~~Mia~~

Zel outright moaned. “It says war?”

Maybe Mia should have lied. The further they got into the book and the more of Lucifer’s words she read, the more the bushes in the cathedral burned, the louder and heavier the winds grew, and the brighter the runes became. She was scared.

“It… did, yeah. But, these are weird words to write in a book, right? This sounds more like a speech you’d give before going out for a fight, not something written in a book for knowledge or something.”

“Indeed. But then, perhaps it is not written for knowledge, but something else, something more… intimate, than simply words written on a page.”

“Intimate?”

Nodding, Zel turned the page. “Continue.”

Mia sucked in a breath. The cathedral reacted to the words she read, meaning if Mia pretended to read something now, lied about it, Zel would know. No choice but to keep reading.

The next page was a doozy.

“The nine spires are my bastion. My children will flood the world. My children will pour over the Heavens, and then the Earth. The nine islands will bow to me. The surface will bow to me. All will be mine, and my children will feed well. Vengeance will be wrought, my kin will be ash, and the creator of all will watch in terror, powerless, as I make this Great Tower kneel.” Jesus fucking christ, even if Zel wasn’t overtly horribly evil, Lucifer seemed to be. The cathedral roared, and both Zel and Mia looked around as something rumbled in the wind, something suspiciously close to a deep, vibrating voice. The final line. “Rise, Belial. Rise.”

Zel licked her lips in that slow, sensual way women did when they were thinking naughty thoughts. She turned the page.

“Uh…” Mia squinted at the new page, more tears in her eyes as the amber runes burned. “That’s a weird page.”

“I thought you might say so.” Zel ran a finger down the pillar drawing in the center of the page. At the top were nine symbols, circles, and at the bottom were nine more. “You confirm my suspicions. It is the Great Tower. At its base, the nine spires of Hell. At its peak, the nine floating islands of Heaven.” She tapped a claw on the small runes, written onto each of the eighteen circles, small things but legible. “Read.”

“I…” Hmm. Mia leaned in closer, squinting against the brightness. A little David showed through now, curiosity that demanded she read, even though she knew she shouldn’t. “I… I’m not sure.” She half expected Zel to yell at her, but the demon queen sat there and waited, eyes sliding from Mia to the book, as Mia’s hand drifted toward the page. “It’s a… a… battle plan? These little runes on the side, little paragraphs, they’re talking about details, about things that’ll happen at False Gate. Lucifer and the nine Old Ones, they converged on False Gate, created the vortex, and then… there was a battle. The archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, came down to Hell and fought. And…”

“Mmm?”

“Nothing. The plan describes the vortex worked, describes the battle started, and just… stops. I guess Lucifer never got to write anything else.”

For the first time in a while, Zel frowned.

“A reasonable conclusion. What remains of our lord, no one truly knows. Perhaps they are trapped in the Forgotten Place. Perhaps they are dead, if such a being can even die.” She laughed, and her frown disappeared. “Whatever the case may be, the bones of the old world are ours to do with as we see fit. Mine, to do with as I see fit. Within the remains of what came before, secrets lie hidden. And—”

Zel’s voice disappeared under a humming choir in Mia’s head. A voice. A song. Music that wasn’t music. Something alien and cosmic pulled at her. With a mind of its own, Mia’s hand descended onto the page of dark stone, and touched one of the runes. A specific rune in one of the circles that beckoned, demanded, she touch it.

Her head snapped back. Pain shot through her finger, up her arm, through her neck and into her skull. Her eyes closed, but light from somewhere burned through her eyelids into her brain. Emblems, symbols, strange shapes assaulted her thoughts, and somewhere beneath it all, she knew she was screaming.

The pain passed. She yanked her hand free, gasping and panting, and stared at Satan’s book as the electric tingles continued up and down her arm. Zel hadn’t helped her. The damn woman had let Mia scream like she’d stuck a fork in an electric socket and couldn’t let go.

“Take your time,” Zel said, grinning at her. “I am sure the book showed you something.”

“It… It did! How’d you know it’d do that!?”

“The tales speak of the ways the ancient language could communicate with more than the symbols themselves. Traces of wisdom, resonating within the writings themselves, the literal runes. I thought perhaps whoever wrote this book had instilled such power into these pages.” Zel plucked at her nipple chain as she ran claws over the stone pages. “What secrets did it place into your mind, young soul?”

“It… hit me with… more symbols. Dozens… more. Oh god.” She clutched her skull and stared down at the book. Runes she couldn’t solidify flowed through her mind, like a hazy dream stacked on a dream stacked on a dream, overriding and overflowing her thoughts.

Lightning erupted from the book, glowing arcs that snapped out. Mia, barely able to keep her eyes open as her brain scrambled, stepped and almost slipped down the stairs, but Zel caught her with one of her extra hands. Even as more yellow lightning shot out of the book and crashed over the black bones surrounding them, Zel didn’t move. She held the book, made no effort to close it, and let what was happening happen, not afraid, but enraptured.

The lightning ignored Zel and Mia, and instead arced toward the walls, the ceiling, the floor, and the pillars. It danced over the black bones, drowned them in amber light, and crackled with hunger. It cut through the air and erupted, drawing lines that blinded and lasted in Mia’s eyes after she closed them, like a long-exposure picture of headlights at night.

She opened her eyes. The symbols were still there, the symbols in Mia’s mind. But now they also hovered in the air, drifted around the burning bushes, and more lightning struck out from the books directly onto them. Each amber lightning arc pushed the symbols, until they collided with a surface, either the pillars or the walls of the bone cathedral.

“Oh my,” Zel said, licking her lips. The lightning eventually came to a stop, and Zel looked at Mia as she licked her lips. “What a wondrous sight.”

With time, Mia’s mind unscrambled. Feeling came back to her fingers, and the symbols glowing against the bone surfaces stopped scalding her brain. Slowly, she looked back down at the book, and pointed with a shaky hand at one of the circles at the base of the tower.

“The first circle you touched,” Zel said, “is the circle of Death’s Grip.”

“It is? How do you know?”

“The symbol is written in various places, and my old lover Azailia has shown me the symbol of her spire.” She tapped on a claw on the next symbol, clockwise. “The Grave Valley.” She tapped on the circle in the opposite direction. “The Black Valley’s symbol. I have seen it before, on my crusades.”

Crusade was probably not an accurate word choice for the sort of shit Zel had been up to. Not vile enough.

Mia stepped off the stairs, checked to make sure Zel was okay with it, and drifted around the inside of the cathedral. Nine glowing runes, each as big as her entire body, circled the cathedral’s floor, and she started with the one she knew as Death’s Grip. Automatically, she went clockwise, to the Grave Valley symbol Zel had pointed out.

“The Grave Valley,” Mia said. Zel nodded. Mia continued on the same path around the whole damn cathedral. “The Scar. The Red Pits. The Navameere Fields.” Around around she went. “Um… The Unholy Lands. Next is Heaven’s Tears.”

Zel held up a claw. “I do not recognize those names”

“That’s what it says. Next symbol is the Black Valley.” She walked to the center of the huge room, and gestured down at the floor, where the ninth symbol sat. “And this one says… the Frozen Heart?”

Zel looked back down at the book still in her hands, smile borderline sinister.

“The Unholy Lands must be the original name for False Gate. Heaven’s Tears became Angel’s Spine, and the Frozen Heart became the Forgotten Place. How interesting. And the symbols above?”

Mia sucked in a slow breath as she looked up at the higher symbols now pinned to the bone walls. They weren’t perfectly arranged or aligned, and they weren’t directly over the symbols for the nine Hell spires either. It was almost like they’d been placed in free floating locations, like the islands Mia had seen on the stairs to Heaven.

“Avinoam. Ravid. Samael. Yathael. Tversia. Azaparad. Ayaloram. Sinev. Azoryev.”

Zel moaned. “The names of the Heavenly Islands have been lost to us since the First Age.” She grabbed a big bone on the floor, yanked it free, and took a moment to scratch some Estian runes on the black surface. Taking notes on some man’s femur, what a world.

How much information was Mia feeding into Zel’s inevitable war machine? Did she care? Demons killing demons didn’t seem to have any ethical dilemmas she could think of, but if she said something that let Zel do something crazy, like attack Earth, or Heaven, she’d never forgive herself.

Last week she’d been spying on boys as a ghost in university while waiting for someone to do an autopsy on her corpse. Now she was actively trying to figure out if her words would trigger Armageddon. What the fuck.

Mia moved to the other symbols, these circling the cathedral pillars. So many, hundreds, thousands, of varying sizes.

“I… don’t know if I can translate these,” she said, wincing.

But Zel didn’t raise her voice. She spoke calmly, with a hint of ice that scared Mia just as much.

“And why not?”

