Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

[• As introduced in the previous chapters, please be warned of the gory content, adult language, and vulgarity for sensitive readers •]

ISRAFEL COULDN'T EVEN HEAR THE RAIN anymore. His eardrums had been smashed out, or was it smashed in?

Every opening in his face was bleeding. His nose. Mouth—lips ragged raw. His eyes and ears. And Lilith had punched new ones in it.

From his days in Hel, he'd known about the fiery anger of the Queen of the Night. His crass-as-shit Uncles had always joked with writing a book on How Not To Piss Off Lilith, so that neither one of the underworld gods forgot. Even the Lore told her of as a menace. But he'd never been on the receiving end of that fury before. Never. Lilith had never hit him once in his hellish years. Funnily, he was the one who did the hitting—mostly indoors with whips, ladle, and at times his very endowed extremity.

But now she was beating him like he hadn't being beat in his life, each one of her punches and kicks killing his nerves, and he couldn't even be emasculated about it.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

He endured her sweeping gazelle legs, sending him through walls of plutonic masonry like it was no man's business. Lilith was one strong, sure-footed bitch. And her legs, by the devil, she had hooves for feet. Like literally! Somewhere in tossing Israfel up and down the breaking Castle she had transformed some; her horns of pure gold glinted at the stilts of weak light filtering on crashed stone. All the candles in the Imperial home were out. Drops of icy rain from the dark clouds leaked in. And that unimaginable chandelier which drew in the finest of the Empire was but seeds of sapphire crystals and fairy dust upon the floors. By now, Lilith had used Rafel to destroy many Chambers of the palace. Very painfully though his cut eye, he could see the robust setta of Vinta Plusia on high.

He could see up different levels of the Castle, because there were demarcations no more.

Lilith had smashed him through it all.

Her shelly blue eyes were like, "you think you've made something for yourself up here. Watch me destroy EVERYTHING you love."

Rafel coughed and spasmed. If he still had working bones, he couldn't feel them. If Lilith kept this way he might just become one with the elden stone of the Castle, a tar amidst the trail of blood and broken bodies.

Slips of the hitting rain fell on his cheeks, and through the cold of his tenderized lips he spotted a hill. . .the hill of bodies.

'So that's where everybody went.'

The Lockshian had been right. It was a hill of corpses:

The stewards. The maids. The chaffeurs, and the cooks... everybody. Rafel only knew them by their uniforms. Apparently they'd been on duty when the Blood Mother showed up. Imagine the grim joke: a proclaimed savior arriving on the black fingers of a storm. Rafel could just see the pall on their faces when they'd first seen Lilith—to witness death so grand. So shapely. So real.

Meanwhile, Racquel Serpent herself was a safe yard away, watching it all happen. This should be her best dream come true: a devil beating up another devil. But seeing Rafel take hit after perilous hit and not beg. . . "Why do I feel weird?" She chastized herself. "This fuckers have been nothing but trouble since they escaped the fiery pits from which they belong. And why of all people does my heart choose to quaken for this flame-headed demon. He should die. I should leave him to die."

But Lilith's kicks weren't relenting.

Where she stood, Racquel sighed, "she's gonna kill him. She might not mean to. But she will. Sometimes love this strong is warped. I can't let this go on no more."

Her mind made up, this crimson-eyed demigod of the common folk bent to a squat and picked from the debris a shard of a broken candelabra. Easily, she slashed her wrist. Just as easily as she ignored the other long-running jagged scars on the soft flesh. Healed, but pinkened.

"Rise, blood of my blood."

The liquid red pooling at her wrist spilled in drops down her fair skin and fell. But rather than submit to gravity and the certainly blood-greedy floors, the drops froze in the air and began to ascend. More drops joined till it was steady stream of scarlet essence trickling from her open wrist. This stream of blood slithered in the air like a living serpent, moving several feet from her and rounding into a complete circle.

A real blood portal.

How interesting?—especially since use of such divine [Sanguine] ability was banned, at least in the parts of their Continent that'd had their fair share red witches.

Albeit, no one was there to behold.

Racquel gave Rafel one quick glance. "I'm going to bring help. Don't die, Apollyon."

The next moment, she stepped through the stream of blood. And she went right through.

• THE DANCING TURTLE, ATLANTEA

Yemaya was idly spying on a party of mating sharks in the North reefs, wondering to herself that she'd really never known how the carnivorous fish 'did' it even after spending a couple—no, plenty of lifetimes in the sea. Loud music from the nearby pub strummed in the space as she stared out into the scape. The pub, Dancing Turtle, was by far her favorite. Perhaps because it never ceased to such attractions as this present one.

One particularly huge Hammerhead was circling all the females.

"Ohh, are they horny!" She smiled to herself. And the Hammerhead; he might be a shark but he had the sugar-tip of a sperm whale. "Whoo!" She was enjoying herself. "—way better than any circus sight on the surface.

She was giggling at their love sounds when suddenly she caught the smell of blood. And she immediately stiffened.

So did the sharks.

When suddenly again, appearing in the bluish underwater was a portal—made entirely of human blood—she stiffened some more. The sharks beyond were not thinking about sex anymore.

