Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

"I WOULD NOT DO THAT if I were you, Apollyon." The voice—this voice was breeze over still water. A caress upon a river.

The voice of a freak.

A person who hid their crazy well. And yes, it was a woman's voice. Rafel's gold eyes streamed currents of lava as tears. Corazón had stilled in his arms. Her chest didn't heave anymore. It hurt him too much to think even the possibility of her quietened heart. And he still had not seen Aya Naamah nor Ravenna. The storm hit and he could hear fat raindrops beating outside. It was so loud—fierce as churning waves, yet latent in his mind. As he cried, he would not let Cora go. Her blood seeped in his hands and the space around his knees; a blood lake upon the grand floors.

How could the entire Castle be empty?

Rafel's eyes still burned devil-flame. His throat, clogged.

This woman with the sickly sweet voice was the only other presence with him in the vast Dublac foyer. She began walking from the high mantelpiece. For some stupid reason she wasn't scared of him roasting the shit out of her. Dumb! His tears—drops of molten magma—dripped, hissing on the open ground, burning brown holes. The lone whisperer obviously had a trick up her sleeve to approach him so.

"You know whom I am...and from what blackest pit I hail. Would you then avail your sorry life so stupidly?"

"Yes. I do know you well, Prince of Hel." The woman kept walking toward him. The thunder and rain outside was eerie music to her thin voice. "—but I fear the same could not be said of me. I have heard my name called in almost every tavern from here to the coasts, every high office, edifice, church and coven. And I hear too it is also called in the courts of the Empress, for which I am branded witch, whore, bitch, cunt, and every other profane name upon the Martyr's green earth."

Rafel touched Cora's face somberly while he cut out to the woman. "Don't call upon gods you defy. You are a WITCH. A WHORE. BITCH! A fucking CUNT! Yes! Everyone in the city can't be wrong."

The woman stopped with arms folded three feet from where he kneeled. Her long maroon dress had sharp sleeves that hid her arms and fell forward. She said, "I guess you know who I am now?"

Rafel hated that she sighed when she said this, like he was but a petulant child acting up in the corner. Of course he knew who she was now! There was only one witch, bitch whore roaming up and down the roads—and mouths of the Empire.

Racquel Serpent.

The foul puritan!

The woman with more reach, preach, and teach than the Holy Cathedral. With her propagandas of absolute truth and emancipation of mortal lives, she had won many Sothebe hearts to her cause, but Israfel knew better. Him and probably everyone in this castle: souls that he could not now find. And it wasn't even funny. She had tormented the peace he had gone to battle for, the freedom he had imprisoned his family for, and the nirvana he'd killed his girlfriend's father for. And she had been to him a faceless somebody—until now.

She had escaped the Blue Moon killings then.

Hmm!

"You may call be Mother—"

"I ain't calling you nothing, bitch-ass whore! THE FUCK do you think this is! The only reason I haven't burned your fucking face off is because you're going to tell me where everyone is. And as for this ...creature," Rafel grinded his teeth at the hunched Frankenstein—the oddity whom had punched a hole in his Cora, and whom had lumbered his way to Racquel's side and was now standing just a short behind his obvious creator: his Blood Mother. "—You're gonna beg to be nailed to the cross once promised you when this is over!"

Red, billous smoke poured from Rafel's nostrils.

Racquel gave her first smile at him. "Scourge is not the one on his knees here."

Her smile guaranteed her in Rafel's mind as a closeted sicko. But Scourge? So this was the 12ft son-of-a-gun that'd tried to kill Ravenna in the Undercity. Now Rafel didn't think this abomination deserved Hel even. With [Soul-Stich] he'd scatter Scourge's lifeform to the four winds so there'd be no possibility of a reincarnation. That's what idiotic curs got! Yes!

Scourge was supposed to be at the Mines, treading black dirt and rocks for the rest of his insufferable existence. But apparently he'd gotten an early release by the hands of his harlot mother or whatever. 'Maybe the priests that night were just a distraction,' Rafel mused. He was still caressing Cora in his arms, hoping she had enough spirit in her [Ghostcore] to keep her tethered to mortal coil. However, looking upon the infamous and great whore of the nation; and though it hurt it his manhood—like running his naked balls over broken glass—to say, Racquel Serpent was not ugly.

She was almost too pretty to die.

Almost!

And normally he had the hots for crazy. But this bitch? She was the fucking exception!

He supposed the gangs of the Undercity did flock to her cause because well, all her talk about defiance and revolution. But more, because they wanted to gang-bang her!

Looking at the way the massive Scourge was almost slamming her ass from behind, he guessed she let them.

"WHORE!!!" He screamed at her, through agony and contempt.

"Wow!" Racquel Serpent gay-chuckled. Rafel fired her again: "your voice sounds like a freight train in need of lube. Tell me, SCARLET SAVIOR, how many Critch dicks you sucked?"

She shared a look with the giant behind her—Scourge was first to look away. "I admire you, Apollyon," she ignored his ask, "your ascent from the Abyss might just be worthy to be named a miracle. From the beginning of your days as fresh Earl of Emberfall, I have detailed your journey and machinations—and conquests." She produced from her long sleeves a withered journal, which she tossed at him. Rafel saw names; and as one teardrop out the corner of his eyes fell to it, the book was engulfed in heat of flames. He met her eyes squarely—like I am not sorry for burning your precious book.

