Holy Opposites 68

Chapter Thirty-Seven


	I writhed in my vision.  I felt a blast of heat over my body from the mouth of a creature I couldn’t see.  The illusion was ever-shifting, but by now, I suspected Asmodeus was done trying to convince me it was real.  This was probably just sport to him.  I forced back my revulsion at this casual violation and dug deep in my piety.

	I stared up at the monster ravaging me and glared my indifference towards it.  I glared my hate towards its unseen master, with the ironclad weight of my faith.  “Ryaire has shown me how useless and prideful you are, you ugly son of a bitch,” I snarled through the illusion.  “Release me!  I’ll never be tricked by this puerile nonsense!”

	Asmodeus’s voice appeared at the back of my mind, and despite my words, my skin crawled.  “Tricked?  What do you mean?  I’m not trying to trick you at all.”

	“Get bent!”

	“You’re being given what you want!  You can’t hide your thoughts from me, little devil.  You are of me.  You are from me.  I own you.”

	“I gave my soul and my allegiance to Ryaire!” I said scornfully.  “She loves me, and I love her!”

	“No, she uses you, and you latched on to her, because she needs you more than I did,” Asmodeus said dismissively.  He still sounded so irritatingly calm.  I felt the urge to retch as my illusory self arched her back in pleasure.  A massive devil made of shadow and flame was driving rods into me, filling my every orifice.  I felt the sensations of torture and fought it off.  My nature makes me particularly sensitive to any stimulation, even the nonconsensual.  Resisting Asmodeus was hard enough, even if he was only sparing me the most distant attention.

	“I spent three years in her shadow, you worthless failure,” I bit off.  The sensations the illusory me felt were as real as if they were happening to my waking body.  I felt sensations through my wings and tail, even though I lacked them in my real body.  “I love her.  She’s my mother.”

	“You have no mother.  You are the product of a river of blood in a laboratory floor.”  Asmodeus’ voice grew pensive.  “I wonder what you would think if you got to see your sisters, unmasked.  You’ve met two already.  They pity you.  They’ve visited you in disguise twice, and I imagine they’d do it again.  They’re much better than you, you know.”

	“You’re a lying sack of shit.”

	“They’ve been harvesting all this time, if you’re curious.  Eighty.  Eighty souls for the furnaces.  More than you’ve taken, of course.  They’ve accomplished so much.”

	I laughed.  “You think you can make me feel weak because my evil sisters have hurt more people than me?  You threw me out the fucking window!”

	“And while you were lounging about like an indolent cat in the laps of nymphs in the Arbor of Innocence, they were doing as they were built to do.  I wonder how you would have fared if you tried to stop them?”

	“I’d have died, and then I’d have accomplished nothing,” I shot back, though his words stung.  I had spent a lot of time just getting back rubs and napping.

	“Ah, yes.  Luxuriating in the palm of your new mistress’ hand.  Of course.  You know, for somebody who claims to be principled, little slut, you do seem to lack principles.  If you didn’t go about claiming to be something you’re not, you wouldn’t be seeing this illusion right now!”  His voice turned dark with cruel glee.  “After all, I am showing you what you claim you hate.”

	I couldn’t fight back against that point.  It was his most potent weapon.  He, better than any other devil, understood that mortals deny that which they crave.  Still, I knew better than to let him in under my skin.  I struggled against his control.  In my mind, I called out for Ryaire to deliver me.

	“And now crawling to your enslaver.  You know full well she isn’t coming.”

	“She’s blocked you before, ugly,” I reminded him.  “She’ll come.”

	“No.  She knows you’re dying, and she’s leaving you to it.  Why else would the dear target of your lust, this Aasimar, abandon you?  I will tell you: direct orders.”

	“See, now I know you’re full of shit,” I said scornfully.  “He would never.”

	“Then where is he?”  Asmodeus’ voice in my head grew sharper.  “He is nowhere near you.  You’re dying alone on the floor of a psychic’s office.”

	I pushed back against the illusion.  It was still shifting to ever-more lurid images of my personal violation, but this newest one was so intense, my resolve flagged for a long moment.  I was riding a man, and he was writhing in agony and pleasure as I slowly murdered him with my sex.  My tail thrashed in delight and predatory hunger as I defiled him and extracted his soul a bit more with each sensuous rock of my hips.

	Ryaire had done a masterful job extracting my intrinsic evil from my soul, but this appealed to me on a purely physical level.  My flesh ached for this calculated act of torture.  I felt the movement of my body as instinctively as if I were there.  I felt each rock, the terrified thrashing of his arms and the eager movement of his hips.  His body fought my touch and sought more at once.

