Maternal Order, and through my piety and discipline, I learned self-restraint and control. I learned… lies. These lies infected me, shaped me, caged me. These liars made me believe that my gifts were the work of evil, and yet, none of them had ever felt God before. I have. I felt her when I scorched my mother and father’s flesh. I felt her when I burned Passion alive. I felt her when I turned Drastin to ash. I told myself this feeling must be the devil’s work, for the Maternal Order taught me that pleasure and euphoria are sins, and I feel such delights when I ignite. I did not know until now that I was wrong.”

“Children of Gratora, I have led you astray. On our journey here, I was so confident of my interpretation of God’s own will, but I was still not ready to hear her words. Still, she led me here, and she tested me. I walked through the bowels of Droktinar, and I faced the effigy of Honor, and I burned the liar alive. I opened the door to the spirit of your people, and I saw the mockery he had made of you, and turned his realm into embers.” There were tears in Julia’s eyes, and they ran in thick black rivulets down her face, yet her smile was euphoric. “Children of Gratora, my lonesome journey is finally over. For from the embers of Wrath’s realm, the seraph Corruption emerged! And upon her flesh, is my mark, FOR I AM SOULBOUND TO GOD’S DELIVERER! AND FROM THE SERAPH’S LIPS, DID GOD SPEAK HER HOLY MESSAGE IN CRYSTAL CLARITY! DAMN THE WALLS OF MAN! DAMN THEIR KINGDOMS AND THEIR TEXTS! DAMN THE VERY LANGUAGE THAT THEY SPEAK! BURN IT ALL DOWN UNTIL THE CHILDREN OF THIS WORLD ARE FINALLY FREE!”

Postlude: The Greatest Leap

CORRUPTION

Xaya sat in my lap and purred like a kitten as I absentmindedly stroked her. Though I detested written language, my other hand was occupied with a book. It was a reinterpretation of one of Wisdom’s most complex ideas, now condensed down from a mountain-sized tree into a five-hundred-volume encyclopedia. I flipped through the pages with my thumb, scanning thousands of words in a second, digesting all of the monotonous drivel the former academic had written on the subject of my interest.

I had never truly understood the power Julia possessed until it was erupting around me. Untamable, unyielding energy so great that it could scorch the very thoughts of man, and the woman who wielded it was just as volatile. I needed her destruction to cleanse the astral plane of the last two Sentients, but her daughter alone was more than capable of sowing the chaos I required in the realm below. Her water dancing would bring castles crumbling, and her kiss would send the liberated souls streaming from the wreckage. My power was so great that I could now pass my gift like a virus, and with practice, Diamond would soon discover the ability for herself. When the horde broke through Droktin’s Pass, it would bring my liberating plague with it, but I didn’t know how much longer I could play with Julia’s fire before it betrayed me.

She was dogmatic, Julia was, and jealous. Just beneath the surface of her soul, her pain raged interminably, screaming the names of Lucilla, Passion, Mom, and Dad. I nurtured that pain like it was upon my breast, for that pain was our love, but that love was so very dangerous, so very close to a truth that would kill me. Julia Gendian had finally reached the end of the Maternal Path; she had seen the face of God. If she ever knew it, our love would shatter, our bond would snap, and I would be dead. She already knew the name ‘Vitanimus.’ The secrets were well-hidden, but they weren’t lost. Knowing that name was the greatest leap one needed to take before learning the name ‘Petranumen.’ And with each passing day, my infection wore at her sanity. She had a strong mind, much like Tera, and she could endure me for a while, but eventually, she would fall, and then there would be no controlling her fire. If Julia learned the truth about me, then death would never need to be conquered, for there would be no more life to feed it. That was why the Heat Bringer needed to be gone. Not dead, but gone. Only one of us needed to be bound for me to survive.
I paged through Wisdom’s tome until I found what I was looking for.

Chapter Five-hundred and Twenty-one, Section Fifty-nine

Petranumen and Joy used their Elemental power to gain autonomy over the astral plane, proving that the plane of thought can be mastered. During this brief thousand-year window, Vitanimus performed miracles that were even beyond his magnificent powerset. He created the continent of Balamora by stitching two subcontinents together along a mountain chain that is now the Gratoran Wall; he lowered the seas so that fertile land could be occupied by the sudden growth in population; he even created the gates of Fedar, allowing for the transit of people to and from the astral plane.

How did the original Life Giver perform these monumental feats? The answer is simple: he did not. Vitanimus did these, but not as the Life Giver. It was Petranumen who manipulated the astral plane for him, allowing his power to be changed at will. Her total mastery of the cognitive plane shaped the power that ran through it. It was even said that during a marital squabble, Petranumen temporarily stripped Vitanimus of his powers, rendering him impotent until he apologized to her satisfaction. The nature of this argument was said to be about the proper acid levels in volcanic soil, and how they affected the taste of fruit borne there. It is speculated that Petranumen quite enjoyed the sourness of tangerines, and was perturbed that Vitanimus had…

I closed the book and ran my hands through Xaya’s serpentine hair.

Excerpt from Dr. Siam’s thesis, The Broken Bridge, page three-hundred-fifty-seven:

Vitanimus discovered something amazing when he created his window. What he discovered was the transport of souls from the astral plane to the spiritual plane. You will remember earlier in this thesis that I discussed how love is a form of reverse transport across the broken bridge; death is the other known form, of course. What Vitanimus saw was that during a blood corona sliver, the transport of souls seemed to cease. What Vitanimus did not realize was why the transport ceased. What was it that caused the souls to stop where they were? Remember when I spoke to you about the conservation of energy? Well, energy is a product of mass and momentum, so clearly, something stopped the souls’ momentum. An equal and opposite energy. Vitanimus observed that the astral sun split from the physical sun during a blood corona sliver, and I understand why he came to that observation. The astral sun is perpetually eclipsed by its physical counterpart… right? Why?

I have taken mushrooms that allowed my transport to the astral plane. When I went there, my astral body was not perpetually eclipsed by my physical form. The ideas that took shape there were not blocked by their literal components below. For that matter, how could something physical like the sun have permanence in the astral realm when nothing else does? The astral realm is abstract and bizarre, and there is no place for rationality there. Something can be as large or small as a person imagines. For that matter, something can be as dull or bright as a person imagines. So why then would the astral sun be eclipsed by the physical sun? When I went to the plane above, I puzzled upon that conundrum. I imagined that I was as large as a house, and so I was. I imagined that there was a great ocean of milk in front of me, and it came to be. I imagined that the astral sun was dimmer than the physical sun, and nothing happened. The astral sun remained brighter than the physical sun, and so remained eclipsed.

Then it came to me. The astral sun is not eclipsed. The astral sun is the eclipse. For the astral sun—no matter how we imagine it—cannot be brighter than the source of all energy in the universe. Reader, if you ever go to the astral plane, look up at the sky. Beyond the dark orb of the eclipse, you will see a brilliant ring of fire. That is the spiritual plane.

Every thousand years, the blood corona sliver sneaks our two planes of existence just a little akilter, and a fraction of the energy of that great fireball comes streaming down to us without obstruction. Is it any wonder the spirits cannot travel there from the astral plane when that happens? They must wait for the river to be dammed again. The true miracle that occurred in those fateful thousand years was not the conquering of death; it was that Vitanimus had unwittingly built a bridge to the spiritual plane.