“I’m not sure. Some of them look like names, but it’s like… like…” Mia touched one of the big runes, half expecting it to zap her, either with mystical knowledge or some pain. It did neither, and she tapped a finger on the warm surface glowing on the charred bones of hundreds of dead people. “It’s almost like it’s asking me to pronounce it with two tongues at the same time? Or two throats?”

Zel nodded, and gestured for Mia to continue. Say one thing for the demon queen, she had a head on her shoulders, and wasn’t the sort to kill or torture Mia just because she didn’t like what Mia had to say or was capable of.

Another rune waited to be read, and this one she managed. Potram. Another, royam. Another, batlam. Each her mind tried to digest, but it was like the other words, alien, and almost impossible to pronounce. But somehow, these stuck, as if demanding she figure out how to pronounce them completely.

She tried. “Batlam.” The word was electricity on her tongue, and images shot through her brain with blinding light. A sword. A spear. A shield. A bow, with a quiver and arrows. The blades and tips all held a gentle gold glow, and the material was perfectly reflective, like a pristine mirror held by wondrous gold. Armor followed, gold and silver, with flowing white silk between the joints.

Mia looked down at her hand. The rune, of its own power, threw an image in her mind of her hand covered in the most beautiful silver and gold armor, with flowing engravings that reminded her of the gates of Heaven. No, they reminded her of the armor she’d seen on the angels at the gates of Heaven. It was their armor. Angel armor. Angel weapons.

She moved on to the next rune.

“Potram.” The same sensation, but different images. Naked skin. Roman sandals. Jewelry, bracelets and necklaces, rings and belly chains, nipple piercings and wreath tiaras, gold and silver. Sheer white silk flowing over skin.

“Royam.” This one confused her. It was like the potram rune, but the clothes seemed far more official, lots of white silk, less jewelry, bits of armor, and less exposed skin. Assuming these runes had something to do with what angels wore, this rune was business clothes, and the potram rune was for casual Friday.

Why, or how, did the runes summon images of armor clothing into her mind? It was almost like pronouncing the runes required more than just her tongue, but her mind too, memories, thoughts, and something beyond.

Other runes asked her to pronounce them, but it was useless. Life and death, fire and water, up and down, the great tower, all half pronunciations that left out something key she had no chance of wrapping her mind or tongue around. They grew borderline cosmic and insane the more she found. The runes for existence and non-existence cut across her eyes like razors, and she looked away. Others weren’t so bad, but even harder to grasp, like trying to grab clouds. Runes for dreams, emotions, and… soul?

“… don’t tell me.”

Zel grinned at her. “Do not tell you what?”

“There’s some sort of secret message written in the runes, and I have to go around Hell, touch each book, and absorb the message from each spire in order to decipher it?”

Zel laughed and laughed, and slowly closed the book. The burning bushes calmed to quiet flickers. The howling, roaring wind disappeared. The cathedral of the dead became a deadly silent place once again.

“I doubt it. For what purpose? Some absurd journey or adventure, left behind by our great lord as a pilgrimage for future demons? No. I suspect what now rests in your mind is a glimpse of the power Lucifer used to turn Death’s Grip into what it is. Perhaps power our lord used to create its spire, or perhaps, to create Belial?”

“Power? They’re just runes, right? Just symbols—” Mia grabbed her head as she stumbled, but Zel snapped out a hand and caught her. “Got a little lightheaded there.”

“Runes can be more than simply knowledge. In the Spires War, angels intervened, and I heard talk of the rune they used to empower themselves. Batlam, as you said.” Zel nodded. Mia gulped. “Now come. You are useless to me if damaged. There are other things to read, but they can wait.”

Batlam. The symbol jumped into Mia’s mind again, pulled up out of the muck of memory and the strange book’s haze that still infected her mind. She could envision it completely, sharp and clear in her thoughts, and it tingled, even as she failed to pronounce it.

Nodding, Zel got up, put the book back on the hilariously huge pulpit, and gestured toward the cathedral door.

“As much as I would love to think Lucifer left great power hidden inside these ancient relics for Hell’s children to use, it is a ridiculous notion, something pulled of moronic fantasy stories. No, Lucifer and the Old Ones used every tool they had in their war against Heaven and the other archangels. Only the echoes of the battle remain.” Zel set a hand on Mia’s shoulder, and her three others pushed open the cathedral door. “But, knowledge is a power of its own. Something has happened, something that has led to your arrival, and perhaps the arrival of others. Knowledge will be how I mold these events to my benefit.” Nodding, she guided Mia to the tunnel door, opened it, and Kas and Adron turned around immediately with small bows. “This is but one shadow of the old world, little soul. My spire holds others, and you will read their contents to me. But no more today. Go, rest. Tomorrow, we will try something different.”

Different. Mia looked up at the bolstara tetrad, and risked an accusing squint, which filled Zel with all sorts of playful giggles. Oh boy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~David~~

None of the other demons got away. They didn’t even try. With a screech and roar, they threw themselves at the rider, and the rider cut them down like cattle. Like chopping blocks of wood. The rider was fast, and direct. No elegance to the movements, no finesse, he moved with the same extreme bluntness as the demons, just faster and harder.

He chopped the demons apart, hitting a massive brute in the skull hard enough his axe went through their head, down through their chest, and out through their crotch. The axe hit the stone, and a splash of fire erupted outward, flowing over the rider and harmlessly off his full plate bronze armor. The other brute he cut in half horizontally.

And then he was alone. No more demons, just a pile of burning flesh.

David somehow managed to tear his eyes away and look to his three demon protectors, but all three stared out over the distance to the rider, and all three trembled. The rider was far away, and the four of them were well hidden, flat against their rock, a good hundred feet up with only the tips of their heads — and horns — sticking out over the little cliff edge. The sky was getting darker. The four of them were completely silent. There was no chance the rider could see them, or even hear them when they whispered.

But they didn’t say a word, just stared, as the goliath of a man hooked his blood-soaked axes on his back, got down on a knee, plunged his gauntlet into one of the dead demon’s chest, and ripped out the heart. Seamless. Even Caera struggled to harvest a heart; breaking bones and ripping a heart free of binding muscle wasn’t exactly easy. But the rider had zero trouble, and fed the heart to his giant goort mount. Oh god the horse had sharp teeth. That was fucking weird.

David looked Caera’s way again, but before he could say anything she nodded back toward the rider.

“He might remove his helmet to eat,” she whispered. “We have to see that.”

Caera didn’t sound like she was watching some powerful demon she feared. She sounded like she was in total awe of a god, or a mystical figure from history. Even Dao and Jes were awestruck and hypnotized.

The rider did gather another heart, this one from the giant korgejin. Such a titan of a demon, something from nightmares, a classic example of a terrifying brutal juggernaut complete with the wings, hooves, and horns. And the rider had brought him down in moments, without saying a word, without even a grunt.

He used an axe, and chopped down into the tetrad demon’s chest. The breastplate managed to resist the blow, barely, and the clang echoed like a mini explosion as the black metal bent. It wouldn’t have taken all that much effort to slide it aside, or cut the straps holding the asymmetrical slab of bent metal to the demon’s chest, but the rider didn’t bother. He chopped again, and his axe erupted with red sparks that showered the area in embers and dancing flames.

The armor broke apart, and fell to the sides of the demon’s enormous chest. Big as the rider was, the demon had to be ten feet tall, and cutting into his chest made a mess of splashing blood that soaked the area. But again, the rider ripped the giant heart free of the titan without issue, held it in his hand, and stared at it from behind his skull-like great helm.

Caera pushed David flat to the stone, just as the rider turned, and faced them. Oh fuck.

“We go,” Caera whispered, even quieter than before, “now.”

“Now? He’s looking in our direction.”

“Exactly. He spotted us. Let’s go before he thinks we’re a threat.” She sounded terrified. She looked terrified.

Slowly, David nodded. He turned his head back toward the rider, but they were too low to the stone to see over the lip, and that was the only reason they were able to slip away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What the fuck was that?” David asked, thirty minutes later with plenty of rock and stone between them and the slaughter. Even with all the space they put between them and the rider, he kept his voice low.

Caera didn’t answer though, and trembles still worked up and down her tail and spine. She walked on all fours, low to the ground, and she gestured to David to stay low. She didn’t have to do so for Jes and Dao, both ladies crouching with every step, Jes sometimes going on all fours too. They had to drift around the mountain, deeper into its ravines, and in the opposite direction of the cave they’d been sleeping in, before Caera spoke.

“The rider,” she whispered, “is… no one knows.”

“No one knows? You said he’s shown up before.”

“He has, but he’s just a ghost story. A human-shaped person, probably a man, who shows up so rarely he… he’s just a fucking myth.”

“Not exactly a myth,” David said. “You’re sure it’s the rider?”

