Chapter 14: The Damned Pt. 02

The mouth of Tombaka a'Zul loomed like the gasping maw of a buried leviathan, a shadowed hole in the base of the sacred cairn from where the Thunder God was once born. Ancient moss-covered stalactites and stalactites lined the cave mouth like the teeth of a great and terrible creature. The Ash-Kar Elders had taught for generations of the first great earthquake which had given birth to thunder; a quake of such magnitude that the earth had split apart like the labia of a mother in labour, and Tombaka a'Zul had burst open, releasing the God entity Zul to the skies where it had ruled as mightiest of all the Spirit-Gods since; spreading its lighting seed across the sky, and giving birth to the sun and the twin moons. It was the most sacred place in Tel Mudera to the Ash-Kar, the place where the Elders and Priestesses went to die. None who entered and stood before the ancient effigy of Zul, carved centuries before by some forgotten devotant, and gazed upon its true face were permitted to leave alive. It was their place of power. The beating, raging heart of the Ash-Kar.

But of late, an insidious wrongness had whispered from the cave mouth like a rank wind; the vile scent of rot, decay and corruption. The Elders had studied it, consulted the flames, heard the whispers and saw woe in their fires. Death was spreading across the plains, through the jungle, from Tombaka a'Zul. Doom for all men. The signs were clear; plainsfolk spoke of unnatural howls in the jungle. Whole groves of dead plants, dead trees and dead beasts. Entire villages cleared of people; at first, seeming as if they had fled, but now the Elders saw something darker in the abandonment. A mother suckling her child lactated blood from her breast instead of milk. The wood and bone altar to the Thunder God in the Ash-Kar village had begun to decay unnaturally rapidly. Strange sickness had spread amongst the young of the tribe, a feverish malaise. And worst of all, there had been no word or sign from their God. The plains themselves held their breath as the storm had refused to come for a full moon now; no rain, no thunder, just a dead and disturbing calm. The Elders had called a conclave. In fevered desperation they called for more piety; perhaps they had displeased their God, and must appease it with human sacrifices, bloodletting, ritual suicides, orgies...

Only Zoran had stated what needed said. There was corruption there now, and he must go and cleanse it. If it could be saved, he would save it. However, if the Thunder God had fallen to some corrupting malaise or woe, then he would go to Tombaka a'Zul and end it himself. If God had to die for the good of his people, Zoran would be the one to slay it.

The blasphemous declaration, that he would somehow bend the Thunder God to the Ash-Kar's will or worse, kill it if it had fallen to corruption, sent shockwaves of terror, doom and anger through the conclave. No man could stand against their God, it was folly, heresy, to even suggest it. But Zoran was unmoved, resolute.

Despite the wailing and gnashing of the Elders, the cries of Blasphemy, the threats of banishment or worse, Zoran had come to Tombaka a'Zul to put an end to the Thunder Gods corruption, one way or another. Not as a selfless act of heroism, however; but because Ossisoul had told him to do so. This was how he would save the Ash-Kar, he was told. How he would make them mighty and whole. How he would lead them to eternal life and immortal dominance of the plains...

"Your god, in fact, all of the gods the peoples of Tel Mudera worship, are no more 'god' than you or I. At best, they are simply forces of nature which would go on existing whether you superstitiously sacrifice brother and sister and beast in their name, pray and genuflect and flagellate yourself to them or not. The rain, wind, sunlight, the moons, storms; they are things. Elements. Uncaring, unfeeling. You can not appease them, nor appeal to them any more than you can to the mud at your feet."

Ossisoul sat casually, one leg crossed under the other on a tree stump, in the shadowed copse by the riverbank he had first met Zoran three moons ago. Their secret rendezvous', like lovers from rival tribes, had been a regular occurrence since that first night they had met. Ossisoul spoke in casual blasphemies and a seemingly inhuman, utterly alien parlance, of things and places Zoran did not comprehend; but his words and actions and undeniable power had gradually and completely seduced Zoran. Had Ossisoul not so strenuously denied and derided the notion, Zoran might have believed him a god too.

He finished stirring the sweet, honeyed tea he had been brewing over a small flame in the tree stump hollow and carefully poured some into a bronzed cup. He held the cup out to Zoran. "Careful now, my lord. It's hot."

The scalding brass burned Zorans hand, but he held on, grimacing, showing no sign of weakness. Ossisoul was mighty, as close to a god as any man Zoran had met, and yet he called Zoran 'my lord'. Truly, Zoran mused as he lifted the burning brass cup to his lips, that was proof enough of his destiny. Ossisoul grinned that black toothed rictus, a sign of approval; the cup never seemed to burn him. He continued, as he tidied away the remnants of the tea set into a black leather shoulder bag and produced a small spherical glass jar.

