The Pleasures of Hell 03.045

~~Day 65~~

~~David~~

No sex that night. No one felt comfortable in the spire, locked in a room. Moriah could probably break them out like Azailia said, but they were still surrounded by potential enemies, and fighting their way out would be tough, maybe impossible.

Morning twilight came, and the group slowly got up from the pile of blankets. Dao and Jes had pulled the last shift, and they came over and joined them.

"Wakey wakey," Jes said. "Let's see what today holds. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say Azailia and Laoko are going to betray us. They're gonna split us up and eat David and Moriah. Thoughts?"

Dao shoved Jes onto the pile, earned a squawk, and sat with David, clicking away.

"I hope not," David said. "But uh, I do think--"

The door opened, teeth sliding up and down into the metal of the spire.

Azailia stood there with her tetrad buddy Silvain, Timaeus, a dozen other demons, and Laoko.

The group paused, waiting for the inevitable betrayal.

"Come," Azailia said. "We spoke long and hard about your future."

"Without us?" Jes asked, and gave her wings a small flap. "We know more about what's going on than you."

"Laoko was sure to be specific and give bias to your position." Azailia nodded, and dragged a set of claws down the red silks running along her torso. "But I would be a fool if I didn't at least take advantage of this opportunity a little. No harm will come to you, but I wish to bring the unmarked to the ceremony site of the spire."

David tilted his head. "Why?"

"Because you can read the ancient language. Can you not?"

Caera snorted. "Why do you think that?"

"Because Laoko believes you can."

David trades some glances with the girls and grimaced.

"And," Azailia continued, "from your facial expressions, her guess is correct."

Fuck. Learn to control your face, David.

"Laoko," he said, squinting at her, "is too smart."

Whatever memory he piqued, it made Azailia laugh, and Timaeus too. Silvain just glared.

"You may all come," the spire ruler said, "but only the unmarked and I will enter the chamber. Agreed?"

David looked to the girls. Jes and Caera didn't trust Azailia at all, and Dao was frowning. Moriah didn't trust any of them, but that was hardly a change for her. The angel did give the spire ruler a few more glares than usual, though.

"You know I can defend myself," David said. "I've fought off the rider himself, by myself." Demons understood boasts of strength, and responded to threats with respect. The fact he didn't think he could do shit to anyone while inside the spire was a problem, but if the threat worked, he wouldn't have to.

Azailia's face lit up. She had a softer face than Laoko, rounder, but her expressions were anything but. If anything, someone had carved Azailia's expressions out of cold, hard steel, subtle but unbreakable, but she kept the small, perfect, deadly smile on David.

"I like you, little unmarked," she said. David gulped, but said nothing, which just made Azailia chuckle. "Come. We will visit some chambers along the way."

She stepped back, walked to the inner edge of the inner balcony, and jumped down the hole in the center of the spire. The hole went down, and down, all the way to the blackness below that, as far as David's sixth sense could tell, went as deep into Hell as the spire stood tall. And his ass sucked up into his gut as he stared over the edge.

"Come on," Jes said. "Pussy."

She grabbed his shoulders and jumped after the spire ruler. Carried by Jes with a big black pit below. Déjà vu. Everyone else followed, David's girls and a bunch of other demons in tow, a lot of them brutes, and a tiger. Muscle, in case they tried to escape. Were they prisoners? Had Laoko betrayed them, or Azailia? No way to tell yet, and that was the grain of sand in his shoe -- sandal -- that was going to drive him nuts.

But he had to look confident, like he could fight the whole spire if he had to. And it wasn't like Azailia was his only concern. The last time an unmarked had been in a spire for a decent amount of time, the rider had come, and he'd brought a giant hellbeast no one had seen in ages, and a squadron of demons equipped with the best armor available. He might show up again. They knew he had to be nearby.

They stopped on a floor with a wide archway door that opened to a huge room. The moans were loud, and the activity within lacked a defined shape. Bodies on top of bodies, demons big and small, souls and incubi and succubi and even grems and imps piled on each other in almost random arrangements.

The Las froze, stared, and pointed. One girl near the entrance had a couple impins and a couple gremlins penetrating her; the little guys had huge cocks, bigger than a human's. More than a few ladies had a succubi mouthing parts of her body, and dudes getting the same. A couple incubi had a bigger demon's cock inside their ass or mouth. A free-for-all, no one caring who did what to whom.

Timaeus walked past the group, stepped into the room, and gestured to one incubus.

"Sissius, come here," he said.

Sissius climbed out from between a gargoyle's legs, smiled up at the big tetrad, and undressed him. It wasn't long before Timaeus was naked, sitting in the center of a mountain of action, and towering over everyone else as the only tetrad. An incubi got to work licking the giant demon's emerging cock, while a vratorin came over, sat on the tetrad's lap, and the incubus helped guide the growing shaft into the vratorin's ass.

David looked around at the girls. None of them looked surprised. Well, if Mia had been around, she'd have been, and she'd have probably taken pictures if she'd had her phone.

"He'll be ready for tomorrow," Azailia said, and she jumped down another floor.

The group followed, down and down, until they crossed the widest floor, the first floor. The spire took them deeper, and they sank below the surface into the awaiting black where the amber veins and skull braziers of fire weren't so bright.

"You wish to see Acelina's new home?" Azailia asked. Silvain didn't like that. He grunted and eyed the group, but Azailia chuckled and patted her fellow tetrad on the arm. "We must show our guests that we're serious about aiding them, Silvain."

"Agreed," Laoko said.

Caera and Jes didn't look convinced. The deeper they went into the spire, the more agitated the two demons grew, both scanning left and right like they might get jumped any moment. It was hard to tell with Dao, but from the little frowns he noticed, she didn't like the spire. The Las just looked happy to be a part of something.

And then there was Moriah, who did not hide the fact she was ready to cut anyone down who got too close. More than a few demons stared at her and her rather sexy potram clothes, and once, an incubus dared approach. He got two steps toward her before she shot him a disintegrating glare, and the incubus walked backward, tracing his steps like a cat in the snow.

Laoko seemed to trust Azailia, though, and she'd pulled through for them.

"I'd like to give Acelina a proper goodbye," he said. "Now's a good time, if we're leaving tomorrow."

"Agreed." Azailia nodded and gestured to the archway, one dripping blood from chunks of muscle growing around black metal spikes.

Azailia went first, Silvain last, and the demons he brought with him stayed outside. Azailia was awfully trusting to think David and his girls couldn't just jump her and kill her. Sure, she was a tetrad, and could probably kill any of them in a straight fight, but she'd lose if Caera, Jes, and Dao all jumped her when she had her guard down, especially if the Las joined in and bit her ankles. Moriah could probably cut her in half without anyone's help, if she got a sneak attack in.

What was her game? Either she was being overly trusting because she felt Laoko had read them right, assuming Laoko had said she trusted David, or she was tricking them, getting them to lower their guard. Which seemed pointless. They were already in the spire. The fuck could they do if Azailia turned on them?

The hallway turned from ribs of metal that circled the walls, floor, and ceiling, into circles of white bone. The floor, walls, and ceiling transformed from black metal with jagged spikes, to layers of skinless muscle, undulating, and wet with blood. They might as well have been walking down the inside of a snake.

The hallway opened into a colossal room, and David froze. The walls reached high, amber veins cutting along black metal sections, and flesh grew around them. Tunnels connected to the giant chamber, each lined with giant white rib bones. And four demons stood within, chatting. Four zotivas. Spire mothers. Nine-foot-tall demonesses, standing on hooves with small -- relatively speaking -- tails slowly wagging behind them.

"Azailia! Laoko!" a spire mother said, and she approached, huge hips swaying beneath her tiny waist. Spire mothers walked with a strut, the hooves working to give them the high heels look, but David was pretty sure they exaggerated it on purpose. Some red silks hung from her body, covering her enormous breasts, but not attached to her by any piercings, unlike Azailia. She looked so damn similar to Acelina, David squinted looking for differences.

"Octavia, Zulia, Tassilia," Laoko and Azailia said together.

David and the girls watched as Azailia and Laoko joined the spire mothers, traded hugs and kisses, shared names, and kissed some more. All except for one.

Acelina joined them last. She had a few more necklaces on her body than the other spire mothers, armor gone, and had red silk draped over her breasts and around her hips. Beautiful. Ridiculously beautiful. Even the way her perfectly smooth, featureless, obsidian face had a slightly narrower edge on her jawline compared to the others, looked beautiful. The other spire mothers looked just like her, but there was something about Acelina that had an edge that left him staring.

The Las ran past everyone and hugged her legs.