A woman in red stepped out. Guiding her head instantly was a [Breather] of the same crimson haze, the bubble granting necessary oxygen to her human lungs.

"Goddess!" Yemaya's visitor bowed.

"Who are you?" The ocean queen snarled; the party of sharks had rushed forward and she had held up her hand, forming a breach in the water, which was the only thing keeping her sharp-toothed friends from consuming the surface dweller.

"Who I am doesn't matter, goddess."

Yemaya couldn't reconcile the respect in her voice with the murder in her eyes. But she asked, "then what does?"

"Your husband."

This two words rooted Yemaya, the water goddess to the ocean floor.

• ROA, THE WESTERN REPUBLIC

"Daschelle, would you sit quiet?" Yukima Nassai Romanov pulled on her youngest sister's blue hair. It was the first time the eighteen years old princess had her dewy curls in a plait. And she really was getting on Yuki's nerves. "You'd better be still. You're lucky all mom asks of you is to have you before a mirror."

"It could be worse?"

Yukima scoffed. Daschelle caught her eyes in the plated long-mirror. The fine edges of the gilded surface spoke volumes of Rocasian wealth. "I mean like you could be put on the market, duh!" said Yuki, adding under a breath, "which is definitely always on demand for mouthy, little princesses."

Daschelle boldly stuck out her tongue at her oldest sister, princess heir.

"Boo hoo! Like you've ever been sold to a fat, clammy-ass nobleman before? Mother lets you do anything you want. Like—ow!"

Yuki pulled on her. "You've got a big mouth, know that!" It was rhetoric. The girls were giggling about it when Racquel's [Door of Damned] opened behind them. Both princesses swept their stools around—like the image in the mirror could be fashioned. "Are you seeing this?" Daschelle quizzed to her sister; the blood portal coughed up Racquel Serpent like the guts of a very weird python. "Yep." Yuki popped her reply.

Racquel stood at the swirly crimson gate of her own blood. And said without trace of emotion,

"Braids and pot-bellied grooms are going to be the least of your problems if you don't come to me right now."

• CANYON YARD, THE FREELANDS

Formerly the blight of Eldoria—one big pee-stain on the map—known by every wretched name on the planet: the Badlands. The Bonelands. The fucking Shitlands! Keyword, formerly.

But now, the heartland of novel countryside. A zoar of greenery, boasting streams and fountains, and bursting new springs every other day, and palms coasting spread oasis. A horde of bandits and highwaymen had once tunneled these roads like cricket legs in dirt. But no more. Dementa, leader of Skullriders, dubbed the Junker queen stood in her happy-place and breathed, and marveled. From the top of the rock-marbled range of the Sorcese Mountains she looked into the panorama, stretching out her eyes as far as it would, loving to see her home of centuries so. . .green.

Swoosh!

She heard the watery sound. A frown creased her lips and her closed eyes opened into a gaze like a sandstorm.

"Who dares disturb Dementa's peace?"

"It is I, a woman of no name..."

Dementa turned on the zenith above the gaping gorge, to see a short strange lady in red. And this odd woman had her blood in some sort of web at her back—which Dementa guessed was the instrument of her sudden appearance. She listened to her. For it looked like she'd given a great deal—of blood at least—to make this travel.

"...but of troubling news. Your hero. . .the Hero of all this," Racquel Serpent stretched out her hand into the wondrous wilderness, "I fear, he's about to become wall paint. Red, wall-paint."

"Lord Israfel?" Dementa panted.

"I do not know a man by that name. But I do know a devil."

Dementa growled. "Where?"

• SOME SMELLY GYM, THE UNDERCITY

"Keep 'em coming, blondie!" Mary Atwell, a.k.a Bloody Mary leveled her slitted iris on a lean barkeep, who was frankly quivering under her stare. She looked human, but her genes were complete snake. He knew her story too; a former legend of the GFC ring, this reptilian headliner was now stuck to cleaning up bodies in a morgue for sorry pay. Of course she'd had her arse whooped on the big stage.

Yeah! And by some chick called Viper.

The paradox of it.

The crack of Mary's tumbler as she slammed the shot back again on the worn countertop jarred the tender mixologist.

GLLUUURRRRCK!

She burped loudly. "Another one!"

He was too scared not to. Frankly, he'd rather take a shit in his pants right here than deny here. She might have been beaten in the ring but she literally had a large croc tail sticking out her ass-crack. And her tats were green scales. Normally, the server would call off the shots if it were any other customer. Normally. But this, this was bloody fuckin' Mary!

"Hey blondie!" She croaked and pointed in her cup. Shivering, he poured the third time.

The lights in the rundown tavern was low and the barkeep took the opportunity to hurry to the side where he got to exciting a group of partying Gyarus with one of his many stories. "Ugh," Mary eyed her empty cup. Dragging herself to all seven foot bulk she stepped for that side of the bar. She leaned in and pulled the bartender by his scruff, completely ignoring the open-mouthed chicks. She'd bet good money—if she had it—they'd never seen a chick that big. . .

[To be continued.]