"At worst, these so-called gods are naught more than demons." He snorted derisively. "Not even the Princes of the Seven Hells! Simple lackeys; opportunistic diabolical creatures masquerading as the divine, granting the most paltry morsels of power in exchange for mortal flesh and soul. Oh, believe me, I do see the attraction. Such practices were not uncommon even in Nazadstok's storied history. That is, until the third sorcerer king, Casimir the Pious, outlawed the worship of diabolical entities, making it a crime punishable by death. Too many cults popping up and besmirching the newly civilised nation with their barbaric practices, you see." Ossisoul raised a fist in mock salute. "Blood for breakfast! Blood for lunch! Child sacrifice before supper!" He chuckled. "In truth," he unscrewed the jar and sniffed it, seemingly satisfied. "Casimir saw that communion with denizens of the Seven Hells was an easy, some might say efficient route to magickal power which threatened the monopoly of the Sorcerer King's rule. And as usual, it was one law for the people, another for the rulers. Not a hundred years after that decree, the Sixth Sorcerer Queen Svetlana was exiled for Congress with Demons."

His words were meaningless to Zoran, but they carried an indefinable weight and stirred something within Zoran; they were like fables, faerie tales. He listened, enrapt, kneeling in the dried mud before Ossisoul. "More's the pity; there's one I would have enjoyed serving. By all historical accounts she was a true beauty, a fearless sorcerer, and ever so generous with her cunt once suitably in her cups."

He motioned to the cup in Zorans hand.

"Drink."

The tea was sweet, cloyingly so, but with a strange acrid aftertaste the honey didn't quite smother completely. It was hot in his chest, and he felt his stomach churn as he swallowed it down, but he gritted his teeth, his muscles taut; holding it in. Zoran nodded, impressed. "That's it, my lord. The effect will take hold sooner than you think. You will feel emboldened, a furious lust in your veins, like you could rut endlessly. But contain yourself."

Quickly, the tea's effects took hold. Zorans head began to swim, the dim greens and browns of the dusk riverbank becoming vivid, the sound of the trickling river becoming like music. His cock swelled between his legs, harder, thicker than ever before; the dark veins throbbing, his purple cock head swollen and smooth, gleaming, pre-cum already dripping from the slit, his balls feeling heavy and tight, warm and tingly. He gasped as the thrilling bliss of the tea coursed through his body like a hundred orgasms. Even Ossioul, his confidante, his servant with the pale drawn burned features, eyes like death and night, black teeth, looked like an angel in this state of being. Zoran would have fucked him there and then had he less control. He reached for his cock, the gentlest touch of his calloused fingers sending ecstatic shockwaves through his body.

"What is this?" he breathed, slowly stroking his mighty engorged prick.

Ossisoul handed him the jar, black eyes watching with cold intent as Zoran stroked himself in front of him, the slightest tug of amusement on his rictus.

"A simple aphrodisiac of my own making. It will heighten your senses in some ways, increase your already considerable sexual stamina, and dull your senses in other ways. Make you more pliable, susceptible to suggestion, and more resistant to pain." He motioned to the jar. "Now, fill it, please."

Zoran didn't understand the words aphrodisiac, or susceptible. But when he stroked his jutting, rock hard cock, so slick and shining with precum, it didn't matter. Bliss whited out his senses. In a matter of seconds he came, thick hot white streams of cum pumping from his cock into the spherical jar. He cried out, pleasure unlike any he had experienced before.

His cock remained just as hard as before, more so. He began stroking it again, the immediate post-orgasm sensitivity only adding more pleasure to the sensation. His vision blurred, his whole body warm and tingling, breath shallow, his cock leaking over his fist as he stroked and caressed it. He didn't even notice Ossisoul at his back; barely registered the feel of the ink-dipped blade in his shoulders as Ossisoul carved runes into his flesh; all that mattered was his cock, chasing the next orgasm.

He came again, just as hard as the first time. Cum splattering into the jar, splashing into his first release. His cock stayed ready, as he pulled and caressed it more, biting his lip, eyes rolling back.

"It is my firm belief," Ossisoul continued, casually carving into Zorans back like a flesh canvas, "after long decades of research on the subject, that in fact the very notion of 'Gods' as we see them, is entirely a misunderstanding. Take, for example, the beliefs of my... former people. The Divine Radiance, the central figurehead of their religion. It is documented, indisputably, that men have seen and spoken with and made congress with Angels of the Divine Radiance. But what proof is there that these 'Angels' are actually divine beings? What proof of the so-called 'Great Beyond' where our souls supposedly go when we die?" He scoffed.

"No, I believe that this deity, this Divine Radiance, and its 'Angels', are nothing more than extra-planar entities, beings from some other realm beyond the skein of ours; strong with magick, indubitably, but with no true sway nor effect upon the world, and certainly no commerce or control over our so-called souls. In fact, one might argue, given the posited currency of the so-called human 'souls' used by Demons, that Demons by that definition may be more divine than Angels."