"Acelina! We miss Acelina!" they said, jumping up and down at her hooves.

She aimed her eyeless gaze down at them, and the barest hint of a smile showed through on her mask-like face.

"Still here?"

"Until tomorrow," Jes said, joining the little critters. "Azailia's taking David down to the spire depths, but she's been nice enough to give us a peek at the hatching pit."

"I see." Acelina nodded, used her long wings and patted the Las on their heads, and joined her fellow spire mothers by Azailia. All four were enormous, and still a foot shorter than the spire's ruler. "You wish for the angel to see, as well?"

Moriah grunted and kicked a nearby remnant. Putting it out of its misery, or just letting out some of her anger, David couldn't quite tell. Probably both.

"If the wounded angel," Azailia said, "is joining the unmarked on his journey, then I see no harm. Do you agree?" The question was pointed at the other spire mothers.

The three spire mothers he didn't know all got on their knees in front of David, and each one smiled, showing a hint of their shark teeth and wide mouths. Squatting like that, their massive breasts rested on their knees, silk pouring off them so they were no longer covered. Their necklaces hung between their cleavage and disappeared in the softness.

Each demoness reached out and ran their hands on his body, his forehead, his red silks similar to theirs, and his abs exposed by the loose clothing.

"Oh my," one said. "Aren't you a sexy little thing? Acelina mentioned your body has some unusual abilities, sexual ones. I don't suppose you could... share with us?"

"Yes, please. We never get to taste souls very often. We always give them to the hatching pit, and never indulge ourselves."

"Oh yes. Acelina says you are quite delectable. I'd love to feel that girth of yours on my body. On our bodies."

Oh god.

Caera sat behind David dog style, but instead of defending him from being accosted like he was a kid seeing a bunch of aunts for the first time, she laughed.

"Now ladies," Azailia said, "perhaps if his owners are willing to share, then later. But for now, let us just show him the pits."

The three women sighed but stood up. Not natural, normal standing. Sexy, exaggerated, slow standing, complete with chest jutting, half spins to show off their large asses, and a flick of their long, thin tails.

Daoka chirped into Jes's ear, and the gargoyle laughed. A shaky laugh, though. The spire mothers were affecting her, too.

David gulped, again, and peeked past the three women to Acelina. She'd been talking about him to the other spire mothers? Whatever she'd said, they'd been complimentary, and he smiled. Acelina groaned.

"Come," Azailia said. "I will show you the wonder that keeps the Grave Valley alive."

The next room made the first room look small. A colossal cavern, walls lined with white ribs and red meat, floor and ceiling, too. A cave of flesh, with some dangling skull braziers of black metal to light the room. There were amber veins, too, but the flesh didn't get along with it. Sometimes he could smell burning steak.

Nearer the floor, along the sloped walls of flesh, were holes. Some as small as his head, some as big as his body, the orifices slowly pulsed, squeezed on nothing, relaxed, and repeated, just like a stomach's sphincter might. And he stared, unable to look away from how the flesh was squeezing, wet, as if ready to pop out an egg.

And then, of course, there were the eggs. Thousands of them. Like the holes, some were big, some were small, and all were black and leathery, with hints of dark red. The holes must have squeezed eggs out regularly, and the soft flesh floor and its rib-like indents gave the eggs places to rest and pile up. The eggs were partially see-through in some places, and he risked squatting over one and peeking down at it from up close. Something moved within.

"Lucifer's children," a spire mother said, and she squatted next to him and gently rotated and nudged the egg to the side. "A devorjin."

"You can tell?"

"Of course. We do not choose what eggs the spire births, but we choose which eggs survive. To do that, we must know our craft intimately."

Which eggs survived. Infanticide. Cruel, but crushing an unhatched egg seemed like a mercy compared to everything else Hell could do to a weak demon.

Another spire mother squatted beside him, made no effort to not accidentally press a huge breast to his shoulder, picked up the egg, and set it beside another, cozy against the flesh wall. She grinned at him, wide mouth and shark teeth a sharp contrast to her smooth, onyx face, and she moved to another egg and did the same. Mothers, tending eggs. A strange sight in Hell, more than giant walls of flesh.

"That's a lot of eggs," Caera said. "A lot more than the last time I saw a hatching pit, decades ago. Isn't this a bit much? We only get so many souls to eat." Right, if there were too many demons, then the demons would spend all their time killing each other for food, more than they already did.

"Changes are happening," Azailia said, and she squatted down by one of the larger eggs. "I must be prepared. More demons will survive the hatching pits, and more will join my armies."

"Armies?" David asked, standing up. "I thought the Grave Valley had factions."

"The factions war among themselves, yes, but all bow to the spire. And all kneel before the call of the horde." She grinned at him and tapped a claw against the amber jewel horn on her forehead. "Come." She nodded to the spire mothers, got nods in return, and she moved to the next big room.

Another big cave, shorter, and wider. It was all underground, walls of flesh, and in the center of the room, was a giant pit.

"That brings back memories," Jes said, leaning over the edge with wings spread. She gestured to some of the giant rocks deep below, and the grems and imps sitting on it, looking up at them from the pit.

There were broken eggs everywhere. The spire mothers must have put the eggs in the pit once they were ready, let them hatch surrounded by hungry demons and limited food, and let them scurry about in the tunnels. Lots of tunnels, judging from how many caves he could see connecting to the pit. But even the tallest rock or tallest, alien bone, wasn't tall enough for any demon to jump to the edge and climb out without help.

So the spire mothers chose the eggs they liked, put them in the pit somehow, and then helped the demons out of the pit when they were old enough?

Some brutes and gargoyles moved along below, looked up, but shrugged and continued along, prowling around the rocks, pillars of stone, and giant bones that looked grown by the pit. Some imps and grems skittered by. Some incubi and succubi did the same. The floor of the pit was covered in some kind of gray dirt; the trodden remains of black egg shells and white demon bones.

On the wall, above the edge where David and the ladies stood, a slab of bone cut across, tall and wide, almost like a mural. And runes were written on it in amber. The ancient language.

"You didn't take me here to show off your hatching pit," David said. "You want me to read that."

Azailia chuckled and tapped her claws together, all four hands. "If you would be so kind?"

Kind. Azailia had been kind, nothing but kind. Something was definitely up. She was trying to get on his good side, so he'd read ancient runes for her.

"The bowels of the Grave Valley breeds the swarm of the graveyard."

Azailia smiled in approved. The spire mothers shivered and smiled too, much bigger, scarier smiles.

"Good, good," Azailia said, and motioned for him to come back the way they came.

"And if I hadn't read it, or couldn't read it?"

"I'd have probably eaten you."

Okay, so, nice, but not that nice.

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

The bottom of the spire was dark. All flesh and bone, no amber veins, and thousands of remnants. He covered his ears, but their screams were relentless, and their desperate cries punched through his skin into his skull, sometimes with words. 'Help', 'kill', 'me', a mesh of noises that made his empty stomach churn. Just when he thought he'd gotten used to remnants, Hell threw him a new curve: thousands of them jammed so close together they looked like living wallpaper.

"Come," Azailia said, marching across the flesh floor. They did. Acelina had stayed with the spire mothers, and Timaeus was probably still enjoying his orgy, so David and the girls followed the spire ruler, while Silvain and his demons followed in the back. Laoko walked beside Azailia, and occasionally glanced back and smiled at David.

Were they gonna try and recruit him into a cult? It felt suspiciously like that.

The tunnel had the same shape as the tunnel leading to the hatching pits, almost circular, covered in flesh and bone, but this tunnel was dark and drowning in remnants. Azailia didn't slow down, used her four sets of claws, and effortlessly ripped apart remnants in her path. Any that reached out from the ceiling lost their heads. Any on the floor where she walked imploded under her weight.

They came to a door, wide, black, with an endless flow of blood dripping down its face. Skulls. The wide double door was covered in black skulls, of all shapes and sizes. A skull in the center of the door dwarfed them all, but its shape was beyond alien. It didn't look like the weird eldritch monsters from the canyon, and more like something that'd come out of a twisted dream of demons that defied reason, coming to kill you in your nightmares. Horns coming out of weird places and in strange shapes. Eye sockets in weird places, and an odd number, too.

Azailia's horn pulsed amber, the eyes of the door pulsed amber in kind, and she pushed the titanic doors open. Heavy, sliding, grinding metal on the flesh floor cut up muscle and splattered the demon's feet in fresh gore.

A colossal room awaited, and David covered his eyes against new sources of light. Hanging skull braziers lit the cavern, three of them, each titanic in proportion. A tetrad could fit in one of those skulls, and the fires inside burned as bright as a bonfire. More than enough light for the giant room big enough to hold a small army.