The three demon ladies looked at him, until Dao eventually clicked once, and they got all marching again.

“Stupid question, my bad. That goort was huge, too.”

“If it’s even a goort,” Jes said. “I’ve never seen a goort that big, or with skin that black.”

Caera came to a stop beside a big boulder, the four of them in a small ditch between two mountains, and she took a breather as she sat down. A break then, before going back to their cave. He didn’t bother asking why they weren’t heading back to their cave immediately, either. Caera wanted to avoid going straight there, in case they were being followed. If they were, going around the mountain first meant time for them to notice.

Dao, Jes, and David sat beside her, each taking some time to let the ache soothe. Crouching and sneaking so long across jagged rocks, climbing up and scaling down, was fucking hard.

“Is he even human?” he asked.

Caera shrugged. “No idea. First time I’ve seen him.”

Dao clicked a few times.

“Right,” Jes said, “if he’s even a he. That armor was… thick.”

“Aera armor,” Caera said, pulling her tail in front of her and rubbing it. A nervous tick. “I’ve seen fragments of it. Adron’s got a few. But a full suit? One made to perfectly fit the body?” With a shaky hand, the tiger stroked the spikes along the back of her tail. “That armor was made probably specifically for him in False Gate, thousands of years ago when demons still knew how to use the forge.”

“Thousands of years,” he said. “That’s… That’s… The fuck does that have to do with me? Why is he here? I mean yeah, we assume he’s here for me, or Mia, but he’s just some… guy, who’s been wandering around for thousands of years?”

The ladies all shrugged.

“He killed Gorlus,” Jes said, “like he was fucking nothing. Yeah, Gorlus was always an arrogant asshole, and part of the reason I left the spire, but I didn’t think he was that stupid.”

Dao clicked a few times.”

“Could be an aura, yeah,” Caera said. “We were too far. But if he’s human, no way it was an aura.”

David held up a hand. “Hello?”

The tiger shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on, David, but there’s no reason to think the rider is unmarked like you.”

“And you’re sure no one’s ever seen his face?”

“Not that I know.”

“Then I’m putting it on the possibilities list.” Nodding, he got up.

And dropped back down. The four of them stopped talking, stopped moving, stopped breathing, and let the silence of the empty mountains fill their ears.

Clop clop. Clop clop.

Caera held up a low hand, and squished herself down against the rock they hid behind. All of them did, down to the ground, with their backs and sides against the wall of stone of the mountain that was between them and where they’d seen the rider.

Clop clop. Clop clop. The sound of a walking horse on horseshoes. Goorts weren’t horses, and they didn’t have horseshoes, but anything that heavy was bound to make noise with each step. More noise gently echoed through the mountains, the clopping grew louder, and was joined by the quiet clink and clank of metal on metal, armor rubbing against itself.

David snapped his eyes to Caera, but she shook her head, pointed at him and pointed at the ground underneath her. Don’t go anywhere. He gulped hard, nodded, and tilted his head up.

A shadow cast over the stone, along the ground beside them, maybe a hundred feet away. There was a path above them, an outcropping of rock path that was flat enough you could walk on it, and Caera had taken them below and around it instead of on it. Too risky being exposed like that, if they were being followed. A damn smart plan. The four of them stared out to the shadow the sky of fire cast, and watched it grow closer and closer, as the rider slowly rode the path over their heads.

The noises grew louder again, the weight of the rider immense and making any sort of stealth for him impossible. Could the goort gallop with someone like the rider on their back? Could the rider run? Was all this hiding even necessary?

Definitely necessary. Caera was petrified. She barely breathed, her tail didn’t move an inch, and all three ladies made sure their horns were pressed back against the wall of stone. Clop clop. Dao’s lip trembled, and Jes’s usual angry expression was gone, replaced with wide eyes like a horrified cat. Clop clop.

Eighty feet. Seventy. Sixty. Heat surged up through David’s body. The hair on his arms stood up. Electricity danced through his fingers, and he clenched them tight, trying to suppress the strange sensation. More heat flooded over him, until his eyes threatened to tear up. His muscles tightened. His heart rate soared until he felt the war drums in his veins.

He grabbed the useless sword hilt he had hooked inside the strap of his skirt, and slowly slid it out and held it in front of him. He didn’t know why. Something told him to. Something told him to grab the sword, and use it. Something burned in his blood and told him to fight, to stab, to cut, to attack the rider. Attack anything.

Fight. Kill. Destroy.

Caera snapped a hand out and grabbed his. He almost sucked in a breath, a noise that might have meant their doom, but Caera’s panicked eyes hit him like a bucket of ice water. He managed a weak nod, and relaxed his muscles until his hand lowered. Only then did Caera let him go.

The rider stopped. David held his breath. The shadow, a steady and solid mass of black casting over the dark red stone, shifted only slightly as the rider looked out toward the mountain opposite of him. If he came closer to the edge and looked down, he’d see the four of them. They’d have to run or fight, and Jes and Dao were in no condition to do either.

Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Every fiber of his being demanded he do the opposite. Something hot and searing poured over him, like rapids of lava, invisible and untouchable, but in full force and drowning him in something he could not fully explain. Rage? The animal urge to fight and defend food or territory? The urge to battle over a mate? Something scalding that shot up through his center into his heart and out into his limbs until they shook with adrenaline. His afterlife body had adrenaline? Apparently, and it flooded him until his clenching fists were sweating and his teeth ground so hard he heard them.

The rider didn’t. After a few more quiet eternal seconds, the rider moved on. No snap of the reins or jamming of the heels, the goort just decided to move on, and the rider didn’t argue. Either the two of them knew each other better than best friends, or the rider gave an order David couldn’t hear or see in the shadow. Clop clop, clop clop, the metal armor of rider and goort clinked quietly, and the shadow moved on.

The four of them didn’t move a muscle until they knew the rider had hit the curve of the mountain and had gone around it. Caera held a finger up to her lips, got on all fours, and prowled in the opposite direction. They followed.

Something had stirred the hornet’s nest. More demons drifted around the mountains, and a lot of gliders jumped from cliff edge to cliff edge, perch to perch. They were looking for something. The rider? If they were on a suicide mission, sure. Whatever it was, life got a whole lot more difficult, and Caera had to take detours deep into canyons and ditches to avoid getting spotted.

If this continued into tomorrow, they had no chance of monitoring the tower, let alone approaching it. Shit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They all collapsed inside their little cave. It was a decent hiding spot, out of the way, somewhat deep between two mountains, and in their shadow. No one would notice it unless they came through the ravine randomly, like David and them had after the invisible monster attack. No sign of any demon activity yet, or giant invisible monsters, or Cainites, down in the little canyon. They felt safe in the cave, a little, enough they all pressed their backs to the back wall inside around the curve, out of view of the entrance.

“Holy fucking shit what the fuck was that,” David asked.

“The rider,” Jes said.

“I meant that… that… aura.”

Caera managed to push off the wall, and lay on her stomach in front of the three of them, perpendicular.

“There’s not much information out there about the rider, David. He’s a ghost story demons like to tell each other sometimes, when sitting around a burning bush. No one knows shit about him. No one knows where he came from, why he does what he does, where he goes, what he’s up to, nothing. He just shows up, and everything goes to shit. He slaughters demons, and moves on.”

Dao clicked a few times and made some gestures.

“Dao’s got a point,” Jes said. “That aura, I’ve never felt an aura that strong, and I’ve been in Diogo’s fight aura before. I almost bit my tail off.”

Caera nodded. “It was intense. Every muscle in me was screaming I get up and… tear into something.” Slowly, she held up a hand, flexed her individual fingers, and examined each big claw. “It was a little too similar to Zel’s horde summons.”

The horde summon, yeesh. Sure enough, Caera closed her eyes, and went still on the ground as she probably did her best to suppress the horrible memories. David had never asked about the sort of horrors she’d had to deal with while part of Zel’s march against the Black Valley, because it didn’t seem to be a personal issue, like Kia and Marquez’s death had. Instead, it was a black mark on her past of nothing but pain and misery, and talking about it didn’t seem like it’d do much for her.

Maybe she’d talk about it if she wanted to, someday. Not today.

“We know he’s probably here for me or Mia,” he said. “But, if we don’t know anything about the rider, we have no way of figuring out why.”

“We know one thing,” Jes said. “He’s been around for hundreds of years. Thousands.”

“Yes,” Caera said. “Some demons say he first showed up during the Spires War, and went around causing chaos. But always randomly, just to kill. And if he’s been going around with an aura like that, it’s no wonder. We were lucky, hiding like we were. If we’d gotten into a fight with him, that aura would have made it impossible to even think about stopping or running away.” She shivered, and rotated her shoulder, the one with the burn scar hidden under a slab of leather strap. “Just like a horde summon, once sealed in.”