Nothing he was saying registered with Zoran. The pain in his shoulders didn't register. His body was heat, sensation, pure bliss as he came again and again, thighs quivering, calves cramping as he kneeled in the dried mud, his cum slowly filling the jar.

"The second 'God' of the Nazadstok pantheon, known among it's devotees as Mother Night, hmm... now there's an intriguing one," Ossisoul continued, casually, "An entity, revered as a deity and ungraciously lumped into the pantheon of our beliefs by short-sighted clerics. At first, I had presumed her to be an Egregore -" He cleared his throat, " - that's a being manifested into existence solely the belief of masses, but," he sighed. "This hypothesis was proven wrong, after much research. I now believe this 'Mother Night' to be, in fact, some ancient eldritch entity from a realm beyond our comprehension. These entities are so far beyond us as to be unimaginable. I have personally found evidence of their visitation to our world in long aeons past, before man crawled on his slick little belly upon the land. This Mother Night may be some slumbering or long dead eldritch being, and her 'sex magick' which her devotees so readily embrace, is nothing more than the misted spray from a waterfall, a side effect of her very existence. Whatever this Mother Night truly is, I believe it is no more aware of us, nor it's devotees tapping into its power, than a stallion is of a tick feeding from its blood, no more caring of our existence than the storms or the sea is. If one were capable of truly harnessing the power of such eldritch creatures... well," Ossisoul sighed happily, moving the blade to the base of Zorans spine, just between the arch of his muscular buttocks. "Perhaps one day."

Zoran sweated, grunted, the words of the necromancer lost on him.

"I had posited once that the Concubi of the far isle of Extasis were true angels of Mother Night, but upon closer... examination," he exhaled, some disgust in his voice,"I discovered they were not. They were simply corrupted Angels turned diabolical. Weak, distasteful and lust-driven. There was no divinity to be had there."

He finished carving the final rune at the base of Zorans spine with a satisfied flourish.

"As for our third lord and divine saviour, Pan... well," he chuckled. "They are as trite and infantile as your people's worship of the storm. A personification of nature, nothing more."

Zoran came one last time, his heart pounding, sweat pouring across his coiled, muscled body, cock angry and red as the last spurts of his seed splashed into the spherical jar; his breaths heavy and ragged, his turgid member finally softening. Ossisoul rounded him and picked up the jar, inspecting it. "Very good, my proud lord. Say what you will of the eldritch sex magick of Mother Night, but when deconstructed and woven in the correct manner to the tapestry of my own studies, it does become a potent tool indeed."

He stoppered the spherical jar and placed it gently into his bag. "Now, Zoran of the Ash-Kar, Lord of Thunder; rest, recover. For in the morn, you have mighty work to do.

You are to become a God to your people."

--

The wind screamed like widows around the mouth of Tombaka a'Zul, kicking up dust and fragments of bone into spirals that hissed as they tore through the air. Zoran stood naked before the cave entrance; a towering presence of sun-dark muscle, ash and ritual oil. His cock hung heavy and half-hard between his thighs. The runic tattoos on his back and shoulders, the tapestry of dark powerful magic carved there by Ossisoul, glimmered faintly in the dying light.

Behind him, the Ash-Kar Elders wailed in horror and anger.

"This is death! No man leaves the Womb but as bones!"

"The Thunder God will strike him down for his blasphemy!"

Their words rang out in panicked chorus, but no one stepped forward to challenge him. No one dared. Zoran turned his head just once, just enough to catch Inzara at the edge of the crowd. The Reaver-Priestess's red hair was unbound, spilling down her bare shoulders; her violet eyes wide with a sorrow that seemed to ache inside her chest.

"Don't," she mouthed, breathless. "Zoran, please. This is ruin."

Once, her words would have stirred him, stopped him. He would have obeyed in a heartbeat, acquiesced to her every wish. But he was no longer that man. His eyes, blazing blue, simply narrowed at her as he turned and walked into the tomb.

The cave swallowed him like a cunt. Dark. Wet. Warm. The stone was slick with humidity. The walls pulsed faintly with veins of stormglass, blue cracks that flickered and lit the carvings of ancient peoples and of the sky splitting the earth's thighs with shafts of lightning

Ossisoul appeared at his back, as silent as shadow, as if he'd been waiting here for him. Maybe he had. His breath was cold on Zoran's neck.

"You are not the first to enter, my Lord; but you will be the last. The others came here to die, to waste their final hours in fruitless prayer for a great beyond that will never come. You come here to be reborn, to live forever. To be a true God."

Zoran squared his shoulders, back straightening with purpose as he made his way further into the cave. The chamber narrowed, the darkness crowding in like a womb. As Zoran passed through the throat of the cave, thunder rumbled not above, but beneath. An echo of defiance in the walls, in the stone floor. 'Too little, and too late', Zoran thought, sneering.