"Come," Azailia said. She stepped in, the group followed, and Silvain closed the doors behind them.

There was a cathedral.

David gulped and glanced back at the girls. It wasn't unlike the cathedral they found the Cainite Greg in, something built into the cavern wall, but it made Greg's cathedral look like a hovel.

"How the fuck?" David asked, gesturing to the giant walls made of black metal and skull carvings. No, not skull carvings. Black metal didn't have pores, or other subtle textures only bone had. And the closer he got to the colossal wall, the more his stomach sank into his guts. The wall was made of skulls, real skulls, charred black. Not just skulls, but other bones between and behind them, holding together a structure that looked more like a castle than a cathedral.

The floor was black bones. The walls were black bones. Not a single remnant grew nearby, and the silence was deafening.

"Come, unmarked. I will only allow you within the cathedral."

Jes snarled. "I don't--"

"Do not worry for the boy," Laoko said. "This place is sacred."

Sacred, right. Sacred didn't mean 'no violence allowed' to a demon. If anything, it probably encouraged it. Would there be a giant bowl inside, meant for people to be sacrificed into?

He sucked in a breath and followed Azailia. If it weren't for the rider and the angels on their ass, David would have dropped Acelina off at the border and run back into the fog. But they needed help, and Laoko was confident Azailia would give it to them. So he sucked down his fear and walked with Azailia up to the colossal wall of black skulls. Thousands. Millions.

Azailia's extra horn glowed, and the double doors in front of her let out a loud, angry click, angry at her for disturbing their hundreds of years of slumber. She grinned at David and pushed the doors open, each slab a giant wall of black bones that creaked and ground against the bone floor.

He followed her in, and she closed the doors, locking him inside the scariest building he'd yet to see in Hell. It truly was a cathedral, an interior that would have looked like a sophisticated, royal hall, complete with giant pillars and a stage and pulpit, it not for all the bone. Small fire pits dug into the bone floor held tiny, dancing flames, the inside of the cathedral far darker than the outside. But the pulpit in the back of the cathedral was titanic and made even Azailia look small the closer they approached.

"What is this place?" he asked. He glanced back. Right, he was alone with the spire ruler. No Jes. No Dao. No Caera.

He didn't like not having Caera near.

"Lucifer supposedly created the spires when he was cast down from Heaven," she said, and stepped up onto the stage and behind the pulpit. She wasn't tall enough to use it, and she had to reach up and grab a book from its surface. "These depths are... well, they are used when a new spire ruler makes her claim, but I will not share the details. You understand."

He forced himself to nod.

"Lucifer created the spires," she continued, "and the spires give birth to demons. But the spires did more than that. There is a connection between the spires, the Old Ones, and Hell herself. A mystery that plagues all demonkind."

"You sure? I think most demons don't really care."

Comment not successful. She glared at him, and he shut up.

Sighing, she sat on the edge of the stage, tail slowly swaying behind her, and she looked at the book in her hands.

"When Laoko arrived with you, I was surprised, to say the least. My sweet sister was content to enjoy her solitude, away from me, away from Zelandariel, but if she felt it important to bring you to me, I have to respect the gravity of the situation." She ran a claw along the weird book's cover. "I hear whispers from wandering demons, and even from the little grems and imps, of what the unmarked can do. Stories of destroyed regions. Stories of cults, enslaved. Stories of powerful auras."

Talk? Don't talk? He couldn't tell. When in doubt, shut up.

"The unmarked are dangerous. Angels could defeat us in war, but they respect the purpose of Hell and have no need for war, usually. The rider is a mad dog, chasing whatever his nose finds; why that is now the unmarked, I do not know. But neither of these forces are... innocuous as an unmarked soul, someone who belongs in Heaven but is simply misplaced. And after what happened in Death's Grip, I am forced to take your presence seriously."

"You barely reacted when you saw me come in with Laoko."

Azailia eyed him. Yeah, he shouldn't have said anything. You never interrupt a dictator giving a speech.

"Lucifer wrote this book, supposedly," she said, and she ran her claws down its cover of tightly compressed little black bones. A single skull sat on the cover, engraved into it, and amber glowed from its orifices. "The archangels and perhaps the Old Ones wrote in the ancient language. We do not know why, but they did. They weaved Hell herself to craft their runes, and if someone can read them, then that is of great interest to me. So you will read for me, unmarked, and perhaps we can form a strange alliance, you and I." She opened the book.

Light sucked out of the room. David spun around. No, the fires were still burning, but the shadowy flicker in the corner of his eyes told him the room was empty, void of light, that the light he could see wasn't really there.

He looked at the book. Black pages with amber runes. How the fuck did someone put amber, literal encasements of Hell's lava, onto thin pages? He stepped closer, and Azailia waited with the book open, her eyes on him.

"Read for me, unmarked." She grinned at him, Laoko's grin, just a little more evil, and she turned the book right side-up for him.

He gulped. "The Grave Valley. Lucifer. Astaroth. They're, um, they look like titles." The flowing lines danced in his mind, and in the dead silence of the bone cathedral, he could hear their music. Quiet, so quiet he wouldn't have been able to hear it a month ago when he was still learning. But it was there.

Her eyes widened, her smile grew, and she turned the page.

"This child of mine, Astaroth, they shall rule the Grave Valley and all within." Next page. "I have wrought my will upon my kin, and have blessed this land with the mist of the lamenting." Next page. "In this valley, this echo of the surface's grief, Astaroth's brood fight amongst themselves. Only the strong survive. The children of Astaroth will grow, become his greatest soldiers, and bring war to Heaven's Gates." Next page. "Rise, children of my first. Rise. Obey. I shall rip the fire asunder, and reclaim the Heavens."

Azailia shivered, head to toe to tail, turned the book back to herself, and teased her claws down the amber runes.

"A sermon?" she asked.

He risked answering. "It sounds like it."

"Lucifer created the spire, molded the land into the Grave Valley, and the children of the Old Ones were born. The first soldiers."

The first soldiers were fucking huge then, because Vinicius had been a titan who'd have made Azailia look small.

"This place," she said, gesturing around, "was a place of worship, and of sacrifice. That much is clear by its construction. But I did not realize Lucifer themself delivered a sermon here. No Old One could fit in this cathedral. What little is known of the original nine says they were beyond colossal."

David opened his mouth, but stopped himself. The fact they were reading a book written literally by the devil was a giant red flag saying he probably shouldn't do this. But circumstances had forced his hand, and if he wanted to get out of this alive, did he even have a choice?

She turned the book back at him, and waited, evil smile on full display.

"Come, children of Hell and Astaroth, crafted by my hand. Children of the Great Tower. Children of sin. Come, my agents of justice. Prepare for war."

Azailia sucked in a breath, shivered again, and ran a hand down her chest, over the silk draped over her nipple, down her waist, and down her naked pelvis and thigh. If he didn't know any better, he'd have thought she'd just cum.

Next page.

"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." Holy shit, Lucifer had actually planned to take over the surface world, too. Every word David read out loud grew louder, but he wasn't making his voice louder. The cathedral was. "Rise, Astaroth. Rise."

They both froze and waited in silence. Nothing happened, thank god.

Again, Azailia shivered, and outright moaned. "Lucifer birthed Astaroth here, with the spire. Oh, to know how it was done, how the spires and the Old Ones are connected, to know such ancient secrets. I pray the book contains more." Next page.

"Um, this one is different from the others."

"It is, isn't it?" She traced the vertical rune shape that covered the whole page. "Explain it to me."

He leaned in. There was a flowing set of runes going up and down the page, huge, but tiny runes on the sides as well, like footnotes.

"Looks like... it's a battle plan? Like, it's describing Lucifer punching a hole through the layer between Heaven and Hell. The vortex. And it describes Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel coming to stop them." And it casually mentioned how powerful the 'song' would need to be to create such destruction. Overwhelmingly, hilariously powerful. He left that part out.

"And after?"

He shook his head. "It stops."

Sighing, Azailia nodded. "I suppose I cannot be surprised. Lucifer is dead or imprisoned. If they wrote these words, then they could not have finished." She turned the page.

Too many runes. The page was covered in them, tiny scribblings in almost random places.

"I... I can't make sense of this. It..." The song grew louder, a tune he couldn't wrap his mind around. Azailia couldn't hear it, but it called to him, like an echo of something, as if someone had played a cello in the shadow of a mountain.

He touched the book.

A surge shot up through his arm, invisible, chaotic, and almost electric. Runes and symbols came with it, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the blinding light in his skull.