They all took a deep breath, and let the silence sink in for a while. It was yet another problem they had to deal with, and at this point their problems were so random, a giant turtle falling out of the sky right onto David’s head sounded perfectly reasonable. Fit right in with the invisible Godzilla.

Dao clicked a few times, gestured to Caera, and pushed David off the wall toward the tiger. He’d been sitting down, but the satyr was damn strong, and he stumbled forward before falling onto his hands and knees, palms against Caera’s back.

Caera laughed, smiled at Daoka, closed her eyes, and let her chin rest on the back of her hands as she got comfortable lying half on her stomach, half on her side.

“Fine fine. David, I need another deep massage, and then some good sex.”

“Foreplay this time,” Jes said with a slap of the tail, right on David’s ass. “No skipping the good stuff this time.”

“Skipping? Last time I—”

Dao clicked twice, gave his butt a gentle kick with her good leg and hoof, and gestured to Caera again.

He rolled his eyes, and couldn’t help but smile as he undid some of Caera’s binding straps. The situation was a shit show, but if the girls were happy to use sex as a way to de-stress, he was happy to oblige.

He drilled a massaging elbow into Caera’s back as his mind went back to the rider. The aura had felt unbelievably powerful, and it’d overwhelmed David’s mind. Had the rider sensed David’s aura? If that were true, why didn’t he notice when he’d gotten so close? Had David’s aura even been on during that, activated, or suppressed?

All he could gather from the memory, was fear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Day 22~~

~~Mia~~

She woke up with a jolt, runes dancing through her mind. A dream. A dream? She was in Hell. She didn’t dream anymore.

She stared down at her fingers, and squeezed on nothing. It’d been a dream. Not the sort of dreams she’d had when alive, but something else, something that echoed in her skull and demanded she notice it. The exact opposite of what a dream would do, the way it’d do everything it could to fade away and be forgotten once she’d awaken. Not this dream. The symbols didn’t fade. And somewhere in the mess of symbols, an evil smile gnashed its big scary teeth.

Belial.

Slowly, she looked to Kas. He came out of his sleep at the same time, the crack of dawn, or rekindling. Without missing a beat, he stretched out like a dog, one arm and one leg at the same time, then the others, before he found a crouched and casual posture in the corner by the door. He hadn’t asked her what she and Zel had seen, and far as Mia could tell, he didn’t really care.

“Hell is a scary place,” she whispered.

Kas said nothing, not even a click.

Groaning, Mia got to her feet, made sure her silk wrap covered her bits, and made her way up the stairway along the side of the room, up to the raised area with the huge table and chairs, and stopped by the window. The big white teeth were still closed, blocking off the window and stopping her from jumping out, or any demons from jumping in. But the teeth were spread out enough she could peek through them and admire the sky of fire, its swirling maelstroms of red and orange, and how they brightened from embers to proper roaring flames.

She watched the fire grow, just like when she was a kid with her brother, hanging out in the woods and making little fires at night. Her mind wandered, and she let it swim through memories of her and David roasting marshmallows over an open flame in the forest, before her mind came right back up to the surface with the runes again.

Batlam. Potram. Royam. Those three stuck out more than the others, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around them. She didn’t even know what they meant, not really. Some of the other runes, her brain understood intimately, and had no problem translating the alien language into English, or Estian, for Zel. Others, she had no chance of understanding. But those three seemed doable, if she could figure them out. They were strange in a way the other runes weren’t. Something inside her tickled at the thought of them, like maybe they were something she should have understood, like someone making a meme reference she was supposed to remember but couldn’t.

The other symbols, the scarier ones, the dark ones hiding underneath, with talk of fire, death, claw, blood, pain, and sin, those circled the scary smile that again grinned at her in a darkness she had never known before. A big scary smile that put Acelina’s to shame. Maybe Zel was right. Maybe the book had been written as part of how Lucifer created Belial, one of the Old Ones. Maybe—

Her door opened. Only one person could do that.

Mia turned, and managed a weak smile for Zel as the demon woman entered her room.

“Little soul, how do you fare?” The tall demon wore white silks today, with more jewelry but less skulls. Still a few skulls, all of them human, but a nice step down compared to a dozen, or a giant skull hanging from the neck. Three thin chains connected her nipples underneath the silk, and several chains circled her slim waist and abs.

Zel was definitely the type to pierce her clit hood if she’d been human, but that might not work for her with how demon vaginas kinda just closed up and disappeared when they weren’t horny.

“I’m… okay, I guess.”

Kas clicked a few times and gestured to Mia, earning a frown from Zel. Uh oh.

“Kas says you’ve been standing there for two hours.”

Mia blinked. “I… didn’t realize. I was thinking about the runes, and—”

“Wonderful. I expect for you to share with me any wisdom you gleam.” Zel joined her up on the raised section of Mia’s cave, and motioned for Mia to come to her. “For now, let us depart.”

Mia winced. “More rune reading?”

“No. As much as the secrets hidden within the depths of the spire intrigue me greatly, they are a gamble. Perhaps we will learn something of value to me, perhaps not.” Zel grinned down at her, and idly plucked at her one of her nipple chains with one of her many hands. “There is something else about you I wish to explore that I am more confident will guarantee value.”

“I really am nothing more than a tool to be used, aren’t I?”

The demon queen’s grin only grew. “Of course.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They went down a few floors before stopping in front of another giant skull door with closed teeth, just like Mia’s, and as they grew closer, a sensation teased up her bare feet into her spine. Sex. That was someone’s sin aura, leaking through the cracks of the big white teeth. Mia didn’t need to ask what she’d see when the door opened. There’d be people fucking inside, and at least one demon bathing the whole room with the erotic, warm, tingling waves of the aura.

This was it. This was how Zel was going to take her virginity, or have someone else do it. Mia’s heart rate skyrocketed, her palms grew sweaty, and she clutched her silks tight to her body as she gulped down a giant rock. Oh god oh god, who’d be in there? Saldavin, with his giant orgy, a dozen succubi, a dozen incubi, and a dozen betrayers? Or Diogo and that bitch Acelina, people who’d rough Mia up and hurt her? Maybe…

Zel opened the door. Well, Mia hadn’t been wrong about the sex, but instead of the orgy she expected to find, she found two people. Adron, and Hannah.

The big vratorin was on his knees, and Mia stared at the demon’s profile as he fucked his pet. Mia had half thought Zel and Kas were exaggerating when Kas said Mia had been staring out her window for so long, but the day had been going long enough Adron and Hannah had been enjoying themselves for a while. Hannah dripped of sweat, her facial expression was a mess of exhaustion and pleasure, and she was on her knees with her chest planted on a pile of blankets. Her head was turned, facing the door, and her mouth was open, with probably more than a little drool soaking the blanket underneath her, along with the copious amount of cum dripping down her thighs, and down the bulge on her belly.

Adron had his hands on her ass and hips, and he yanked her toward him as he thrust forward. Slap, slap, wet sounds with each thrust, and Adron was not gentle. Hannah’s whole body shook, and her broken voice erupted with a tiny, pathetic squeak with each thrust, as the distension on her belly slid back and forth each time, nearly hitting her sternum.

“Adron, you mischievous little impin.” Chuckling, Zel casually tossed aside her silks, leaving her lean, muscular body naked — save for all the jewelry — as she walked toward him. “What use are you to me if you expend yourself so soon?”

He eased up on the thrusting, but didn’t stop, slowing down to a gentle, deep-but-tender rhythm, as he looked up at his boss.

“Hey, you told me to create the mood.”

“That I did. But poor Hannah here is now wasted and ruined. She won’t be much of a comforting companion to Mia for her first time.”

Mia summoned her best frown and aimed it straight at Zel, but a quiet mewl from Hannah drew her eyes. The woman’s thighs trembled, and she tried to push herself back up onto her palms. And failed. She collapsed with a high-pitched grunt, and half closed her eyes as she melted back against Adron’s cock. Of course Adron didn’t stop, and took the time to remove most of his length, grin at Mia, and slowly sink every inch of his cock back into the shivering woman. The way the distension moved down her stomach before nudging against the blankets under Hannah’s sternum, was insane, and mesmerizing.

Zel got down on her knees beside Adron on the pile of blankets, and motioned for Mia to come closer.

“Come, little soul. I look forward to experiencing this aura of yours when it is in full swing. Adron and Diogo have both convinced me of its power, and that you cannot help but unleash it when aroused.”

“And if I don’t want to have sex? Are you going to force me?” It sounded stupid, but she couldn’t take it back now. Zel had gently ‘implied’ she’d be happy to use torture to get her way if she had to. Forcing Mia to have sex with a demon she was obviously attracted to probably seemed like a gift, to Zel’s demon mind.