He found the altar. It was a statue, a massive ancient obsidian colossus; Zul-Kar, the Thunder God. It loomed over the center of the sanctum, carved with cruel, masculine grace. Muscles coiled like serpents, jaw sharp, hair like a crown of stormclouds. And at its center, a cock; monstrous, monolithic. Glossed with old offerings and the long dried seed of dying Elders. Its face, inhuman in its beauty and terror, was twisted in a rictus of pain and ecstasy. At the base, carved into the altar, beneath the monstrous cock, was a symbolic cleft; narrow, lined in old dried hides and ancient offerings of mead and blood. A sacrificial slit, and entrance to the womb of the god.

Zoran stepped forward. His cock twitched. His balls drew up, full, tight, heavy. Ossisoul's voice was a kiss of rot in his ear.

"See how it opens for you. This is how you will become."

Zoran's nostrils flared. He dropped to his knees before the effigy and pressed his forehead to the cleft. He opened his mouth and licked it. Salt. Old sweat. Ancient blood. The taste of forgotten offerings and extinct tongues. He rose with his cock already swelling to a full, thunder-thick erection, veins like cords, the gleaming head purpled and already weeping pre-cum, the taste of blood and honeyed tea at the back of his throat. Zoran stepped forward, wrapped one hand around his cock, and pressed the head into the effigy's slit.

The first thrust was slow. The tightness shocked him; slick with condensation, but cold and rough. Hard, jagged rock under brittle, ancient hide. He sneered, steeled himself. The second thrust was deeper. The sharp walls of the altar's sacred slit clung to him, greedily. He snarled. His muscles flexed, slick with oil and sweat. His hips hammered forward, cock plunging into the stone cunt of the effigy, fucking it like it belonged to him; his cock solid, swollen and thick, scraping the hide away from the cleft revealing the unyielding obsidian crevice beneath, until...

At first, he thought he imagined it. The wet, scraping slapping of his cock against the stone, piercing the crack until it felt as if it softened, yielded to him. The whisper of Ossisoul's cold encouragement in his ear.

And the statue began to change.

The hard stone warmed, softened. The face twisted, not into agony but into receptiveness. The cock of Zul-Kar cracked and withered and fell away like dead bark as the cold hard rocky crevice softened to a wet, slick, warm pulsing opening. The effigy became fertile, welcoming him inside.

"Yes... yes!" Ossisoul whispered his voice low and cruel. "Let it be unmade. Fuck your god."

"Fuck your god." Words Zoran had said himself in the past, before destroying the false gods of the Ash-Kar's enemies. Now he was doing it to their own false god. The words spurred him on. Zoran's balls slapped the wet, fleshy stone as the effigy warmed around him, sucking him in. His grunts became roars. His spine arched, neck bulging, hair matted with cave mist and sweat.

Ossisoul's arms raised, his long narrow fingers split like bone fans. From his mouth poured a stream of ancient magick, thick syllables older than the plains themselves, spoken with cold reverence and casual violence. The runes he had carved in Zorans shoulders and back flared in a frigid blue light, save for the final single rune at the base of his spine. Zorans cock twitched. His voice cracked. The entire cavern shuddered as smoldering black lightning cracked through the stone, a bolt racing through Zorans body, his muscles locking up as he thrust his battered, engorged prick to the hilt into the effigy's molten cunt and came. Hot. Endless. A flood of steaming cum blasted into the carved cunt of Zul-Kar. It oozed and poured from the slit of his cock-head, steaming, thick, more cum than any man should have been able to produce. His seed ran in rivulets down the altar, pooling at the base, soaking the rags of old hides, baptizing the stone.

The cavern darkened and the stormglass fractured and shattered. The thunder around him went silent. Zoran fell forward, panting, his cock still pulsing, scraped and bloody and shining. And when he looked up, the effigy had a new face. His face

Zoran's cock softened only for a breath; then rose again, veined and angry. His body gleamed in the faint glimmer of light which penetrated the cavern from outside. The carved cunt of the effigy pulsed one final time before closing, lips fusing into polished stone with a damp, sucking sound like the death rattle of something holy. The entire statue shimmered, cracked, and began to shift again; its face reshaping from Zoran's tortured likeness into something feminine, alien, and hungry. Wide hips emerged from the stone. Heavy breasts. The cock once carved into the effigy now broken, dust, gone. The new face was open-mouthed, lips thick and parted in either worship or scream.

Zoran stalked forward with his cock bobbing, full and slick and twitching, dragging a smear of pre-cum behind it as it slapped lightly against his thigh. He spat into his palm and gripped his scraped shaft, jerking it slowly as he stepped up onto the altar, his knees pressing into the soft, warm stone. He grabbed a handful of the sculpted stone hair, and fucked its mouth.