	I was the perfect predator I was designed to be in that moment and I had never felt more afraid.


	Axio slowly walked up the stairs with the last of the unconscious children in his arms.  Triera was sitting cross-legged next to the portal, clearly waiting for him before she would go.  Axio set the child in the hands of a waiting Watch officer, who promptly walked through the portal.

	The Paladin squeezed his shoulder.  “I’m heading back to get Cavria now, okay?  Grandfather will want to see you alive and well.  You should go.”

	“No, I’ll go help with Cavria.”  Triera stood up and fell in behind her brother.  “I want to help if I can.”  She rubbed her arms, shivering a little.  “It’s so cold down here.”

	To Axio, it was room temperature, at least.  She was clearly not quite over her shock.  He set one huge hand on her back and gently guided her down the hallway.  “If you’re uncomfortable, you should stay…”  He trailed off as he suddenly realized something.  “Triera, I just remembered… Cavria’s fairly badly hurt.  You don’t want to see her like this.”

	Triera looked up in concern.  “What?  What’s wrong?”

	“She took a bad hit.  Her armor got mangled,” Axio said, which was true.  “Like I said, you don’t want to see her like this.  She wouldn’t want to be seen like this, either.”

	“Can I just poke my head in?” Triera pressured.

	“Axio!” Luanea said, poking her head out of Vorthane’s office door.  “The fever’s getting worse.”

	Axio sighed under his breath.  His work wasn’t done.  “All right.”  Then a thought worked its way through his exhaustion.  “Wait.  A fever, though?” he asked.  “Our bond to Ryaire renders us immune to disease.”

	Luanea shrugged helplessly.  “Then I don’t know what ails her.”

	Axio quickly walked past his sister and entered the office.  He rushed to Cavria’s side and sank to his knees.  He pulled one glove free and rested it on her head.  “Ryaire’s love, she’s on fire!” he said.  “This is no fever, not this fast.”

	Behind him, Triera leaned around the corner of the window and clapped her hands over her mouth.  Her brother and Luanea were still huddled around Cavria, but Triera had an unobstructed line of view.  Cavria wasn’t a pimply, pale human, she was a fiend!

	“W-what?  Axio?” she asked, her voice shaking.  “What are you doing?”

	Axio clenched his jaw.  His sister was in no shape to be yelled at for her lack of privacy.  “Triera, I told you to stay in the hall,” he said coldly.  “Now, come in and shut the door.”

	Triera did so, now physically shaking.  “She… she’s a demon?”

	“A devil, now be silent.”  Axio ran his hand over her bare face, frowning.  “There’s definitely something wrong here.  Does anybody have any protection from good and evil spells available?”

	Luanea and Doshellas shook their heads.  Axio grunted.  “I think she’s having a vision,” Axio said urgently.  “We need to get somebody here who can cast the spell.”

	“What about her glyph?” Luanea asked.

	“I can’t cast a spell bound to her own body!” Axio said.  “Damn.  Somebody go get Solen.  We have to hope he has it prepared today.”

	“Does… does grandpa know about this?” Triera asked.

	“He does, and I want you to tell nobody, understand?  Not even Mother and Father,” Axio said.  “They will know eventually, but not yet.  This is Cavria’s story to tell them.”  He looked around for the remains of Cavria’s armor, and his eyes settled on the holy symbol of Ryaire on her punctured torso armor.  He remembered Ryaire’s words in his dream.  “This may help,” he said.  He grabbed the badge from the armor and pressed it against his partner’s bare collarbone.


	In my horrid vision, I felt a sudden disconnect between the sensations my illusory body was feeling and my own, conscious mind.  Relief surged through me like a wave of cooling water.  I didn’t know where it was coming from, but I clung to it with my entire mind’s might.


	Axio laid his hand over his friend’s heart and prayed.  He forced a day’s worth of exhaustion and horror out of his mind with an effort and began a prayer of protection over Cavria.  ‘Lady Ryaire, Mother of the Sacrificed, I beg your aid for another.’  He grasped his own holy symbol in his other hand, and turned his eyes to the dark ceiling above, and the Astral Sea beyond.  ‘Cavria is suffering,’ he spoke in his mind.  ‘Please, guide her back to us, and relieve her of her burden.  I suspect Asmodeus, who has no claim to her soul any longer, is tormenting her.  I beg for you to rescue her from the grips of her torture, or show me how to do it myself.’