And that aura. That fucking sin aura. Adron filled the room with it, and for all Mia’s supposed specialness, the heavy, warm, inviting waves of desire flowing out of the demon tingled up her thighs into her spine. Her breathing quickened, and she hugged her silk toga tighter to herself as she forced her eyes off the damn bastard and onto Zel instead. Better to look at her, than the handsome demon still slowly fucking his borderline comatose pet.

“I will force you, if that is what you desire,” Zel said.

“It isn’t.” Playing with fire.

But Zel just giggled, and motioned for Kas and Mia both to come closer. Kas did, a quiet annoyed grumble in his throat, but zero hesitation. The goliath half sat half squatted beside Adron, his more alien dinosaur body shape allowing the odd position, and he half turned toward the open door.

Open no longer. Zel waved subtly toward the door behind Mia, her center horn glowed, and the white teeth of Adron’s room closed. Trapped. Another shiver ran up Mia’s spine, electric, tingling, and exciting.

“I could leave you to Saldavin, if you’d prefer,” Zel said. “He does enjoy gentleness, at first. You did not see how rough he often becomes, once his first few orgasms are had.”

“I…” As much as Saldavin had been attractive, in that ‘scary big muscular horrifying colossal demon beast’ kinda way, that was very much not the way Mia wanted her first night of real sex to go. Adron, however, Zel knew she wanted. Damn her. “I…”

~~♥♥♥~~

Adron picked up the pace with Hannah once again. He reached down, grabbed the limp woman’s wrists, and pulled. Her torso raised, her head hung limp, and Adron pounded into her hard, his grip on her hands stopping her from collapsing back onto the blankets.

Everyone stopped talking. Everyone watched. Poor Hannah could barely squeak anymore, and her body shook with the strength of each hard thrust ravaging her sweating body. More tremors worked through her, orgasm pulses drove up and down her legs and made them shake, while her toes curled, and juices splashed over her thighs. Mia couldn’t tear her eyes away from the blond woman, her thin and fit body, her modest breasts, all of it shifting back and forth with Adron’s rough pace. And with Adron holding her torso up, horizontal over the blankets, Mia had a clear view of the bulge moving back and forth against her abdomen and past her navel. Deep, and relentless.

He slowed as climax hit him, and gushing waves of thick, white cum poured out of his connection with his pet slave. The already drenched blankets were buried under a new wave of white, and Hannah’s stomach bulged with the hot fluid he squirted into her depths. Mia knew the fluid was hot, knew what it felt like on her skin, on her lips, in her mouth, in her throat, knew how strangely delicious it was, knew how good it felt to have on her breasts.

Zel and Kas both enjoyed the show. Their bodies reddened, and Zel idly plucked at one of her nipple chains as her nipples softened and swelled. Kas, sitting closer to Hannah’s head, tossed aside the few bits of armor he wore, before putting his hands back on the blankets. His cock emerged from his reddening body, immediately reached the blankets with its length, and half bent with malleability as it grew thicker, and longer, and didn’t stop. The beast growled as he entwined claws into Hannah’s short hair, lifted her head, and licked his huge teeth. He wanted to do things to her.

Poor Hannah’s eyes were mostly closed, and her mouth hung open, while a single drop of drool fell from her lips.

“You can’t… just…” Mia squirmed and tried to tear her eyes away from Hannah, and the way her tight, firm little ass molded against Adron’s pelvis. “You can’t just tell me to come have sex! I… I’m… I demand romance! A relationship! And foreplay!” Okay somehow foreplay snuck onto the list.

Giggling, Zel reached around and past Adron — she was over two feet taller than the already huge demon — and took Hannah’s shoulders in her grip. Like lifting a feather, she removed the dripping, soaked, exhausted woman from her master, and handed her to Kas. Kas looked the trembling, half comatose woman up and down a few times, and set her further aside, out of the way.

That left three demons, all three of them aroused, one of them with their cock utterly drenched in cum, all three of them looking Mia’s way.

Mia’s body lit up like a Christmas tree. It only got worse as Zel turned Adron to face Mia, and the demon, on his knees, leaned back against Zel as the much taller woman pressed her stomach against his back. With two hands on his shoulders, her lower two hands reached around Adron’s waist, took the base of his long cock in her grip, and gently squeezed and massaged the bottom half. Confident as Adron was, and had clearly had sex with Zel before considering his reaction, he still looked a little nervous. And excited. A few more drops of white cum dripped from the swollen glans, and Zel caught them before they landed on the blankets, only to sigh blissfully and wipe the thick drops on Adron’s perfect abs.

The queen of Death’s Grip was not only a sexual creature, she seemed perfectly happy fucking her subordinates. And if the look in her black and red eyes was any indication, perfectly happy fucking someone like Mia, too.

Adron held a hand out to Mia, and curled a finger toward him.

Mia walked forward. Everything became a blur. A haze. Heat swam up her body into her breasts and between her legs, joined by tingling sparks. She managed a quick glance down, and groaned at how her nipples pushed out clear imprints against the sheer silk.

“You all need to learn how to start sex properly!” Mia said. “You don’t just sit around, pull up an aura, and decide to have an orgy. It’s supposed to be organic and natural.”

Adron and Kas said nothing, but Adron did grin. Zel laughed. Mia was, apparently, utterly hilarious.

“Is this not organic?” Zel asked, letting go of Adron’s cock. Cum dripped from her claws. “Perhaps I should tell you what a bout of natural, organic sex is like in Hell.” She got up, and walked around toward Mia. Uh oh.

“I mean… it’s just…”

“Kasimiro. Adron,” Zel said, licking her lips. “I hereby give you both permission to fuck Mia whenever you wish. If you ever find her aura growing, feel free to grab her, pin her tiny body to the wall, and sink your lengths into her. If she ever teases you, feel free to trap her against the floor, and bury your tongues inside her. If she ever insults you, use her mouth to pleasure yourselves. If she gives you the cold shoulder, feel free to hold her, sink your cocks into her, and simply keep her there until her writhing, squirming body brings you to climax.”

Oh. Shit. She stared between the two huge men, and shivered. Adron looked like he’d just been given a birthday gift, and Kas… well, it was hard to tell with Kas. But even the eyeless beast pointed his head Mia’s way, and kept it there as each of Zel’s proposed situations earned a small flex of his cock where it half rested on the blankets. A small drop of precum dripped from its tip.

“Your aura grows,” Zel said, and she came up behind Mia and put her hands on her shoulders. “The idea of large, deadly men, monsters, demons, taking you against your will excites you, doesn’t it?”

“I uh… I mean…”

Zel yanked the silks from Mia’s body, earning a squeak from her, and Mia covered her bits with her arms and hands out of habit. All she wore now was Zel’s necklace.

“To be the target of their desire. To be so utterly gorgeous and beautiful, it is intoxicating, and these wild beasts of men incapable of resisting it. To be wanted so totally and utterly, these handsome creatures of muscle and size will grab you, hold you, and trap you in their embrace until you are a sweating mess, wriggling, mewling, cumming until you can no longer breathe. Even if you beg for a moment’s rest, they will continue to fuck you until you collapse. And when you collapse, they will continue to fuck you, until your limp, quivering body cums again, and again, and again. Those are the sorts of sexual thoughts dancing around inside your wanton mind, aren’t they, young soul?” Zel giggled, leaned down, and set her chin on Mia’s shoulder from behind. “Hardly uncommon thoughts for a woman.”

Mia gulped, but said nothing, even as each word sent tiny little shivers down through her thighs. After another playful, told-you-so giggle, Zel gave her a small push forward, and Mia squeaked again as she almost fell onto Adron.

Adron grabbed her lower hand, revealing her swollen, wet pussy behind it, and gently pulled her toward him. She pulled back. He didn’t let go. He pulled her closer and closer, not down but toward his face, and Mia’s panting doubled as she stepped between his legs toward him. He pulled her closer again, slipped his hands behind her ass, and forced her to stand so close she had to step around his hips to not fall. That meant she had to spread her legs so she could stand over his lap.

Adron leaned in toward her pussy, his hands holding her thighs, and she pushed back against his head with both her hands. Pointless. He was gigantic, a hundred times stronger than her, and so fucking handsome. Yes, she knew her aroused brain and his sexual sin aura were clouding her mind, but for a moment, she didn’t care.

He pressed his mouth against her small, smooth, aching slit, and she whimpered as the demon bathed her with a kiss. She grabbed his horns, and tried to bite back the tiny sounds leaking out of her, but it didn’t work. All she managed to do was turn whimpers into squeals through her nose, as Adron’s long tongue slowly dragged along her clitoris. Hot, wet flesh massaged the engorged nub, and Mia glared down at Adron with her best angry eyes as the bastard found the perfect pace to send more tingles into her pelvis.