He drove his cock into the parted lips of his own god-face made female and fucked it mercilessly, brutally with wet, slapping, ruthless rhythm. Zoran's strokes became wild. One hand on the effigy's head, the other squeezing his own pec, his fingers dragging through ash and cum, rubbing his nipples raw with divine madness.

The statue's new breasts jutted upward beneath him, still forming. Zoran leaned forward and spit on them, then dragged his cock from the mouth to rest between them. He jerked himself faster, harder, his teeth bared, fucking its tits, his body trembling with sheer, hateful need

Ossisoul inhaled. The glyphs flashed once more, brighter.

Zoran came again. The world whited out as stream after stream flooded the tits and face of the god, and the statue began to crumble beneath him. He fell with it to the floor as it fell apart, and knelt there, panting, cock twitching, as the effigy collapsed around him in a graceless tumble of blackened ash and orgasm-slick rubble. The altar dissolved around his knees, leaving him naked and caked in sacred filth.

He stood slowly, lifting both hands into the swirling smoke, cum still dripping from his cock, his chest smeared in it.

"Fuck your god," he snickered to himself.

From behind him, Ossisoul stepped forward, one slender, pale, cold hand reaching out to gently caress Zorans muscled, filthy back. The runes faded, leaving only the single dormant sigil at the base of Zorans spine remaining.. Zoran turned, face flushed with triumph, cock still half-hard, his body singing with the aftershock of power. Ossisoul grinned, black, satisfied. He bowed reverently, and pride shot through Zorans heart. He believed he was divine.

And that belief was absolute.

--

The plains were graveyards now. Where once there were villages, now there were piles of stones and sick black weeds pushing through dead scorched earth. Where once the jungle sang with life and the drums of rival clans, now was the mournful howl of wind through dying trees. The skies no longer carried smoke from distant cookfires. Only the Ash-Kar remained, fattened on the ruin of their rivals and the relentless plunder and desecration of the land.

At the center of their stronghold, what had once been a village and was now a sprawling warren of twisted totems and skulls, Zoran sat upon his newly carved throne of obsidian and bone, draped in hide and fur. Its arms were polished femurs, its back adorned with the skulls of the Elders he had brutally and mercilessly slain upon his triumphant return from Tombaka a'Zul.

Two of his harem knelt before him, mouths full of his cock. Their movements were slow, worshipful. One took the head, swirling her tongue lazily with each pass. The other stroked the shaft, her lips dragging across his inner thigh. They were young, naked, buxom; prizes from the last raid. Eager to buy their lives by pleasuring their new God as best they could.

Zoran didn't react. Not even a breath.

His blazing blue eyes stared across the village circle, unfocused. Harder every day to tell if he was even alive; until the sound of the prisoners being dragged in brought him from his malaise. They were herded in by a dozen reavers, laughing, naked, blood streaked. The prisoners came with heads bowed, wrists bound in vine rope; the scattered and shattered rivals of the Ash-Kar.

Men, women and children. Broken.

Zoran let the women keep working, sucking his cock even as he rose to his feet. Their lips popped free with wet slaps, and both looked up to him in fear and longing. They wiped spit from their mouths and bowed low as he descended the throne.

He walked with the stillness of a dread titan. His cock hung semi-hard, wet and glistening, the head flushed dark and twitching. The carved tattoo runes in his back had scabbed away, leaving only dark grey flesh in their place. Only the solitary rune at the base of his spine remained.

He stood before the prisoners, towering over them. He looked to the men, and with a dismissive wave of one hand, uttered

"To the keep."

No one moved for a moment; the simple horror of those three words swept across the circle, before the men were dragged away into the darkness at the edge of the sprawling village, screaming. Even the Reavers who violently manhandled them shuddered.

Zoran walked among the women. He palmed their thighs, squeezing roughly; calloused fingers explored their cunts. He gripped their breasts, turned their faces to the light, examining them like cattle. He chose three. The rest he threw to his Reavers with callous indifference. The Reavers descended and the women were dragged off, weeping, pleading. Some were already being bent over stones and spread, or pulled down into the dirt.

Zoran turned to lead his chosen three captives to his hut, before a voice interrupted him.

"Zoran."

The voice cracked like dry leather. He turned to see Inzara standing behind him, hands on her hips, violet eyes like a storm. The only remaining devotant priestess of the dead Thunder God, her red hair oiled and combed back from her face, violet eyes dark. Her tits still proud, full, her body gleaming and tight, her smooth pussy glistening. Her long smooth legs shone in the light of the firepit as she approached him, chin held high and defiant.

He looked at her like a memory he couldn't kill.

"This is beyond enough, Zoran. You swore once that we were not rapers. To them, to me. And now you indulge in savagery more vile than ever before."

