Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

"—fucking satanic bitch!" Corazón grabbed damp handfuls of Constance's pale hair and pulled hard. "Let him go, you possessed cunt!"

In a serpentine hiss, the Countess withdrew from Rafel. Her eyes bore crazy delight as she licked her lips. Rafel had some chew marks on his upper lip from where the she-devil had nicked him. His own eyes burned in hot crimson fury. They were now a bit further from the mana-drowning system of the Sanctum, so he could pull on his [Helflame].

He did speedily, feeling the fires of the abyss roar in his chest and halo his infernal organ as he boomed out. "ENOUGH! RELEASE HER, UNCLE!"

In the normal occasion of an exorcism, it would be fit to utter, 'Release her, Devil!' or something along the lines, but this wasn't a normal occasion—it was a demon performing the exorcism; a demon whose uncle was the literal devil.

It was this Hel prince that was strong enough to banish the darkness, rather than the shaken priest who stood shivering in the corner, his hands clasped in prayer to a God he hoped was listening.

Rafel's palms charged with infernal light and his fingers surged with red effervescence. He slammed them both down onto Constance's eerie floating body, getting her in her torso. She jerked once in the air and hit the bed.

Her mouth opened in a silent, round O. But no sound escaped as she stretched about the iron chains. Rather, a very rattling flatulence hit the air from her bum, sounding sharply in the room.

Rafel would roll his eyes if he was one to. It was just like his Uncle Lucifer to consider humor even when being forcefully shopped out of a body. Few demons used the anal route to leave a possessed victim. Even fewer made a sound when they did. The ranks of Hellions, [Third Hel Class] and above, which could possess a mortal form liked to exit through the vocal pathways or nasal sinuses.

But never the arse. Definitely not the shithole.

Clearly, his uncle gladly picked messy over cool. It was perhaps just to spite his nephew, Rafel reasoned. He wasn't dwelling on the fart though.

Constance's body fell back heavily to the bed and the springs groaned. Her limbs and mind belonged to her again, and Lucifer's voice was gone; the one that sounded to the Highfather like ants were crawling up his cassock gators. The Vicar wobbled close from his hidden perch by the stone walls when Constance Medici opened her eyes and it wasn't utter black.

She had stopped foaming in the mouth too, and the foul dialect had ceased from her mouth. She looked around from the narrow cot and noticed she identified everyone around her on the bed.

"What happened?" She touched a hand to her wet, white hair, though it was more of gray now and smelled like illegal broth.

"We should be asking you that, blood bitch." Cora pinned her with fierce blue eyes left of the squeaky bed. She wasn't smiling.

"Oh god." Constance felt down her soiled dress to find it ripped at her rib sides; she was spilling side boob. "Ugh. I stink." Her aquiline nose turned up, like she couldn't quite fathom her own odor. Guess the nobility in her was back. "—and where are the rest of my clothes?"

"Do we look like we give a shit?"

Rafel didn't stop Cora's verbal assault on the Countess. He did not care neither for her slight nudity or smell. In the dank pits of Hel's lesser fighting grounds, he had smelled worse. And besides, if Constance ever decided to bottle up her ooze right now, she'd make a killing amongst the Bonereavers—and that included the farting.

"A possession doesn't just happen, blood witch," said the Apollyon. "Tell us what happened."

"I-I..." Constance stuttered.

"I wasn't asking." Rafel solidified. If he had to remind her again, the chains that had her spread-eagled would be the best torment of her life.

Somehow the Countess of Avila seemed to spot this stoking rage in his yellow, leopard-like eyes and she gestured to the manacles on her wrists. Rafel nodded to Aya: "Naamah, take care of her binds." This command passed telepathically from him to her. The fair succubus was reluctant but heeded her [Demon Sire] as she passed a hand over Constance's chained arms.

"Fade to nought." She uttered a simple casting.

The gross iron rings fell away like threads above a Bunsen flame. Constance swallowed her interest and rubbed on her tender, reddened wrists. The flesh was caked in blood. Aya left her legs out of the freeing spell. She pointed her forefinger at the Countess—who was now sitting on the narrow bed.

"Now talk!"

Constance collected the stabs of Israfel's glare and that of the girls roundabout with a hard swallow. If the Highfather hadn't took pity on her and bravely summoned them, she'd probably be laid down on this asylum cot with half her stomach on the outside and eyes deader than a raccoon's, from where the devil would've no doubt ripped right out her corpse—like some evil bambino.

"I figure I owe the truth...and now, more than one life certainly." She told the staring eyes'. And without further rigmarole, she set her gaze on the cracks of the chamber and told the truth—from the moment she had vanished stabbed and bleeding from her room at the Tourniquet Inn. All of it.

"After I was wounded by your dagger's blade," she meant Cora, "I found myself on the other side of the portal that took me in the hold of my partner. In her office. . ."

Her partner? There it was again. But Rafel didn't want to interrupt, and he let her go on.