His tongue, hidden inside his kiss, pressed lower, and Mia clenched her entrance tight as he pushed the huge slab of meat up against it. Her body didn’t want to listen. It relaxed for a moment, just long enough for the demon to slip the slightly pointed tip into her, and her mouth opened with a heavy moan as he pushed the thick tongue up into her body.

“You… fucking…” Again she glared down at him, but the harder she tried to show him how angry she was, the more his demon eyes smiled right back up at her. And the more he pushed the waves of his tongue toward her front, against her g-spot, while his kiss bathed her clitoris. Holding his horns was all she could do to not collapse.

A playful giggle followed Mia’s moans. Zel. The demon queen sat down beside Adron, facing Mia, and slipped two of her hands under Mia. Mia half expected Zel to touch her, but no, she touched Adron instead. The angle blocked what was happening, but judging from the reaction of Adron and the evil grin on Zel’s face, she was giving him a handjob.

“First penetration by a demon,” Zel whispered, licking her lips, eyes locked onto Mia’s body. “Adron, are you still right of mind?”

The busy demon nodded.

“Right of mind?” Mia asked. Talking was a mistake. Adron took it as a challenge, and he pushed his tongue deeper into her, turning her wavering voice into a squeal that forced her to look down at her flat stomach. Oh god, a small bulge pushed out against her abdomen where the demon’s thick tongue pushed against her g-spot and above it, and pushed hard. A pulse of tingling bliss shot up through her, down through her thighs, and her insides squeezed hard. Not hard enough to stop the writhing tongue pushing deeper into her.

“We did not know what would happen,” Zel said. “Perhaps he would simply incinerate on the spot, penetrating an unknown entity such as you.”

“I… I…” Her grip on Adron’s horns tightened, her muscles clenched, but Adron stopped licking and kissing before the pleasure could grow any more. She glared down at him with even more anger. She wanted him to keep going, to keep wriggling the huge slab of hot, powerful flesh inside her. And she couldn’t tell him that! She couldn’t even tell herself that.

“Perhaps they will, once they both get their cocks inside you, but I think we are safe.” Nodding, Zel, sitting between Adron and Kas, gestured to the shark demon.

Kas rumbled deep in his chest, half annoyed, half horny, and he slipped around behind Mia. Wait, both?

She outright squeaked like a chew toy when she felt Kas’s huge teeth on her ass cheeks. He had no lips, mouth more like a dragon snout than anything, and she stared back over her shoulder down at the eyeless juggernaut as he opened his mouth wider, and wider. With each inch he opened his titanic jaw, he leaned in closer, until he had half her whole pelvis in her mouth.

“Kas, wait! Wait, don’t—”

The beast pressed his tongue against her ass, slowly licked one of her large ass cheeks, and then the other. She trembled. Tiny as Mia was, she’d worked hard to build a big ass. She was proud of it. And now Kas had his massive dragon mouth wrapped around it as his tongue painted lines over its curves, forcing little whimpers out of her, whimpers Adron took advantage of.

“Adron!” She glared down at the other demon between her legs, only to find his devious smile growing, as he pushed his tongue up deeper into her. She braced for pain, but Adron, the damn slut, knew exactly what he was doing. His tongue found the spot, the right spot deep inside her that ached, and he pushed up against it. Softly at first, as if testing how she’d respond.

She tried to hold back the moan, but Adron’s whole tongue pressed forward, hard pressure from his hot, wet muscle against her g-spot, while his kissing upper lip buried her clit, and his tongue rolled up to sink more of it into her. A moan slipped out of her, a weak moan that sounded more erotic than any of her squeaks. Adron chuckled, mouth still tight to her, and pushed in more tongue, and more, earning another pathetic moan out of her. All she could do was watch the small bulge along her belly push higher and higher as he began to stretch her inward.

Kas pressed his tongue against her ass’s entrance, and she forced herself to look away from Adron, and watch the beast behind her and his massive mouth get snug against her butt. The dinosaur squatted over Adron’s legs, his giant cock hanging heavy across the blankets between Adron’s knees, another drop of precum Mia couldn’t help but stare at as she peeked to the side and looked down. Her eyes came back up to look down at his flat, eyeless shark head and his colossal horns, as his thick tongue pushed against her, and using its slightly pointed tip, spread her open.

Mia was no stranger to anal play, and used it sometimes when she experimented with her toys, but nothing could have prepared her for the unique sensation of the beast’s thick tongue spreading her ass apart, soaking it in hot saliva, and sinking into her depths. Her jaw fell, mouth hung open, and she watched the titanic jaw where it hid from view what Kas’s tongue did to her, how it rolled up and down in waves as it pushed against her, and how her ass cheeks, practically inside his colossal mouth, spread further to accept the increasingly thick tongue. Despite his jackass demeanor, Kas knew how to go slow, how to let her body adapt, adjust, stretch. And he knew how to make her squeal. He pushed his tongue toward her belly, toward her pussy and Adron’s tongue, and squished everything until she thought she might burst.

The bulge on her belly grew, and she stared at it as it rolled like a wave pool, slowly reaching higher into her as Adron stretched her more, until the distension pushed past her belly button.

She came. She grabbed Adron’s horns tight, stared down at him, and fell. But Adron’s grip on her thighs kept her upright, and despite her body going limp, she remained on her feet, panting, mewling, as Adron pushed his tongue deeper. He knew to ease up on rubbing his lip along her clit, but his tongue did no such thing, and pushed up into her as rolling waves, despite her insides clenching down as hard as she could. Deeper, pressing against that deep place she knew to only touch if she was out-of-her-mind horny. Adron knew, and he pushed his tongue harder against her, stretching her inward, making her pant between orgasm pulses that shot down through her legs, and into her toes.

“Asshole,” she whispered. “I… I need…”

Kas rumbled around her, and sank his tongue deeper into her, too. Soon it twisted and turned, no longer pushing in a straight line, but bending around to follow the path of her insides. But even as it did, he somehow kept pushing it toward her front, toward her stretched pussy and Adron’s tongue, making everything Adron did apply harder pressure against her g-spot and everything else. Neither were done. They pushed their tongues deeper, ignoring Mia’s desperate squeaks and trembling legs, content to stretch her more and more as she finally came down from her orgasm high.

“Too deep,” she said, but no matter how hard she tried to make it sound serious, it came out as a weak little mewl. Too deep was an understatement. The bulge on her once flat stomach had pushed way past her belly button, and was only getting higher.

Zel giggled as she leaned against Adron’s side, and ran the blunt side of a claw down Mia’s sternum, onto the bulge just below it.

“You cum quickly, and easily, little soul.”

“I… I…”

“Deeper, my demons. She is a tiny thing, after all. Stretch her well.”

“But—ng!” Both of the huge beasts between her legs complied, and pushed their tongues further in. She really was going to burst. She clamped her hands tight to Adron’s horns, and held on for dear life as more surges of bliss pulsed outward from deep inside her cunt, down into her thighs and toes, and up into her chest and head until she saw white spots. She couldn’t even look down at the bulge on her belly anymore, no matter how much she wanted to watch the rolling waves of the two muscles filling her and dancing inside her pussy, and her guts. All she could do, was hold on, and cum.

“I think that is enough,” Zel said. “Do take your time penetrating her. I would like to bask I this aura she clearly cannot control, and observe if the act has any… side effects.”

Mia managed to lift her dangling head enough to look at Zel again, but both demon tongues pulled out of her and sent more jolts through her trembling insides. Kas backed off, but Adron put both of his giant hands on her waist, and began to lower down.

“W-Wait, I’m… I’m not…” She tried to push against the floor and blankets with her feet, but her legs refused to listen, still shaking, still quivering.

She looked down. Adron winked at her. Either he was telling her he’d be gentle, or he was telling her he was about to fuck her into a coma, like he’d planned to that other night before he’d been interrupted. Whatever it was, Mia couldn’t do anything but watch, and her eyes slid down Adron’s body to the huge cock underneath him Zel had one hand around. The same cock Mia had rode, cum on, felt cum underneath her, and felt in her grip as it pumped cum into her mouth.

Zel aimed its fat glans up, and Adron slowly lowered Mia down until the dripping, swollen lips of her tiny pussy pressed against it. She bit her bottom lip. Mistake. Adron groaned, hungry, eyes locked onto Mia and the little lip bite that’d apparently triggered something in him. He pushed her down harder, and with Zel keeping the huge length of his shaft pointed up, he had free use of both of his hands to guide Mia’s body. Her aching pussy spread wide, further than any of her toys would open her, and the fleshy, hot, soaked texture of his glans sent electric tingles through her as it massaged against her skin.