"Savagery?," he sneered. "If I were truly a savage I'd have flayed you along with the Elders for your devotion to a false, dead god. Yet I spared you. You live by my will alone. Think on that."

"Your will? You mean his will."

She spat the words. "You've torn the land asunder and salted the earth. You've made the Ash-Kar monstrous! And you have done it at the whim of that pale creature you invited into our village! The very Doom the Elders spoke of, you brought into our home with a song of blind conquest in your heart -"

"Enough."

"- He is a rot, Zoran! A devourer! And you are letting him eat you whole, all of us!"

Zoran's face twitched, his voice roared.

"Enough!"

Inzara quieted. Zoran stepped close, his breath hot against her face, his voice low, rough. "You are afraid. Weak. Pitiful. You think Ossisoul has sway over me? He is my servant, I his lord! And with his guidance, I have made the Ash-Kar mightier than ever; none exist any more who can threaten us. None! And you think that rot? That's power. Power you fear, because it doesn't belong to you any more."

He stepped back, sneering.

"Be gone from my sight, priestess," he spat the word with utter disdain. "Before I forget how I once loved you."

Zoran turned back to the three chosen prisoners; shaking, naked, afraid.

"Pleasure me well, take my seed, and I will permit you to live."

He didn't look back at Inzara as he roughly shoved the three whimpering girls into his hut and slammed the door. Inzara turned from the hut, her mouth twisted in disgust, her fists white-knuckled. She had seen enough.

She didn't notice Xichi until she slammed into her.

The young Reaver grinned, drunk on lust and blood-hunger, her tits gleaming with sweat, her thighs glistening with the juices of desire.

"Did you see him?" Xichi whispered, voice trembling with awe. "Our god... Zoran... Oh, Inzara, I would crawl on my belly just to taste his cock. To worship him properly, to let him fuck me as you once did."

Her fingers drifted between her own thighs, idly stroking her driping wet pussy as she spoke, pupils blown wide with unholy adoration. Inzara spat at Xichi's feet and sneered.

"You're welcome to him."

She turned her back on the fires and the moaning crowds, striding naked and burning away from the village center. Toward the edge of the settlement, and the Dark Keep.

It was a recent construction, hastily but skillfully made, stone and bone fused into crude walls, bound with tar and vine. No one spoke of it openly. No one dared ask what the Chieftains' strange, pale advisor did there. But Inzara had seen the captives led there. Anyone who could not service the Ash-Kar's needs were brought there, and none left.

She crept silent as breath, the cool night air chilling the sweat on her bare skin.

The side of the building had no door. Only a narrow slat window, barely wide enough to slip a hand through. She pressed herself against the rough stone, bile rising as she looked inside

The sight brought sickness to the back of her throat, her heart hammering in fear and disgust.

Inside, under guttering black candles, Ossisoul worked. He stood tall and regal, clad in his strange alien finery, his almost skeletal hands precise and elegant. The very air shimmered around him, as if warped by vile magick. The prisoners were laid out on stone tables, their naked bodies pinned open, spilling blood and twitching viscera across the slabs. Some of them were already dead. Some of them still moved, mouthing in silent agony.

Inzara bit into her knuckle to keep from screaming.

She watched as Ossisoul passed his hand over one still-breathing man, muttering some diabolical incantation. The man's body split like an overripe melon, his chest tearing apart, ribs crackinb outward like opening jaws; and another face pushed out from inside, screaming wordless horror; it's mouth full of jagged teeth, eyes black as pitch.

Mewling and huffing on the floor she saw a pair of women, their faces locked in silent agony, their spines twisted together until they crawled on all fours like a beast, mouths sewn shut, breasts swinging grotesquely beneath their stitched chests.

Ossisoul passed calmly from table to table.

Sometimes, he carved runes into the bodies with knives made of black bone. Sometimes, he spoke low words that made the corpses rise, jerking, shuddering, dripping black filth onto the floor as their new, twisted un-lives began; shuffling, rotted horrors like the remnants of old ghost stories from the camp fire.

Inzara saw a woman with mouths sprouting across her body, her face, her tits, a mass of gnashing, mewling teeth and drool; her eyes glazed, her arms elongated with too many joints... She saw a man with spider-like legs sprouting from his back, dragging himself across the floor toward a pile of bones and scrap flesh, gibbering mindlessly, black drool and vomit dangling in ropes from distended jaw.

She saw Ossisoul pause before one particularly large corpse, a man whose skin had been stripped away entirely to reveal the rippling dark muscle underneath. He placed a hand on its heart, whispered, and the corpse shivered, slowly lifting itself from the slab, and kneeled before him.