He knew this feeling. He'd felt it when he'd touched Mia. The surge didn't hurt, and the symbols it filled him with were already there, but touching the book lit them up and demand he notice them again. It was like he'd grabbed a live wire, except the electricity had a path to flow that wasn't just straight through his organs. Mia must have touched this book then, Death's Grip's version, and he'd absorbed the knowledge from her before.

Lightning shot out from the book, and he yanked his arm away with a yelp. Amber arcs crashed into the bone pillars, the bone stage, the bone pulpit, up to the distant bone ceiling and the bone walls. Azailia stared down at the cursed pages, eyes wide, smile growing until she showed her fangs.

Runes glowed in the air.

"The fuck?" David said, looking up and around at the symbols. The book stopped, but the runes remained, carved into the air and locked into place near the pillars.

"The book has never done that," she said. "Your touch awakened something."

He blinked back at the tetrad, gulped, and drifted around the huge room and the runes that glowed amber in the air around him. It would have been a magical sight, if not for all the charred bones.

"It's the names of the provinces," he said. "And the names of the Heavenly Islands."

"What are they?"

"Uh... from here," he said, pointing at the symbol for the Grave Valley. "Grave Valley. The Scar. The Red Pits. Navameere Fields. The Unholy Lands. Heaven's Tears. The Black Valley. Death's Grip. And in the middle, the Frozen Heart." It was safe to share that information. Hopefully. "And the islands are: Ravid. Samael. Yathael. Tversia. Azaparad. Ayaloram. Sinev. Azoryev. Avinoam."

"Strange," she said, and stood up. She came close, very close, until her hip touched his bicep, and she traced claws through the incorporeal runes. "The provinces of Hell are named after specific things, while the islands of Heaven are not. And I had not heard of the Unholy Lands, or Heaven's Tears, or the Frozen Heart. But memory tells me they are fitting names."

"You've been to them?"

"I've been to all provinces, save for the Forgotten Place. The Frozen Heart." She nodded, adjusted her long ponytail, and gestured at the higher runes, the islands. "Only Navameere Fields shares a name that makes no sense."

"Was Navameere a person?"

"I do not know. Many places in Hell are named after mighty demons or angels who died fighting on their land, but not the provinces themselves. I suspect when you reach Navameere, your ability to read this ancient, forgotten language, will answer that question." She grinned at him. "And the other runes?"

Right. There were other runes, much smaller, and they circled the pillars as if someone had drawn them on, like writing on parchment around in a circle. He recognized every one of them. Life. Death. Destruction. Creation. Angel. Batlam. Potram. Royam. Hellfire. Healing water. Any and every rune dumped into his brain by touching Mia was now in front of him, for all to see. But unlike the names of the provinces or the islands, he couldn't outright say them. The rune for life wasn't simply life, and trying to say it would be like trying to pronounce a paragraph condensed to one word.

"They're, uh, runes that represent a lot of stuff, existential stuff. But I'm having a hard time reading them." Mostly true. "They're weird." They were powerful. "I couldn't pronounce them without multiple tongues." Mostly true. "I uh... don't think I can do much with these." Mostly a lie. Seeing the strange runes drawn in front of him painted them in a new light in his brain.

The runes had power, not just potram, royam, and batlam. He could hear them, a tiny buzz of an instrument's strings buried under layers of blankets.

"Do not worry. What power you can gain from the runes is not why I brought you here. I suspected this book would react to your presence, as I imagine the others would. And perhaps there are other books out there, written by Lucifer or the Old Ones."

"Yeah?"

"You know how it is, young soul. Rumors abound, old legends, things of the like."

"Oh. I uh... I'll keep an eye open. Caera really likes history. She'd love to find something like that."

Azailia grinned. "I bet she would." Nodding, she picked the book back up and flipped through more pages. "So many runes, written in small script. I believe these are the runes we are seeing."

"So the book isn't just about Lucifer creating the spires, the Old Ones, and their fight against Heaven? It's... a dictionary? Or an index, or something?"

"Perhaps. Why would the creator of the spires list the ancient language in its entirety in a book?"

Holy shit, she was asking him questions and actually looking for an answer. Big bad spire ruler wanted his opinion? Warning bells went off in his head. Be careful what you say.

"I don't know." Perfect.

Nodding, she set the book back on the too-high pulpit, and gestured back to the doors.

"You may explore the spire, but keep your friends close. Laoko, myself, Silvain, and Timaeus are the only tetrads in the spire, but that does not mean a powerful devorjin or two couldn't defeat your friends."

He followed her to the door and let the four-armed woman open it for him.

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

"I," he whispered to Jes, Caera, and Dao, "am under the sneaking suspicion... that Azailia isn't going to let me go tomorrow."

The group sat in a circle in their room, door open; they needed Azailia to close it come twilight. They sat together, and by some miracle, Moriah had come and sat on the floor with them. Everyone had eaten, courtesy of Azailia, and the angel didn't look as exhausted as usual. Still just the one wing, though. Regrowing a limb was a bitch. Could she regrow an arm?

Caera lay on the blankets in front of him, her head on his lap, and aimed her good eye up at him.

"Why?"

"Because she's been way too nice to me."

Jes laughed. "Isn't that what humans like?"

"I mean, they do, but even on the surface, it's a red flag for manipulation."

Daoka leaned in and clicked quietly.

"Doubtful," Moriah said. "No ruler becomes a ruler through generosity. Even in the world of the material, the swiftest methods to power and leadership are cutthroat, dirty, vile, and loathsome. There is no reason to think Azailia is an exception."

Dao sighed, and her shoulders drooped.

"I agree with Moriah," Jes whispered, patting her lover's spiky back with a wing. "I don't know Azailia, but I did know Zel. A smart bitch. Maybe not the cruelest, but she was plenty capable of being cruel when it served her. And if Azailia and Zel were lovers--"

"Acelina was Zel's lover, too," David said.

"Yeah, and? You don't think Acelina can be cruel? She was Diogo's lover too, once. And both Diogo and Zel were cold as ice. That's the expression, right?"

He shook his head. "Yeah, that's the expression, but I don't know. Acelina's nicer than you think." He leaned in close and brought his voice to as low a whisper as he could manage. The Las were by the door, playing with each other's wings and tails. "Acelina is not as bad as you think she is. I'd kinda wished we'd kept her along."

Jes snorted. "She was useless in a fight."

Dao shook her head and hit shoulders with her lover.

"Dao's right," Caera said. "Acelina's proved herself in fights a few times, even without her aura."

"It doesn't matter," Jes said. "She's staying here. What I'm saying is, Acelina, Diogo, and Zel can and could all be very fucking cruel when they needed to be. Azailia's gonna be the same way."

"Agreed," Moriah said.

"So if she's being super nice to you, David, then I bet yeah, you're right, she's probably manipulating you. I mean, who doesn't want someone who can read the ancient language? I bet she'll get you to decipher that book you told us about."

"I got no idea how I'd even go about doing that. I mean, I knew the three angel runes, too, but I couldn't do anything with them until Moriah taught me." And he could only use two.

"Knowledge you stole," the angel said.

"It was an accident."

She frowned, mouth open, ready to spit fire. But Daoka put up a hand, and the angel relaxed. Sighing, the satyr clicked a few times and gestured at the door.

"You think Laoko doesn't know?" Jes asked. "She was smart enough to guess David can read the ancient language, the bitch. She knows Azailia pretty well, too. I bet she was manipulating us. Walking us right into a trap."

Chirps drowned the room, Dao trying and failing to stay quiet.

"Okay okay!" Jes said. "I'll give her the benefit of a doubt. Still, why the games? If Azailia wanted to enslave you, David, she could. She's got enough demons she could take the rest of us out of the picture, Moriah included."

He shrugged. "Maybe she thinks I can wreck her tower like I did that forest? And I closed a canyon, right? Laoko and Timaeus had to tell her the details."

"But you can't," Moriah said.

"No. I can't. I... I mean, maybe I can try and do something with the ground outside the spire, or the fire sky, but if it comes to a fight inside the spire, I'm not sure there's much I can do."

"The angel rune?" Caera asked.

"It protects me, but it didn't seem to give me any powers. The staff helped me play the music, but that was it. I'm not shooting any laser beams." He gestured to Moriah. "Can you teach me how to shoot laser beams?"

She narrowed her eyes. Apparently calling holy energy a laser beam did not sit well with the holy warrior, and she hit him with her wing. Big, soft, light feathers brushed against his skin, so many of them they pushed him back onto his elbows, like someone had tackled him with a giant cotton blanket.

He smiled.

"Don't smile at me."

"Sorry." He rubbed his cheeks. Don't smile.

It was the first time she'd touched him in a non I-want-to-kill-you way.