Racquel didn't look bothered. He had a good guess with him kneeling at her feet she was quite fulfilled. He told her, "so this floats your boats then? The brokenness of a principality?"

"I am fond of putting devils where they belong. . .under my heel. Yes." She grinned, her crazy showing out. "You might just be the most prolific demon in existence. Alas, you're still a big, burned fucker."

"I see," said Rafel, "in addition to being community pussy, you're racist too."

Raquel's blood-red pupils said she didn't refute this. She was about to hurl something next but her words were cut off by the entrance of two people. They looked sinfully identical. But it was one person, not twins. A Lockshian. The fashioned one-lock of hair was a giveaway.

'A [Bodysmith].' Rafel remarked.

She had enlisted the help of a body-splitting bastard to her cause. It'd be easy enough to sneak one man into the Castle, and then find an army waiting. [Bodysmiths] could split into as much as ten hundred bodies in minutes. It was the power of exponentials. And all bodies were equally adept in the magic of the original [Prime]. Looking at the two men, Rafel didn't know if the real Lockshian was even in the foyer presently.

"I am done with the stewards, eh. T'was one hill of bodies, Mother. My brothers are searching the grounds for survivors..." The Lockshian kept whispering more to Racquel. Her smile grew by the second. Every now and then she would glance at Rafel with her psycho, crimson eyes and have the guts to look amused.

He knew now how they had infiltrated the House of Raven.

A [Bodysmith].

"Fucker!"

Who'd see that coming?

—And with the storm. No one would expect an assassin with the rain. Rafel heard bullets of the icy weather drum the shut long windows of the palace. They were locked in.

Obviously he could attack and reduce them to a pile of ash in seconds. But not without seeing his slave succubus or jaded angel first. And with the confidence in which Racquel squared her shoulders Rafel had an inkling she probably had them. "WHERE IS THE EMPRESS?!" He abruptly spat, interrupting the talkative Lockshian. They was blood on the man's thready shoes but Rafel did not want to dwell. If the stewards of the Castle were referred to as a 'Hill of corpses' it was clear they were dead. Still, Rafel didn't get why the son-of-a-literal-bitch had to refer to his multiple selves as his brothers.

Some unburdened trauma there, no?

There was no mention of Ravenna or Aya, so he had hope. Meanwhile, in his head he tried to call on his system, "Peitho? Peitho, are you there?" But all he got was the monotone drill, pinging the Ding! Ding! in his head.

"Where ...is my succubus? WHERE ARE THEY?!!!"

Racquel looked at him that sorry way again. "I'm sorry, Apollyon but your decibels are not going to bring in your whores."

Rafel grinded his teeth. His heart felt on fire—and maybe it was. But it was when Racquel dared to turn her look of pity to the bleeding girl in his arms that that fire reached his brain. "Fuck this! Fuck you!" He exploded out from his position.

Poof!

The next second he stood behind Racquel, upstanding. She was bewildered. Dazed, for a moment. She heard wet, crushing sounds. When she turned to look at Rafel, he had in his flaming hand Scourge's ripped spine. It was a very big cluster of bones. Sticky blood splat on her shocked face, some in her mouth.

"Ohh—" she shuddered.

Rafel's [Hel flame] licked up the dropping blood, roasting the vertebrae as it bled out.

It was a moment before Scourge fell with a thud; his spine had been collected so fast from his body he didn't even know. And as for the poor Lockshian, he was but organs and tidbit bone on the foyer's cold floor. Both bodies of he. The only complete thing left of the man was a single torn eyeball protruding from the bloody mess. Rafel stepped on a half-brain as Scourge's back-bone turned to black ash in his grip.

Corazón—her unmoving body—was safe above him; she was held several feet high in the air by [Titan Grasp]: the gargantuan red arm of his Behemoth form cuddled her form safely in its crimson hollow.

But upon the bitch before him, Rafel had no care. Billows of [Infernum] poured out his nose – the soul of a fire dragon inhabiting his body – he said quietly to her, "I am only going to ask one last time, BITCH. WHERE. IS. MY. SUCCUBUS?"

"B–Bu—But..." Racquel stammered.

She in herself was powerless. Her blood held all the divinity.

Rafel shouted at her. "BUH WHAT?!"

"But—"

"Oh she's right here, darling." An untouched voice of silver cut what Racquel was going to say. Rafel turned to stone. He knew that voice. The voice of twenty thousand hot nights. The voice of sex. Where Racquel Serpent had the talk of a wasp, this was the slur of silk. The voice that had caused many heroic warriors to perdition, shame, forgotten death; this voice could seduce an Angel from realms of glory. Before even he turned, he knew who was standing at his back.

He turned anyway.

. . .and there she was.

Robed in the night itself. A morose salvation—darkly astonishing, palest, beautiful. A jewel of the abyss. Mary in a crown of thorns.

"Oh my dear, dear boy." Lilith held out her arms—open, inviting. And Aya Naamah's cut-off head rolled to him.

[To be continued.]