Inzara fell back from the window, gagging, clutching her stomach. The whole building hummed with magick so foul it seemed to rot the very air. She stumbled back into the night, heart hammering, mind racing, the world spinning; now she knew, for sure, the doom was real, and it was more horrific than she could have imagined; she had to tell others, to rally her people against this corruption, to stop Zoran and Ossisoul before they were all consumed by it...

The hands that seized her were not living, but cold, dead, sharp and monstrous, skin stretched too tight or hanging in strips. Fingers like broken spider legs closed around her throat, her wrists, her thighs. She tried to scream, but one of them forced its hand into her mouth, pushing past her teeth, choking her to silence as she was dragged, naked and kicking, into the black maw of the keep.

--

The jungle beyond the Ash-Kar village was brittle and brown, the vines shriveled, the trees gray with rot. No drums beat in the distance anymore. No birdcalls or cicadas filled the air with song and humming. The only sound was the wind and the low, gnawing moan of the dying earth. The Ash-Kar were hollow-eyed, emaciated, their ribs pressing through their skins. Only a few of the strongest Reavers remained relatively hearty, hale, swaggering with the last scraps of muscle and pride. The others slumped against totems, their bellies shrunken, their cocks hanging limp and listless.

The village stank of decay, unwashed flesh, shit, vomit and corruption.

At the center of it all sat Zoran. His throne seemed bigger now; not because it had grown, but because he had shriveled. He sat slumped in it like a king carved from white bone, skin pallid and stretched too tight, cock limp against his thigh, eyes burning an unnatural, fevered blue.

He did not sweat. He barely moved, barely breathed. He had become as still and cold as a statue; an effigy of a God. And yet, when the latest group of prisoners; the very last survivors of the last remaining village were dragged forward, he stirred; A slow, aching motion, muscle memory pushing him towards them.

The survivors were little better than skeletons themselves; sunken-eyed, filthy, staggering. A smattering of women, men, children. There were no cheers from the Ash-Kar this time, only low murmurs, growls. The sound of stomachs rumbling.

Zoran rose, grunting with effort, his cock hanging limp and useless between his legs. He stepped forward shakily, instinctively, and grabbed one of the women by the hair. She cried out weakly, too frail to try and fight back as Zoran shoved her to her knees, her shrivelled tits sagging beneath her, trying to will himself to hardness.

His hand gripped his cock, pumping slowly, methodically, staring at her.

Nothing.

He tried to spit into his hand, but his mouth was dry. He gripped harder, stroked faster, strain tightening his features. His once mighty, proud prick was now as lifeless as the plains around them. Zoran's lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl of frustration.

A ripple went through the circle; low whispers. Angry muttering.

"If the chieftain cannot fuck them, then their meat can at least fill our bellies."

A murmur of dark agreement passed through the Ash-Kar like wildfire catching dry branches. Eyes gleamed in the failing light. Hands tightened on knives. The Ash-Kar seethed, the promise of warm flesh driving them as they began to encircle the prisoners.

Some of the prisoners began to sob, huddling together, realizing what was about to happen. But even as the first Reaver drew her bone knife and started towards a huddled young man, a blood curdling scream stopped them in their tracks. High pitched. Raw. Shredded from a throat that could no longer bear the pain.

Heads snapped toward the hut nearest the circle. A woman, one of Zoran's chosen from the last breeding, stumbled out, naked and sweat-slicked, her belly and tits grotesquely swollen, her legs shaking with every step. Blood poured from her cunt in dark rivulets down her shit-smeared thighs. She clutched at her gut, at the mound bulging outward in horrible pulses as she fell to her knees.

The Ash-Kar backed away in confusion, fear already souring the air. Her belly spasmed; and then split open with a sickening tear. From between her splayed thighs, her ripped open guts, from the wreckage of her torn cunt, something pushed out as she collapsed to the dirt in a pool of her own viscera.

Slick and twitching, its skin mottled gray and red, limbs too long and crooked, its head lolling grotesquely on a half-formed neck. It dragged itself free from her body with a wet, slapping squelch, killing her in the process as her guts spilled out around it. The creature shrieked; a sound that made even the strongest Reavers stagger back, covering their ears.

It crawled on malformed limbs, eyes like burning coals, a mouth full of too many teeth; and somewhere deep in its twisted flesh, something still resembling a child. The Ash-Kar screamed in confusion, horror; then rage.

"Zoran has damned us!" someone howled, voice cracking into madness.

"We are cursed!"

Zoran staggered back a step, mouth opening. He tried to speak, to roar his authority, that he was still their God, the chosen, the storm reborn. But no voice came. Only a dry, rattling gasp as his throat seized. He looked around, slowly, at the panic and hate in his people's faces; his vision blurring. The Ash-Kar began to close in, some with knives, some with axes, all with death in their eyes.

"Kill him! End this!"

As they rounded on Zoran, a voice from the shadow filled the village circle. The starving, horrified, braying mob stopped in their tracks as he stepped from the shadows.