"No, I cannot teach you to use the energy of my grace, no more than I can teach you to breathe."

"Sounds intrinsic."

"Yes, it is."

Dao chirped, clicked, and got up.

"Fine," Jes said. "This talk is getting us nowhere. Let's pay Acelina a visit and say goodbye without Azailia spoiling it."

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

"What are you doing here?" Acelina asked. With her wings draped over her shoulders, she had that long cloak look going for her, like a queen wearing traveling clothes. "You were here only hours ago."

"I know," Jes said, "but..." She shrugged out her wings, gestured to the girls behind her, and entered the domicile of the spire mothers.

It wasn't just flesh and bone. They had cabinets. Maybe cabinet was the wrong word, but in various places in the flesh walls, giant cupboards of black metal stood, with shelves midway. Armoire? Some of them were open, insides decorated with skulls, and dozens of hooks held hundreds of various metal chain necklaces. Some necklaces held skulls, too.

"Oh, it's the unmarked," a spire mother said. She scooped a few chains from the cabinet, slid them past her huge horns around her neck, and squatted in front of David again. "We met, but a proper introduction is in order. I am Octavia."

"I am Tassilia."

"I am Zulia."

The three women might as well have been identical triplets. Tassilia and Zulia squatted near Octavia, and each of them wore red silk scarves that draped over their breasts. But with them squatting like girls in high heels, their knees came up straight in front of them, squashed their huge breasts to their chests, and their red silks poured past their breasts over their legs.

Don't. Stare.

"Hi," he said, somehow.

Caera chuckled and sat behind him. "The Las wanted to see Acelina."

On cue, the four little ladies ran past everyone and stood around Acelina's legs. She stood in the back by a cabinet, watching, head tilted slightly, but the assault of four petite ladies, jumping up and down and flapping their wings, was enough to put a smile on her black, featureless face.

"Why?" Acelina asked.

Jes shrugged with her wings again. "Beats me." Even saying that, she joined Acelina by a cabinet and fiddled with the necklaces. "Where's your armor?"

Acelina gestured to another closed cabinet. Like the other spire mothers, she wore some red silk scarfs, each draped over her breasts like curtains, but none reached her pelvis. All the spire mothers were bottomless, round butts and tiny pussies on display.

David squashed the aura asap.

"Imagine," Octavia said, leaning in closer to David until her horns almost touched his hair. "A zotiva wearing armor. We are far too precious to be caught in battle."

"Yes," Zulia said, scooting closer and running her claws down David's clothes. "It is terribly impressive that Acelina journeyed with you from Death's Grip. We've asked her many questions."

He gulped. "Yeah?" He peeked past their horns to Acelina. Even he could see the spire mother was struggling to resist the Las and their antics. They made her smile.

"Yes," Octavia said, and she spread her wings and draped them over the backs of her two kin. "We have spent many centuries here, in our spire, tending the eggs and choosing which hatchlings can be released. We do not battle... often."

"It was pretty amazing, actually," he said. "Acelina did some impressive stuff." He glanced back at Moriah. Yeah, better to not mention the fight with angels. "She helped kill a bunch of Cainites." And he glanced to Caera. Yeah, better to not mention the fight with the weird eldritch monsters, either. "She saved my life."

The three nine-foot ludicrously busty demons with black-mask faces each half purred, half clicked, and looked back at Acelina.

"It is true," Acelina said. "But, loath I am to admit it, the boy saved my life as well."

Dao nodded and hugged David from behind, clicking away.

"Indeed," Octavia said. "And yet, you are such a small thing. A boy. Young."

"Handsome, though," Zulia said, and she traced her claws down his chest. "Green eyes. Red hair. Freckles. Pale skin. And this messy hair." Giggling, the huge demoness tussled his hair. "Clean shaven." With a terrifying grin exposing her many shark teeth in her wide smile, she ran the blunt side of a claw down his cheeks.

Tassilia touched his sandals, his knees, and traced her claws up his skirt and inner thigh. He didn't move a muscle.

"Acelina has told us about your auras and your strange body. You don't mind."

He gulped. He didn't mind, not really, but Tassilia insisting he didn't without asking him gave him 'my sexy boss is going to take advantage of me' vibes. Which was definitely one of his biggest fantasies, but still.

"Has the angel tasted you?" Zulia asked him.

"What? No. No. We're uh... not on the best terms."

"Are you the one who cut off her wing?" Tassilia asked.

"No. But it's a long story, and kind of private, and--"

"In our first encounter," Moriah said, "the boy used his power to kill my friends. But no, I did not lose the wing to him. I lost it to the rider." Way to take a sledgehammer to a delicate topic.

Everyone froze. Even the three giant ladies aimed their eyeless gazes at Moriah, and Dao let him go and faced the angel, too.

Sighing, Moriah stepped around them and investigated one of the giant metal cabinets. No explanation. She tinkered with the dangling necklaces, flexed out her tiny, growing wing, flexed out her huge wing, and said nothing. The spire mothers watched her, but Moriah didn't so much as glance their way as she ran her fingers along their dangling jewelry.

A one-winged angel, silently bullying a bunch of demons much, much bigger than her.

But Octavia recovered and looked back at David. "Did you come to watch us work? We were about to begin another round of inspections. There are many eggs to tend with, more than before."

"The spire's birthing eggs faster?"

"Yes. It can probably sense that change is coming, and that Hell needs more demons. So we work quickly. Hundreds of eggs must be filtered every day, and come morning twilight, we see which hatchlings survived the pits and are worthy of leaving."

"How long does that usually take?"

"Months," the mothers said together. "Sometimes a year or more."

"Long time to survive in a place like that."

"It is," Zulia said. "And that is the requirement all demons must face to be worthy of our blessing."

"And those we are especially impressed by," Tassilia said, "will taste of us." She leaned in closer and touched his lips with her claws. "You've impressed us."

David gulped so loud he heard it, and he looked past the girls to Acelina for help. But Acelina just grinned at him, squatted, and engaged in some Hellian click conversation with the Las. He glanced back at Dao and Caera, but both just grinned at him. He looked Jes's way, but she'd joined Moriah, examining the jewelry. No help for him.

"But you haven't seen me do anything," he said.

"Acelina told us about your battle prowess. But she also told us how much you seem to be... concerned, about the demons who own you. Empathetic. You sound like a human from the scrying pools."

"Aren't all humans from the scrying pools?"

Zulia shook her head. "An unmarked soul is different. I have never spoken to an unmarked, only seen their actions in the scrying pool. No marked soul is selfless."

He squirmed and blushed. "I uh, I don't know about selfless. I've been pretty concerned with my self and not dying quite a bit."

They all laughed. Either they were practiced laughs, or the girls really had that queenly, haughty sound going for them all the time. They did look like queens, with the jewelry, the piercings, the red silk draped over their bodies, and their four massive black horns.

"You think us droll," Tassilia said. Droll? How Hell interpreted that into Estian, he couldn't fathom, but the queenly image cemented in more. "But for a soul to be standing here before us, unmarked, one who'd originally gone to Heaven? A delectable, handsome--"

"Cute boy," Octavia said, "to stand before us? With strange, sexual powers?"

"They're, um... not all sexual. Mostly not. I--"

"Don't kid yourself," Caera said, and she pushed him toward the evil queens. "You're the horniest soul I've ever met."

He wanted to thank them for calling him a soul. Whether he was even human was still a mystery. But his mind went blank, and he froze as his weight crashed into the three ladies and their tits. They giggled and surrounded him. Literally. All three spire mothers squatted around him and drowned him in exploring hands.

"Truly unmarked," Octavia said, and she brushed the hair from his forehead.

"Truly," Zulia said, and she plucked at his toga. "These clothes. They are even more pristine and perfect than ours."

"Ours," Tassilia said, leaning in closer until her breasts buried his back, "are silks weaved by the expert hands of the volas of the Scar. How is it you came to wear such clothes?"

"It's... um... complicated."

Octavia giggled and leaned in close, too, and squashed her breasts into his arm and side. "Just as that horrible angel wears perfect white, we can see perfect red in your clothes. Angel clothes."

He had no idea how much the spire mothers knew, how much Acelina told them. Better to keep them ignorant.

"It's a secret," he said.

Zulia laughed, joined her sisters, and pressed her breasts into his other side, trapping him. "You don't think we could make you tell us? We have powerful auras, too."

He gulped. Okay, if the ladies wanted to play the power game, he could play that. Maybe. It was taking every bit of will he had to keep his aura suppressed, and a glance back at Caera didn't help. She was grinning at him, an evil grin.

"I have a stronger aura."