She’d expected pain, but found little. Their tongues had left her so stretched and drenched, Adron’s cock managed to open her up, and the slightly malleable, erotic texture of his flesh bent just enough under her gripping entrance as it pushed into her. His glans slipped in, her pussy lips squeezed around past the base edge of his cock’s tip, and Mia moaned as its thickness immediately buried her g-spot in pressure.

She pressed her hands against Adron’s steel chest, but that only earned another hungry rumble from him, and an enticed smile from Zel. He pushed her down further, and the bumps and grooves on his cock massaged and rubbed against her muscles as they pushed past her vise grip. Deeper, until the fat head of his cock touched her deepest place, and he still had so much more to go. The bulge was much bigger than the one his tongue had created, and even as her legs quaked and her arms shivered, Mia put one hand against her belly, and gawked.

“P-Please… that’s… it’s too much. I…”

Deeper, and deeper. She panted, mewled, whimpered, and somehow managed to get out a few begging words between the sounds she’d never made before. They sounded more carnal than anything she’d ever heard in porn, or imagined in her monster domination stories. Zel was right, and Mia had known it, too.

She gave up. Her head went limp again, dangled forward, and she sucked in a few weak breaths, enough to instantly lose them as whimpers, as Adron continued. He was going to sink every inch into her, and take his time doing it. He lifted her an inch, enough to let her breath, before he sank her down a couple more, hot cock filling her with heat as it spread her wide, and pushed the bulge on her stomach past her navel.

“Still alive,” Zel said, and let go of Adron’s cock. “Whatever this little soul is, sex does not seem to be an issue. But, it is probably for the best her first time is a touch gentler than how you treat Hannah.”

“Agreed.”

“Of course, that is only for now. In the future, I do expect my new pet to be fucked into utter oblivion.”

“Of course.” Adron grinned down at Mia, and licked his fangs as he pushed her down another inch, and another.

She set her hands on his arms, and held on as best she could as the beast gently, tenderly, buried over a foot of thick, hot flesh into her depths. The soft-but-firm texture of his glans stretching her deeper, and forever putting pressure against that deep spot, sent more vibrations through her, igniting more of her aura to pour out of her and onto the three demons. And when Adron finally managed to sink every last inch of his huge cock into her tiny body, Mia shivered in perfect resonance, like she’d become a tuning fork and he’d hit her just right.

“Look at this,” Adron said, and he gently bent her backward with his hands. Her body arched, chest jutted out, and she stared down at the bulge nudging against the base of her sternum as Adron admired his work. “She feels… different.”

“Different?” Zel asked.

“Different. She’s ridiculously tight, but… it’s… different. It’s almost like… there’s something sending a buzzing sensation through me.” He pulled her forward again until her limp body sat up straight. “I could sit here doing nothing, and I’d cum eventually.”

Zel licked her lips. “Interesting. Kas, penetrate her and fuck her. Adron, relax. Kas has yet to cum while you’ve cum at least twice in that pet of yours. He deserves to cum in my new pet first.”

Oh god, Kas. Slowly, like she was in a horror movie and afraid to look behind her, Mia peeked over her shoulder toward the goliath of a beast. He crept in closer to her, his short legs and long arms allowing him to squat easily behind her. Squat wasn’t the right word, more like crouch, ready to pounce, like a predator.

He lifted his cock with one of his massive hands, bigger than Adron’s, ran the warm, wet tip of his cock up along the crack of her ass, slid in closer, and let the huge slab of meat rest along her back. He moved in closer again until his pelvis pressed to her ass, his legs around Adron’s, and he took a moment to align his cock along her spine. He was measuring, to see if it’d fit. And from what she could see over her shoulder, she wasn’t sure it would. He looked a little bigger than Adron.

“I… I don’t… It’s… my first time, and…” Oh god oh god oh god. She looked up. Kas, with his pelvis against her ass, loomed over her. Suddenly it was a scene from Jurassic Park, and she was the tiny human in the shadow of a dinosaur, with the chest and arms of a god, and a cock well over a foot long dripping precum onto her spine.

He pulled back, set one of his titanic hands on her shoulder, took his cock with the other, and pressed the tip against her ass. The length had bumps along the top and underside, and the slightly pointed glans was wide at its base edge. She had a dildo a lot like it, one of her dragon ones, but colored purple instead of blood red. And unlike her toys, Kas’s cock had that skin-tingling texture of wet flesh, heat, and with just slightly enough malleability that it pushed in a little where the tight ring of her sphincter squeezed around it.

The beast rumbled in his throat. Unlike Adron’s rumbles, it sounded almost like a purr from — predictably — a giant beast, or some inhuman monster. It sent more tingles through her body, and she squeezed her ass in response. Kas liked it. Another rumbling purr vibrated through her, and she managed a tiny mewl as the creature holding her from behind pushed his glans against her. Her ass spread further and further, hole opening and ass cheeks parting around his thickness. Another demon with a cock bigger than any toy she had, and she was about to take two of them.

His glans slipped in, her ring of muscle squeezed the flesh past the bulbous tip’s edge, and all she could manage was another mewl. She was going to burst. She was going to break.

The beast leaned in closer. After a hungry groan, Zel slid her claw down Mia’s body to her belly, above her pubic bone, and gently pressed against it. Her g-spot squashed against Adron’s girth, and the bulge grew as Kas’s cock pushed toward her belly, toward Adron’s cock, and Zel’s stroking hand.

“You could seduce this entire tower,” Zel said, “with this aura of yours. I must admit envy. There is no succubus or incubus that can spread such a nuanced aura over so wide an area.”

“I—nng!”

Kas didn’t feel like letting her answer. He’d been told to fuck her before Adron, and he decided to do just that. He eased his hips back and forth in a pleasant slow-but-not-too-slow rhythm, and with each casual thrust, he sank in half of his enormous length into her ass. That was a lot, and she stared down at her belly as the pressure of Kas’s cock against Adron’s again increased the size of the distension. She was too small for this! Way way too small. Every time she squirmed, wriggled, squeezed, anything, her aching muscles and swollen insides barely moved at all, stretched and full. She could barely breathe.

Zel knew it. Licking her lips, the huge demon queen leaned in, planted a kiss with her enormous head on one of Mia’s swollen nipples, and then the other. Chuckling, she brushed aside her long tendril hair, leaned in toward Mia again, and down. Soon the spire ruler set her lips on Adron’s abs, before sliding down further. She grinned up at Mia, before turning her head to face Mia’s pelvis, and ran her long demon tongue across Mia’s clit. Zel’s tongue must have been just as big as Adron’s or Kas’s, and she had no trouble pushing the huge thing under and along Mia’s spread, squashed vulva, before again she rubbed its hot, wet flesh against Mia’s clit.

Mia couldn’t stop herself. She reached out, grabbed the queen’s horns, and held on for dear life as the almost painful sparks of bliss shot up into her stretched pussy. The beast behind her increased his pace, and again Mia struggled to breathe as the monster sank more of his cock into her clenching ass, until she felt things move to accommodate him. She tried to beg for mercy, but Kas let go of his cock, and with his now free hand, he wrapped the monstrous grip around her throat, and squeezed.

Fingers, around her throat and shoulder, enormous, powerful, deadly, and squeezing just hard enough to give her trouble breathing. Oh god. Her muscles clenched hard, her hands reached up and grabbed fruitlessly onto Kas’s fingers, and her body quivered from head to toe as another orgasm ripped through her. She didn’t have to look down — she couldn’t anyway — to know she was drenching Adron.

The beast choking her rumbled again, and sank more of his cock into her. She managed to look up at him, but all she could see was his chest looming over her, his head reaching out far over her and Adron. So massive. He pushed in closer, more of his length pushed into her, and Zel lifted her head to admire the growing bulge on her small belly. Mia put her hands on her own belly too, and whimpered through Kas’s grip at the sensation of their cocks pressing against her once flat stomach.

His pelvis pressed to her ass, and pushed more, the beast rumbling as he forced the last inch of his length into her depths. Her cheeks molded to his body. He pinned her head to his sternum. She let her arms go limp, and simply sat there, trembling life a leaf, as the beast fucked her guts. Slow, deep strokes, each pushing the wind out of her as her insides moved to fit him, each sending pulses of tingling waves through her as his cock put pressure against her pussy, against Adron’s cock, and again against Zel’s hands as she explored Mia’s bulging stomach.

Seconds before Mia could cum again, Kas stopped thrusting, and tightened his grip until Mia could no longer breathe at all. Warmth flooded her insides, reached deeper than his ridiculous cock could, and fought for room against all the flesh already stretching her. Cum poured out from her ass, drenched her ass cheeks, her thighs, and while she couldn’t see, she knew it had to be enough to utterly drench Kas’s testicles, and Adron’s. But the vrat between her legs didn’t mind. He only grinned as he held onto her hips, and watched.