". . .I was rescued by her. But she did not want my partnership anymore, said I had become a liability; that I had drawn too much risk to her plan. She abandoned me to the care of a plague doctor, whom once finishing with closing up my injuries, dozed me in chloroform and left me by the muddy cobble of a dumpster.

When I awoke, I was sore and felt the possession of Satan claim me: the price of me using the helm of Hecate to power the machine of my beast, the Persuadå.

With what little strength I could muster, I roused and stumbled for Vallon-de-Grâce." She glanced at the Highfather, "I had no idea I even made it here."

"Let me stop you there. We are not your fuckin' confessors," Rafel bristled. "This partner you keep speaking of, who is she?"

He watched Constance flex her fingers and the ghost of a smile shadow her ashen lips. She said, "you all know her. You call her Headmistress. My partner is Nicara Shetty, proprietress of this college. It's quite the reveal, innit?"

She let the withheld smile through; her teeth were browned in just few minutes of possession. Cora wanted to smack her noblewoman face—with her clutched dagger.

Corazón turned with the other girls to meet the equally magnified expression of Rafel. 'How had I being so ignorant?' He wondered. 'I have been betrayed again.' The signs had been there, if you knew were to look. But they had been so inconceivable, no one did bother with it.

Nicara. Funny Nicara. Sexy Nicara. Loving Nicara.

The Headmistress any student you'd point in the hallway would die for. The Luna of the revered weretiger clan. Nicara? How? Why? Rafel talked it through in his head: 'You had to go and make me add you to my blacklist.' He shut his eyes a moment, Peitho in his mind, echoing his only option.

'She has to die. But we have to wise about it. All of us, the gang. And the Children of the Crow too.

She is the governess over [C.A.W]. An A-Rank, two hundred year-old shifter. The Headmistress of the most lauded private Magus Institute in the Nine Realms, the Greatest of all time, since the dawn of the Martyr. We have to be careful. But we can take her.'

"There's more." Constance's returned voice wove into Rafel's subconscious, piercing his fusion with his system. Rafel opened his shut eyes. She took this as a sign and continued. "While I was...uh, possessed, I had a vision. I can show you if you let me. But I'll need a clairvoyant.

Is there any?"

Rafel turned to Rosamunde. She was of the opinion that she was still manifesting her ability to see into the future, but she was a powerful Scryer if Rafel had seen any. She got the meaning in his eyes and stepped closer to the cot. "Everyone, come. Gather close to her now and touch some part of her body. Any part."

Rosa ushered her friends and the Vicar to touch Constance as she said, "now, think of the vision which you saw." Constance closed her eyes softly and Rosa commanded her righteous system into the stone chamber.

"Sacred Arts! Ripples of Jordan! Open thy Veils!"

The sound of rushing water filled everyone's heads as the room burst into a sudden mirage. The stone walls faded in a bright light, and in a moment's worth, they all stood in a new place. Constance still sat on the asylum bed and cracked one eye open to view the surroundings; it was her vision alright! They had been transported into it.

It was an illusion though—they still were all in the cavern under the Sanctum—but what an illusion it was. Your adventure continues at empire

The white light dimmed as a red sky opened up above them. The sun was scarlet. Wyverns dashed around in the bleak horizon. Weird ripples of lightning flashed overhead. Souls screamed in a cyclone of agony. The pain and misery, palpable.

One word: Hel.

In the vision, Constance's vision, a figure appeared in a gathering of wolfbats. The apparition abruptly materialized in front of the stricken group. It was so real. The sulphuric scent. The burning. The hot air, charring the skin.

If not that Constance still sat on the bed, Ravenna would've said they stood in the real Abyss. All of them had hands out, touching the blood Countess.

When the wolfbats cleared away, a woman stood in their place. She was a Giant—literally.

She was over 20ft tall. And the tip of the [Flame Bident] she wielded stroked zagged crimson nimbus. Her gown was like the Nile. Long. Red. Without end.

It stretched on and on behind her. A dog with three heads woofed at her left and a large wyvern dropped behind her, marking the fiery helscape with a brandishing tail.

This woman could he described as infernally beautiful. She had a body that could only be carved of the Underworld gods with sin in their hearts.

Gently, the red-appareled smiled; her flowing hair was crimson as deep mahogany and breezed about in the chaos, like none of it mattered. She seemed to read the group's collective mind because she clutched elegant, slender fingers around her Bident. When she spoke, all the souls stopped groaning. A hush, over all of the abyss.

"Hel is a place," she offered, "but also a person."

She reached down her hand from her towering form and gently ruffled the ruddy hairs on Israfel's head, similar to hers. "Come home, Apollyon. Hel misses thee. I. . .miss thee."

By hell, she meant herself.

This erotic personification of the fiery nether, this savagely hot redhead pouted her scarlet lips and blew on them. It was just an air kiss. But a fierce tornado rose at it. In a second, the helscape was gone. And they were all back in the stone chamber.