Octavia opened her shark mouth wide in a big, monstrous smile. Against the black canvas of her featureless face, a wide mouth full of white sharp teeth, and a long, pink tongue slithering within, was downright scary. But the way she kept her breasts snug to him turned fear into spice, and he forced down the urge to shiver.

"Leave the boy be," Acelina said. Thank god, the fourth spire mother came to his rescue, and she brushed the backs of her kin with her wings. "He is claimed."

Daoka chirped and gestured to David. Whatever she said, the spire mothers each sighed pleasantly and leaned in a little harder against David's body, literally squashing him between six giant boobs. Acelina had tried to rescue him, but Daoka apparently gave the girls permission to eat him. Not the role reversal he was expecting.

"If we got time, later," Caera said, pushing her way in between the spire mothers. "We came down to stay goodbye to Acelina properly, and then we're going to sleep."

"Make plans and whatnot," Jes said.

The spire mothers sighed again, less pleasant and more annoyed, but they nodded, stood, and fixed their necklaces and silks; they'd gotten disheveled in all the boob pressing. They all had pierced nipples.

Control, David. Maintain control.

Caera stepped around the ladies and joined Acelina with a nod. "How's it going?"

"It goes well." Acelina returned the nod and pet the horns and dreadlocks of the Las standing around her. "The zotivas of this spire remind me of my sisters." So they did call each other sisters, despite the inaccuracy.

"Hardly," Octavia said, giggling as she joined Acelina. "Death's Grip is filled with the most uncouth demons! Barbarians."

Acelina tilted her head, eye-roll implied. "And you sisters of the Grave Valley act like royalty."

Jes snorted. Yeah, no argument there. Acelina acted more like a queen than anyone. Or a spoiled princess.

Some chirps drew David's eyes, and he smiled. Daoka had drifted toward one of the giant, black metal armoires, and she touched some of the dangling chains. Without hesitation, Acelina slipped around her kin and leaned beside the satyr. David did his best to not stare at how the position made her breasts hang underneath her; even unaroused, they were big enough to move almost like huge water droplets.

"Here," Acelina said, and she removed several chains. Way too big and long for Daoka, but Acelina used her claws, fiddled with some tiny hooks on the metal, and grabbed a pair of pliers from the cabinet counter. Wait, pliers? No, more like some kind of hook, a miniature crowbar, all black, and she used it to pry some metal links apart.

In no time at all, she shortened several necklaces, and set them around Dao's neck.

"You," Acelina said, poking Dao in her forehead, "should have been born zotiva."

Dao smiled up at her, clicked twice, and stroked the necklaces dangling against her breastplate.

"I admit," Jes said, joining her lover, "she's got a point."

"She has a soft touch," a spire mother said. Tassilia. No, wait, Zulia. They looked too similar. Only Acelina had the sharper edge to her jawline that identified her.

"Perhaps," Octavia said, "she'd like to choose an egg?"

Daoka sucked in a breath, paused, and nodded.

"Wonderful. Come. Acelina's friends are our friends."

David waited until the girls were ahead of him, and threw a quick glance Caera's way. She'd noticed it, too. They were being super nice. Too nice.

In the next room, where metal ceased to exist and everything was flesh, bone, and holes, the four spire mothers walked around and gestured at the many eggs sitting in piles. Slowly, a new egg slipped free of a squeezing, wet orifice, and Acelina casually picked the egg up, checked it for... something, and threw it down.

She stepped on it. The leathery shell broke apart under her hoof, and some mangled mess of goop and noodles fell out, red and white and black.

David winced. No one else reacted.

"A spindly, weak devorjin waited within," she said.

Dao clicked and shook her head.

Acelina nodded. "I suppose if that would give you pause, then perhaps being a zotiva would be troublesome for you. Still." She gestured to a pile of smaller eggs nestled together. "Come, see if you can tell which of these grem and imp eggs will soon hatch."

The Las squeaked, dashed around Acelina, and stood around the pile of the smallest eggs. But Acelina used her tail and pulled each one back before they touched them.

"You may watch," she said. "Do not touch."

After some pouting, the Las squatted beside the eggs and did some size comparisons. The eggs were shorter than a foot, oval, and like the others, black, red, and leathery. And there were a lot of them.

"The spire really likes to breed imps and grems, doesn't it?" David asked, joining Acelina.

"It does," Octavia said, perusing over the other eggs. "They have value, scavengers that kill remnants before they overflow."

"Supposedly they've helped in wars before," Caera said. But she laughed and gestured to the Las. "But trying to make that happen would be difficult."

"Like herding cats," David said. They all looked at him. "Expression. It means difficult, can never be done because it'd be so annoying to try, kinda."

"That sounds fitting," Zulia said, checking a different pile nearby. "Why do you keep those four with you?"

"They helped us out," he said. "And everyone keeps saying grems and imps aren't very smart, but these four are. I mean, smart enough to help, fight battles, and other things."

Octavia, Zulia, and Tassilia traded invisible looks. If they'd planned to say something, Dao got their attention instead. The satyr joined the Las, leaned over the pile of smaller eggs, and nudged one. She nudged another. And another.

With a happy chirp, she picked up one egg and held it in front of her, against her breastplate. She stroked it, ran her claws along its shell, and clicked some more, words no one bothered translating.

"A good eye. It is ready," Acelina said. "Or perhaps nearly. Another day, I think." She took the egg from Dao, and held it for inspection, too. So huge compared to Dao, Acelina's hand dwarfed the football-sized egg.

Big eyes filled with wonder, the Las stood and stared up at the egg, and they fluttered their eight wings and wagged their two tails.

Acelina put the egg back in the pile, shared some clicks with Daoka, and gestured back to the group. Dao rejoined them, Las in tow, and Acelina followed.

"I..." Sighing, Acelina leaned over them, David in particular, and again he had to avoid staring at giant breasts going teardrop shape in front of him. "You truly wished to visit again, simply to say goodbye properly?"

"Yeah," he said. "We all did."

"I didn't," Jes said, holding up a wing. Moriah mirrored her.

"Ignore them. They like you. Jes, at least."

"Do not."

Acelina laughed. "If you survive your journey, then we will meet again, I'm sure. And... I will find some way to... thank you, before you leave."

Thank you. A demon being polite was so rare, far as he could tell, their society basically expected demons to never say please or thank you. It just wasn't a thing. And before anyone could make the obvious remark about it, Acelina turned, stroked David's chin with her tail, and walked away.

"We done?" Jes asked.

Moriah flapped her wing and gestured to the exit. "I assume so. Let's go. Our sleeping room is more easily defended than here, and I dislike exposing my back."

David stared after Acelina, her huge ass, curvy thighs, unnaturally narrow waist, long limbs, and her enormous, thin, cape-like wings. Yeah, she was absurdly hot, curves exaggerated to the point they made succubi look like boxes. But it wasn't the curves that had him staring, not completely.

She'd sounded sad.

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

David sat by the closed door, its large teeth pressed together, a mouth of enormous white fangs. Caera sat across from him. They were taking the shift for the middle of the night, the most annoying shift to take, since you had to wake up halfway through sleep to do it.

He looked at Caera, and she looked at him. A silent conversation, recalling the team meeting they'd had four hours ago before the others went to sleep.

The plan was simple: don't trust Azailia. Something was going on. Everyone was being too nice. Acelina's niceness earlier was definitely unusual, but Azailia's niceness felt straight-up manipulative. And if they were being manipulated, then they were in danger. Talk to Laoko? She might have been in on it. Timaeus, too. Their options were limited.

Come morning twilight and the rekindling of the fire sky, they'd find out what was up. If they had to fight their way out, they'd figure something out. If he had to call on the presence deep in the ocean of vibration and wreck the entire area to save his friends and girlfriend, he would.

His girlfriend.

"Hey, Caera," he whispered. "Do you--"

The door opened.

Caera and David opened their mouths, but didn't sound the alarm. Acelina poked her head in.

"I thought I heard your voice," she whispered.

"I... said like, three words."

"I was coming to see you."

He sat up straighter. "Why? Wait, how'd you open the door?"

She shook her head. A new necklace dangled around her neck, and an amber jewel wrapped by black metal claws hung against her sternum. She gestured to it.

"Come. Bring your girlfriend."

He raised a brow. Caera raised her scarred brow.

"This have anything to do with Azailia?" Caera asked.

"No. I asked her for a key to your room, but that is all."

Key. Interesting. He got up, dusted off his butt, and shared a shrug with Caera.

"If Caera's okay with it."

Caera eyed Acelina, squinting her single eye at her, but she shrugged too and stepped out of the room on all fours. David followed.