“Oh my,” Zel said, and she traced a few claws up and down Mia’s growing belly, her small breasts, and up to her chin and lips. “Now, you may both fuck her. Gently, for today. In the future, yes you may fuck her hard, but I want this to last. I wish to see how her aura changes and grows.”

Kas finally let go of Mia’s neck, and she collapsed forward, gasping. Somehow she found enough strength to get her hands underneath her, pressed them against Adron’s abs, and forced herself to sit up.

“I’m… oh god, I’m…” She stared down at her stomach, groaned at the absurd sight of how it stretched to fit the two giant cocks, and who knew how much cum inside her. “I… need a break. I’m…” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew she’d made a mistake. Zel had said she’d say exactly those things, even while she still wanted to get fucked. Mia blushed hard and looked away.

Zel’s grin was positively evil, and she gestured to the two demons.

Kas took Mia’s shoulders, Adron took her waist, and the two found a perfect rhythm. They’d done this before. They’d done this hundreds of times before. She melted in seconds, and the only thing that kept her from face-planting on Adron’s chest was the two giant hands holding her shoulders. Adron lifted her up half a foot, leaving a trail of her juices on his cock, and Kas pulled out with him. Then the vrat lowered her down fast, sending a deep tingling wave into her as his cock pressed against her depths. Kas thrust in a moment later, and both men spent a moment balls deep inside, before Adron again lifted her by the waist and bounced her on his cock.

Her first time having sex, and it was with two demons, double penetration, her tiny body at the mercy of monsters. Her first time having sex, and she was cumming so hard her toes hurt, her muscles hurt, and she had to pant fast for every breath before a little mewl of pleasure pulled it out of her. The bastard between her legs had stretched her poor pussy ridiculously deep, the beast behind her was rearranging her guts, and no matter how hard she tried to bite back her noises, they kept coming out of her. Carnal little mewls, whimpers, and the occasional squeak when Kas buried himself to the hilt. She barely recognized the sounds of her own voice.

She spent most of her time staring down at Adron’s gorgeous body and the way it flexed underneath her, but every so often, her eyes drifted down to her own body and the way it struggled to fit the two titans. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered the conversation she had with Zel, about how durable a soul’s body was in the afterlife. Right beside the memory was another, of the busty woman Saldavin had been fucking, working her up and down on his cock.

Mia was more full than she’d been. A lot more. Zel loved it, and she massaged the bulge on Mia’s stomach with one hand, while two others teased Mia’s small breasts and swollen nipples. Every so often, Zel leaned in, planted a kiss on a nipple, and suckled, sending little jolts down through Mia’s chest. Satisfied, Zel leaned back, moaned at the sight, and resumed fondling Mia’s breasts and distended belly.

Mia went limp again, but that didn’t stop the two demons inside her. They fucked her long, and deep. They fucked her until more warmth flooded her insides, stretched her belly, fought for room in her guts, and white poured out over Adron’s abdomen. They didn’t stop, until Mia managed to lift her head, jaw hanging, and a weak whine slipped out of her. It was enough to earn herself a break, and both demons instead gently ground themselves against her, balls deep. And then they did it again, until white fluid again poured out over Adron’s pelvis, his abs, and down Mia’s legs. How much of it was Adron’s, or Kas’s? She had no idea.

Eventually Kas lifted her up off Adron. Mia watched, head hanging forward between her shoulders, as a sliver of her insides exposed as Adron’s width pulled out. His cock finally fell free, and Adron smiled up at her, his hands on the blankets behind him as he leaned back. Cum flowed out of her pussy, down her thighs, and off her toes, still in the air. Kas held her firm to his body, her ass snug to his pelvis. His cock was still inside her, buried deep in her guts, while her legs hung in front of his, unable to reach the floor.

He fucked her ass while standing, one arm hugging across her chest, one hand holding her throat and completely circling it in finger and claw. Zel and Adron could only see her head and her legs and waist, the shark’s arms were that big. And as the two demons watched the beast fuck her ass, Mia’s eyes drifted closed, and another climax flowed up and down through her as Kas’s thick cock pressed forward against the walls of pussy, squashing it, her womb, her g-spot, everything up against the front of her stomach.

“Quite the sexual little thing aren’t you? Cumming from anal sex alone?” Chuckling, Zel got up, stepped up to Mia, and caressed her cheek with the back of a claw. “I know that look, Kas. You want to pin this little annoyance down and fuck her until she breaks, don’t you? Well, perhaps later. But do continue, gently for now.”

Kas grumbled, clicked once, and his grip on Mia’s body tightened. Had she annoyed him that much before, pestering him, asking him questions?

Zel chuckled, and ran her claw further down Mia’s body, down over Kas’s arms, and down to Mia’s exposed, empty slit. With a tender, playful touch, the tip of her finger — not claw thank god — nudged against Mia’s tender, aching clit, and Mia whimpered as it sent a painful sharp electric jolt through her pelvis.

It was enough to make the beast holding her and fucking her ass rumble again, and cum. More hot sensations, flowing, almost soothing in the strangest way possible, poured up into her insides, and she melted back against the goliath’s steel chest and abs as he hugged her tight, and filled her with cum. The rumbling continued, and she closed her eyes as she sank into the purring sound of a Humvee engine.

~~♥♥♥~~

Eventually, Kas’s orgasm came to an end. He eased his grip, and Mia sucked in a breath. She hadn’t noticed how hard his grip had made it to breathe for some time, and a few spots danced along her vision before her lungs devoured air again.

With a pleasant giggle, Zel’s two lower hands reached out, took Mia’s, and lifted her up and away from Kas. The beast stepped back, and the giant girth filling her ass slipped free, only for a fountain of thick, white cum to gush out of her clenching insides. She stared down at it as it flowed down her thighs, shins and calves, and off her toes, and she shivered. It really was a perfectly white, thick fluid, creamier than any man’s she’d ever seen; her only experience there was porn, and a bit of ghostly spying, but still.

“Your aura begins to soften,” Zel said. “Satisfied?” One of her two free hands plucked at her nipple chain, and the other held up Mia’s chin. “Adron is done, I think, but Kas would happily continue fucking you, if you’d like. I do not think I’ve ever seen him enjoy someone’s ass so much.”

Mia sucked in a deep breath. Energy came back to her, and the tingling orgasm aftershocks settled. She might even be able to stand up if Zel put her down. But, probably not.

“I… I think… I’m good…” A part of her wanted to be angry. She hadn’t agreed to any of this, hadn’t consented. Another part of her was happy Zel had decided this route instead of the literal torture she’d borderline threatened Mia with. Worse, a part of her was even a little thankful Zel had picked Adron and Kas for her first time. A glance down at the gorgeous vrat and his perfect abs drenched in cum was enough to send more tingles through her.

But the tingling died quickly. She was absolutely exhausted, and getting hungry.

“I trust you found the experience more enjoyable than what you probably thought I might inflict upon you? You did climax… what, a dozen times, little soul?”

Mia blushed harder than when Kas had first penetrated her, hard enough she felt her heartbeat in her cheeks.

“I… I uh…”

“You may rest for now, though I do suggest you keep in mind that I gave Adron and Kas both permission to indulge themselves of you.” With that, Zel set Mia down on the blankets beside Adron.

Mia was wrong about standing. Her legs refused to stop shaking, and she had to grab the shoulder of the huge vrat sitting beside her.

“B-But… they…”

Kas clicked twice, stepped back, crouched in his classic ready-to-pounce-at-a-moment’s-notice cat sitting position, and shook his head. Whatever he said, it made Adron laugh.

“Don’t worry,” Adron said, winking at her. “We’ll treat you right.” And with a lick of his fangs, he reached out to Hannah, who still lay on the blankets, half asleep and sweating, and gave her firm little butt a harsh slap. She groaned, and didn’t move.

Mia eyed him suspiciously. Adron was a smart man, conniving, mischievous, playful, fun, and dangerous for a number of reasons. But at least she could understand him and his motivations. Kas was a quiet man who seemed closer to beast sometimes. He was an asshole, and a dismissive jerk. And he’d hugged Mia and choked her and squeezed her tight as he’d fucked her ass over and over and over and…

She touched her stomach, free hand still clutching Adron’s shoulder for balance, and she looked to the eyeless creature. Again, Kas took a step back, and grumbled quietly as he looked away. He was so damn hard to read without any eyes.

Maybe Adron could tell her what the beast was thinking? Because, much as she mostly trusted Adron, Kas she wasn’t so sure about, and Kas was the one who stayed with her at night.

The idea of Kas, coming up to her in the night, pinning her down, growling down at her, setting his massive cock on her body and taking measure to see if it’d fit, before slowly sinking his length into her and… The thought sent a buzz through her, and she squirmed. It only got worse when she imagined Kas inviting Adron to join him.

Good fucking god, she was horrible.