Holy Opposites 69

	I forced my mind’s eye away from the scene of defilement playing out beneath me and tried with all my might to look up.  I forced my illusory self, inch by inch, to disregard my ecstasy and stop.  Nothing worked.  My false self kept bouncing on my victim’s helpless, eager body, until I felt a sudden sense of clamping, somewhere deep inside me.  My victim howled as I ripped his soul out of his body in one last orgasm; I felt myself climax, and I screamed my horror as my illusory self screamed its pleasure.  I felt his soul rush into my body with his seed, and slide easily into the Hells through my womb.  His body shriveled to a spindly mass of dry skin and bones.  The cool sense of relief had not faded, and I held onto it with my mind’s full might.  I could feel the orgiastic delight of my illusory self, and had I not had that blessed sliver of sanctuary in myself to which I could cling, I would have been lost to my own evil.

	“Your resistance is utterly without meaning,” Asmodeus said darkly.  “I own you.  It means nothing.”

	“I hate you!” I screamed.  I felt shame and disgust wrack my mind as my illusory self gave the corpse between its legs a coquettish wink and wriggle of the hips.

	“I couldn’t care less.  You’re my slave.  What regard does the master hold for his property, beyond its simple utility?  I am your God, you are but the least of my pawns… ah, but for loyal service…” he said, and I felt my illusory head turn.  I whimpered in horror as I saw dozens of men chained to the floor, each helpless and naked, straining to escape their bonds but eager to service me.  It was everything my High Succubus senses could want, and everything Cavria the Paladin wanted to reject.  “Such rewards for loyalty, little slave, oh yes,” Asmodeus said.  “Such rewards…”


	Axio finished his prayer, but Cavria’s thrashing and mewling grew worse.  Triera looked down at her friend in deepening concern.  Axio set his ear to Cavria’s lips and growled when he heard what she was whispering.  “She’s begging for something to stop,” he said darkly.  “Asmodeus is giving her a vision, I knew it.”

	“What can we do?” Triera asked nervously.

	Axio drew in a deep breath and sighed as he realized what needed to be done.  “If protection from evil didn’t release her from the spell, only one thing will.”  He drew his knife and closed his eyes.  “Forgive me,” he whispered.  Triera gasped in shock, and the two drow looked away.

	He drove the dagger into Cavria’s shoulder.  The Succubus cried out in pain and bucked against the floor.  Her eyes flew open and she thrashed, clawing at Axio and Luanea with her bloodied hands.

	“NO!  NO!  KEEP THEM AWAY!” she screamed, eyes flooded with tears.  She doubled over and vomited on the floor.  Luanea had to spring back to avoid it; the contents of her stomach were laced with blood.  The stone shard in her gut shifted from her movement, and Cavria collapsed as the shock of her wounds caught up to her frenzied mind.

	Axio grabbed her un-wounded shoulder and her chin, and forced her eyes to meet his.  The hellfire in her pupils blazed in pure terror as he met them with his own heavenly blue.  “Cavria, you will listen to me!” he roared.  “LISTEN!  Asmodeus is NOT torturing you.  You are badly injured on the floor of a Baneite’s office, and you are with friends!”


	My mind snapped to full consciousness at the sound of my friend’s thunderous words.  I stared into his faceted gemstone eyes and felt his absolute confidence.  It was like a balm on my soul.  I sobbed as he held my chin in his grip, and I felt his other hand leave my shoulder and caress my cheek.  “We’re here,” he said, quieter.  “You’re with us.”

	I screwed my eyes shut and wept.  My stomach heaved in shame again as the images of Asmodeus’s temptations played through them, as vivid as they had been when I had first lived them.  Axio slid a hand under my head and cradled me in his lap.  “I know you’re hurt, my friend,” he said softly.  “We’ll get you someplace safe.  Someplace you can heal.”


	The two of us sat there alone for a long time.  The others had left to help with the evacuation, and to send Kyria to loot discreetly the cache of spell scrolls.  We would have to sell them to finance the repairs to our equipment, and to help cover the costs of this expedition.

	I didn’t worry about that, though.  I lay there in Axio’s shadow, drinking the Heal potion Suivi had brought me.  He had gone, now, to help Solen with Triera and the other children.  Doshellas and Luanea would be off later, having their own wounds treated in the Eilistraeean temple.  We two Ryairans were alone.

	When I finished the potion, the stone shards fell out of my body.  The scraps of metal and cloth from my armor also dropped out of the closing wound, and I was restored again.  Axio released my hand, and I rose to crouch on my knees.  “I… feel better,” I said distantly.  “Thank you, Axio.”

	He nodded and sat down in the chair before the dead cleric’s desk.  “You’re welcome, my friend.”

	I sighed and ground my hands into my eyes.  “I was… Asmodeus was torturing me again.”

	“I gathered.  I’m sorry.”

	“He told me Ryaire had abandoned me.”

	Axio nodded.  “She hasn’t.”

	“She didn’t respond to my prayers,” I confessed.

	“Nor mine,” he said, surprising me.  “I wasn’t expecting her to.  Not visibly.  I suspect she helped me by letting me hear your words.”

	“My words?”

	He leaned forward in the chair and helped me stand.  “Yes.  When you were writhing on the ground, I heard you whisper words.  ‘Help me, stop it, go away,’” he recited.  “That was how I knew you were being tortured, instead of just delirious with pain from your injury.  That, and Paladins of our rank are immune to most diseases.”

	“So you knew to jolt me with the knife,” Cavria said.  “I was… last time he did this while I was awake, taking my Oath of Devotion, she helped me right away.”

	“Last time, you were in a place of holy and pure worship of her,” Axio reminded me.  “You were standing in her light, reciting her Oath, swearing your mind, body, and soul to her eternally.  She had vastly greater power over you there than in the office of a torture factory.”

	I sighed.  “Of course.  You’re right.  I… I should thank her in my prayers tonight.”

	He smiled.  “Your faith inspires me, my friend.”  He stood too.  “Now… let’s loot this place barren and be rid of it.  The very air here stinks of evil.”


	The two of us started turning the room over, plundering anything of value we could find.  We claimed everything we found as our spoils, and it was a fair price for the sheer effort and pain of our campaign.  I grabbed coins, weapons, scrolls, trophies, potions, and maps.  Axio took the psy-reactive metal slats off the old cleric’s body, along with a psychically enhanced dagger from his belt.  When we had loaded all our booty up in the cases of the pillows from the old cleric’s couch, we took off, leaving him to rot.

	“How about you, Axio?” I asked.  “You… those kids, that couldn’t have been easy.”

	He turned his eyes to the floor.  “It wasn’t.”

	He had let the pressure of my torment and his sister’s needs distract him, but now, he was feeling it all rush back.  I knew how he felt.