Acelina closed the door behind them. "We'll be back before the others wake up."

"Kinda defeating the purpose of doing guard shifts if we're not there," he said.

"The door will protect them. As Azailia said, only an angel could break through them with any ease. Now come. My sisters wish to speak with you." She grabbed his hands, didn't wait for his response, and jumped down into the center pit. He almost screamed, but she opened her wings, slowed their descent, and landed three floors down. Caera had to jump down on each floor individually, but didn't have trouble keeping up.

It wasn't long before they stopped on the floor with the tunnel to the hatching pit. Acelina let him down, and she led the way. It was the middle of the night. Most demons were sleeping in rooms, cubby holes, caverns hidden inside the many tunnels the spire connected to, any place they felt comfortable sleeping where they wouldn't get eaten while defenseless. But there were a few around, and they watched David with raised eyebrows as he scooted after Acelina.

Moans greeted him.

He stepped into the first chamber, walls of flesh and bone, dangling skull braziers, some exposed black metal wall with spikes and amber veins, and a half dozen giant black cabinets. Sitting back on the main shelf of one cabinet was a spire mother, completely nude. She held her leaking breast in one hand, the very red, very soft, very heavy pillow spilling over her huge palm, while her other held the head of her kin between her thighs. Whoever was whomever, one sister was devouring the other, to the point a small bulge moved along the woman's abdomen, below the navel. That was a lot of tongue inside her.

"Oh, you did it!" the third mother said, and she walked over to them. Naked, both her breasts were wet, dripping with milk, and she ran her hands down them to her stomach and her thighs, a convenient lead-in to lean forward, hands on her knees, and let her breasts hang underneath her as she looked at David from up close. "I thought you might say no."

He gulped and looked to the spire mother moaning on the cabinet. From the sounds, she was cumming, or about to.

"I... I'm still not sure what I'm signing up for." But he was getting an idea.

"A proper goodbye," Acelina said. Again she grabbed his hands, earned a tiny, unmanly squeak out of him this time, and set him on the main shelf of a cabinet only a meter away from the spire mother in the middle of an orgasm. "Assuming your guard dog does not mind."

Caera snorted, but prowled over and sat dog-like by the cabinet. "Have fun."

Acelina looked at Caera, paused like she wanted to say something, but only sighed. It even sounded a little happy. Nodding, she ran her claws down David's shoulder and casually slid the toga down to his stomach.

"Disrobe."

He blinked. Sitting on the cabinet, his feet dangled a few feet from the floor.

"I--"

"I will do it," a spire mother said. From her voice, that was Octavia.

With a sultry, purposeful sigh, she picked him up by the hands with one of hers like he was an egg, and she slid the toga entirely off his body. Stark naked, except for the sandals. She groaned, set him back on the cabinet, and leaned forward. He couldn't lean back with the cabinet behind him, and his back and skull pressed against its metal shelves as she leaned in closer and closer until her dripping breasts pressed to his abs.

"Grow for me," she said. "Become aroused. Use your aura."

"I... I uh..."

The spire mother beside him came down from her orgasm high.

"Please. We've been so excited since you visited." It was Zulia.

Oh fuck. They'd gotten this horny because of him? Like gasoline on some embers, the aura inside him exploded, and he crushed it as best he could.

"I... I'm not sure if--"

"David," Caera said, smiling at him, "the girls want to give you a proper goodbye. It'd be pretty rude to say no."

He squinted at her. Plans to remark about how that made no sense were interrupted, though, Tassilia joining Octavia, and she pressed her body into her sister's side. Torso pointed at him, she opened her mouth, let her apparently expert tongue hang long and far, and leaned against her sister so their breasts pressed side to side.

Zulia, still shaking, slipped off her shelf, stepped around to Octavia's other side, and did the same.

Three spire mothers, all pressing their enormous, dangling breasts into his body, while Acelina stood behind them and watched. He looked up at her. She kept her eyeless gaze on him, ran her hands down her own chest, and gently cupped and massaged both her breasts.

He let the strings go.

~~♥♥♥~~

The aura flooded out of him, over the ladies, and the three pressed to his body gasped.

"It... buzzes through me," Octavia said. "That is not a normal aura. That is... insidious. Mmm. That is--"

The ladies looked down, and watched his cock grow. It pushed up from between their breasts, and they stepped back, only for Octavia to use her claws and wrap his girth. It grew tall, reaching past the width of her palm once, twice, thrice, and thick enough it almost overflowed her hand.

"Wow," Zulia said, and she wrapped his cock as well. Tassilia joined her. Four hands, and they had room.

"Silvain would be envious," Tassilia said, giggling. "How... how big can it grow?"

"I don't know," he said. "I um... still trying to figure this body out."

The ladies each stood up. With them leaning forward and him sitting on the shelf, their breasts dangled at just the right height Octavia only had to wiggle a little to make her breasts rub against his swollen glans. The other girls let go and watched, and Octavia slowly stroked his length from bottom to top. It was well over a foot long at this point, and heavy enough it would have bent slightly under its weight if the spire mother wasn't holding it for him.

The ladies groaned.

"That aura tingles inside me," Zulia said. "I cannot resist it."

"Is that what the young boy wants?" Tassilia asked. "To enslave the three of us?"

"I um--"

"Oh yes," Octavia said, guiding his glans and rubbing it against her large, wet nipples. "You would like that, wouldn't you? To have the three of us bow to your sexual whims."

"I bet," Zulia said, "he wouldn't even pleasure us. He'd just make us pleasure him, like a greedy soul."

"Indeed," Tassilia said. She leaned in around her sister's hip, opened her mouth, and ran her long tongue along his length. "No pleasure for us."

"None for us," Octavia said. With an evil grin showing a hint of her shark teeth, she got on her knees, lifted her breasts, and set them on his lap. Massive, heavy, but not big enough to hide his length, and Octavia guided it so it rested between her breasts, and against her sternum and neck.

It grew a little longer, and the ladies groaned again.

"You could kill someone with this," Zulia said, and she got on her knees as well. Her long tongue snuck out from between her shark teeth, and she leaned in over her sister's breasts and teased it along his glans. Instant sparks of pleasure shot down his length, and he quivered. Apparently, his little quivers had a powerful effect, because Zulia groaned and set her giant hand on his, pinning it to the shelf beside his leg.

"More," Tassilia said, leaned over Octavia's other side, pinned his other hand down, and ran her tongue up and down his cock. The warm, wet appendage reached the tip of his length, caressed the pink, sensitive skin, and he shivered again. Again, the girls groaned.

"I just want to devour him," Octavia said. "Absolutely devour him."

He gulped. "Please don't."

She giggled, guided his cock straight up, and brought her head down. She opened her mouth, showed off all her crazy sharp shark teeth, but hid them behind subtle, almost invisible lips, black against the black of her mask-like face. And she wrapped them around his glans.

No teeth. Only the suckling tight grip of eager lips, and a long, long tongue stroking and teasing around his cock's head hidden inside her mouth.

It was too much. Octavia licked and gently suckled, and Zulia and Tassilia continued to run their tongues along what part of his cock was visible between Octavia's breasts and her mouth. The two ladies leaned in closer, squashed Octavia's breasts around his cock, and warm milk squirted from her nipples onto his lap, drenching his abs.

And Acelina stood directly behind them, caressing herself, playing with her breasts, featureless face on David.

He came. Tingling, electric sparks pulled deep muscle squeezes between his thighs, and forced waves of heat up his length, each bringing pleasure that flowed up to his glans, down to his testicles, and out through his thighs. He gasped, tried to control his breathing, failed, and watched his cum overflow the giant woman's strange, onyx mouth. It puffed her cheeks, flowed out from between her lips, and poured down his length onto the awaiting tongues of the other spire mothers. More came, flowed past their tongues and kissing lips, and coated Octavia's breasts.

Octavia lifted her head and grinned at him.

"Already?"

"I uh... Um..."

"He is a pathetic little boy, isn't he?" Acelina said. "He climaxes at the drop of a claw. But... he does continue."

He'd have frowned at her, if Acelina hadn't come closer until her legs almost pressed against Octavia's back and wings. She massaged herself and sighed happily. She was putting on a show for him.

"He does continue," Zulia said with a little gasp, and she kissed the side of his cock. "Quite... inhuman."

"Perhaps," Tassilia said, and she gave his cock a kiss, too. "But look in his eyes. That is a human's whimpering little gaze, isn't it? Just a young, helpless boy's gaze."

"Hey, I'm not... whimpering."

They giggled and rotated. Zulia took middle, set her breasts on his lap again, and Octavia cozied up to his side. But instead of kissing his cock, Octavia leaned in toward him and brought her face within inches of his. He froze. She grinned, licked his chest, and kissed the huge curves of her sister's closer breast sitting on his lap. She nudged her face into it, earning a few small squirts of milk from Zulia's nipple. Tassilia did the same on the other side, and Zulia sighed bliss as she snuggled up between his thighs, set her hands on top of her breasts, rested them there, and tilted her head down.

Another set of nearly invisible, black lips, hiding a huge mouth full of sharp teeth, welcomed his glans in wet warmth. And all he could do was sit there and squirm as the woman drowned his cock in slow, succulent suckles, lips easing back and forth along the base of his cock's head. He looked at Caera, but she was more hypnotized than he was, mouth hanging open and single eye locked on the way Zulia sucked on him.

Acelina came closer, squatted down behind her kin until Zulia's horns brushed against her chin. She reached around, slipped her hands underneath Zulia's arms, and pressed the woman's breasts together. More squirts of milk splashed over David's chest, and the two spire mothers beside Zulia licked it up. They nudged their faces into their sister's breasts, suckled on her nipples, and earned moans from her, moans that buzzed vibration straight onto David's cock.

He couldn't stop looking up at Acelina. Even as another gush of cum poured up his length and flooded Zulia's mouth, he couldn't stop looking at the spire mother behind her, at the way she squeezed and massaged Zulia's breasts so her milk splashed over their sisters' lips, the way she let him see just the tiniest hint of a smile, and the way she slid her fingertips through his cum as it flowed down his cock onto Zulia's body. She didn't stop. Chuckling, she massaged his cum into Zulia's breasts, and the spire mother melted against his thighs, almost collapsing forward but held up by Acelina's groping hands.

"I suppose it makes sense," Tassilia said, "that Acelina would be so talented with the boy, having spent so much time with him."

Acelina scoffed, stood up, and Zulia slipped out from between his legs. Zulia had enjoyed that too, judging from how she quivered as she switched places with Tassilia. Apparently, all spire mothers had really sensitive breasts.

Tassilia grinned at David, set her breasts on his lap, and snuggled in up against his thighs. But instead of hiding his glans inside her mouth, she kissed it, her wide shark mouth pursing into a small kiss, and a few inches of her tongue snuck out to join it. As she kissed his glans, her sisters leaned in, squashed their breasts against the outside of his leg and side, and joined in.

The three spire mothers kissed the head of his cock, each fighting for room around it, occasionally knocking horns but otherwise almost seamlessly working together to bury it in gentle suckles and long, tender licks. They kissed each other, too, pausing every so often to lick cum off each other's chins, giggle, and resume. They were relentless. Never giving him a moment, they nudged foreheads, and kissed each other, making out while his cock just happened to be between them.

They didn't use their teeth. If anything, they kept them hidden within their mouths, and kept them mostly closed so only their invisible lips and long, pink tongues touched him and each other. And Tassilia held perfectly still. No one touched the rest of his length, leaving it to sit between her breasts, while the three ladies drowned his glans in stimulus until it almost hurt.

He groaned through clenched teeth, and the ladies moaned onto his glans. The first gush of cum splashed over Tassilia's lips and face, and they giggled again and resumed kissing. Slower this time, his now overly sensitive skin sending nigh painful electric tingles down his length to his testicles, only made worse by each wave of cum that splashed onto their lips and tongue.

He was still mid orgasm when Acelina nudged her way in. She gently pushed everyone aside, Tassilia included, and stood in front of him. But instead of kneeling and lifting her breasts up onto his lap, she took his cock into her mouth, and leaned forward with her back curved so her breasts hung underneath her.

She lowered herself down, and down, and down. David sucked in a hard breath, squirted a gush of cum into Acelina's mouth, and then another down her throat. Her throat's muscles constricted around him, milked a final wave of cum out of him, and she moaned, sending buzzing vibration down his length as she lowered herself more, and more. Her tongue, hidden inside her mouth, bathed the underside of his cock as she eased inch after inch into her. Her subtle lips wrapped around his girth snug, and reached lower, until he could feel his cock's head push way too deep.

But she kept going, until her lips pressed to his pelvis.

He stared down at her, quivering.

"Wow," Caera said. He wanted to look at her, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the onyx mask devouring every inch of his cock.

Acelina smiled, and tilted her head around from side to side. Her throat twisted and turned subtly, squeezed on him in the strangest way imaginable, and he shivered again. She took his hand, guided it to her, around her jaw, under, and around her neck. It was bulging underneath her where he couldn't see, but his fingers felt it, and he failed to suppress a groan.

She stayed there for a full minute, balls deep on his length, tongue rubbing his cock's underside. How deep did his cock go inside her? It had to be past her throat, but Acelina didn't seem to mind at all. She reached up, teased her claws along his legs, along his abs, and up to his chest and shoulders, before finally lifting her head. She gasped, panting.

"You are too large for me to breathe," she said.

"I uh... sorry, I um... I could try... shrinking it. I think. Maybe?"

Acelina smiled at him, this time happily showing off her many shark teeth, got on her knees, and she took his cock into her mouth again. And again, she took him to the base, licked his length as she eased him into her mouth, into her throat, until some of him reached past it.

She took his hands and guided them to her head. Had he ever touched her head before? Acelina was bald like the other spire mothers, but the perfectly black dome and the four enormous horns substituted. He couldn't help but stroke the hard skin of her head before wrapping his palms around her two closer horns where they met her skull, and held on as the woman sucked on every inch of his cock.

He came, straight into her stomach, and Acelina nuzzled her lips into him. She caressed his chest, stroked his abs, and traced her claws on his wrists where he held on for dear life as the woman milked him. Again, she slowly tilted her head from side to side, lulled it up and down, softly squirmed between his legs, and every inch of his cock felt the friction of her throat and insides squeezing and milking him.

Cum gushed out from her lips and squirted hard, splashing up over his abs, drenched his thighs, and dripped off the shelf he sat on. He held on, and Acelina made no effort to lift her head as she milked him. She leaned forward, snuggled up against his legs, and stayed there, gently squirming on his cock and letting more waves of it flood her stomach, and what didn't stay inside her gushed out, puffed her cheeks, and poured over his body and her chin.

Slowly, she stood back up to her full height, and let his cock slide free of her throat. It fell from her lips, landed on David's chest with a splat, and a few more drops leaked onto his sternum.

Acelina smiled at him, letting a bit of her teeth show as his cum oozed down her chin, slender neck, and down over her heavy, enormous, leaking breasts.

"You fit that inside your throat?" Caera said, standing up on her hind legs and leaning on the cabinet David sat on.

"Of course," Acelina said, and ran her hands down her body, spreading his cum along her throat, her clavicle, her sternum, and especially over her breasts. Like massaging in lotion, she caressed them, stroked them and worked his cum into her skin, cupped them and squeezed them, and squirted a little milk against his cum-soaked legs and abs. She shivered, and a quiet moan escaped her.

"How arousing," Zulia said, standing beside Acelina and joining in massaging her kin's cum-soaked body.

"Very," Octavia said, doing the same for Acelina's other side.

"Very," David said with a gulp. "I... I uh."

"Still hard," Tassilia said, giggling.

Acelina chuckled. Her voice had a little more depth to it than the other spire mothers, a little more bass, a little more royal edge to it. If he didn't know any better, he'd think he was looking at the mom and her three daughters. And for some damn reason, that thought sent a pulse of desire through him into his aura, and his cock twitched on his chest.

The ladies each groaned, and Acelina got on her knees in front of him.

"I know you're insatiable," she said. "But I think I can drain you. A proper goodbye, yes?"

"I mean... I guess, I--"

She leaned in, ran her tongue up his testicles, up along the underside of his cock, and brought it to the tip. Inches away from his face, she smiled at him, and whispered.

"I think I might just miss you, unmarked."

He gulped. The spire mother's grin washed away, and she grabbed his cock with both hands. Again, she slipped the whole of it into her mouth, throat, and deeper, and kept him there. And again, she encouraged him to hold her horns, and she used a little rocking motion.

He dared, and gently nudged her head back and forth a few inches with his grip. She let him. No longer just sitting and watching, he was now fucking her throat, gently and slowly, but he was, and he outright groaned again as he eased her head back and forth again and again, always bringing her back to the base until she couldn't hold her breath any longer. She stood up, gasping.

"Sorry I--"

She leaned back in and took him to the base again. And again, put his hands on her head. Unable to stop himself, he again worked her head back and forth, and fucked her throat and deeper, until he pumped cum into her stomach.

Caera leaned in close over his shoulder, moaned, and watched.

~~♥♥♥~~