"Cursed? Damned? Ungrateful savages. I have freed you from the false promise of a great hereafter, and given you purpose." Ossisoul's voice was calm, even. Mocking. "The other villages came to heel with greater ease, but I had such high hopes for you proud Ash-Kar. I had hoped to make use of all of you willingly, but it seems desperation has forced your hand. Very well. You may still be of use to me as meat."

With the faintest of hand motions, Ossisoul stepped back fluid, almost floating above the cracked earth; and the dried and jagged jungle around the village exploded inwards, a flurry of dried bark and dirt. Ravenous rotted zombies, skeletons, ghouls and abominations stitched from the parts of a hundred different corpses swarmed into the village, running at unnatural, loping pace, and a tsunami of undead flesh and horrors, teeth and claws, fell upon the Ash-Kar like locusts.

Proud Reavers shit themselves openly, the wet, greasy stench rising thick into the blood-choked air as their bowels emptied in pure animal terror. Some tried to run, but slipped in their own filth, falling screaming onto the trampled ground where skeletal hands seized them and ripped them apart, guts unraveling like butchered livestock, ribcages pulled from chests with wet snapping cracks, throats torn out, jaws torn from skulls as their eyes were eaten from their sockets while fhey screamed.

Zoran watched from the foot of his black throne, swaying like a drunkard; barely comprehending the vile, violent horror unfolding around him as his body failed him. His skin was ash-pale, stretched taut over his bones. His once-mighty cock hung limp and dripping, a sickly, thin dribble of piss and watery cum leaking from the slit, trailing down his inner thigh as the muscles of his bladder and bowels slackened. With a humiliating squelch, a wet rush of shit sluiced out between his legs, splattering hot and steaming onto the dirt, streaking his thighs. His breath shattered in his lungs, gasping, a death rattle crumbling from his cracked lips.

Zoran wanted to scream, wanted to roar like the God he still tried to believe he was; but no sound came. Only a thin bubbling dribble of bile from the corner of his mouth. His last breath soured on his lips as undeath claimed him, slow and humiliating. All around him, the bloody, violent carnage continued; Reavers and prisoners alike torn asunder, limbs snapped, stomachs ripped open and gorged upon by endlessly ravenous undead beasts.

And through it all, he saw her.

Inzara.

Standing beside Ossisoul, untouched by the carnage, a vision of blasphemous beauty. Her skin shimmered like polished ivory, a soft glow clinging to every inch. Her tits were swollen, perfect, heavy with impossible fullness, the dark nipples thick and pointed as if forever aroused. Between her thighs, the lips of her cunt were slick, gleaming darkly like wet onyx. Her thighs were streaked in a slow, wet ooze of clear arousal, glistening down her legs as if the death around her only made her wetter.

Her lips; full, wet, pink and cruel, curled in a smile of total supremacy. Her violet eyes, dark and vicious. Ossisoul's hand cupped her hip, fingers tracing obscene circles lower, lower, almost but not quite dipping into the slickness between her legs.

When her eyes met Zoran's, they didn't weep for him. They didn't pity him. They didn't even remember him.

Zoran tried to crawl toward her, one hand slipping in shit and blood, one knee scraping flesh from bone. The world swam around him, black and red and vile and wet. He opened his mouth to call her name, but all that came out was a wet, choking sob, thick with blood and rot, the final shreds of Zorans humanity spilling from him as his body succumbed to undeath...

--

High above the barren wastes of Tierra Muerta, far to the north of where the vibrant plains and lush jungles had become corrupted and died, the thousands of undead toiled endlessly, a black sea of hollowed slaves stacking stones into an obscene, spiraled tower. The sky churned with slow, oozing clouds, leaking soot-stained rain and freezing hail. From a squat, cold keep of cracked stone, the masters of this ruin watched.

Zoran sat at the right hand of the throne. He was draped in simple black robes, heavy with dust and dried blood. His body, once swollen with brutal strength, was now a hard, cold thing. His hand clutched a black iron spear, the shaft slick with runes carved from the bones of infants, the head jagged and wet with slow, weeping ichor.

He did not move unless commanded.

He did not act unless commanded.

His burning blue eyes stared without focus at the endless labor of the dead beyond the stone windows. At the center of the keep, before a low, bloodstained altar, stood Ossisoul, the King of the dead land. His fine clothes shimmered on the candlelight. Before him stood Inzara; naked, radiant. Her undead body was a thing of cruel, obscene perfection. Skin pale as moonstone, almost luminous in the gloom, dusted with faint traces of dark ash, her breasts hung heavy and full, tipped with dusky nipples hard enough to cut glass. Between her thighs, her cunt gleamed slick and shameless, the outer lips plump, the inner folds glistening with wetness that dripped slowly down her thighs. Her hair was a riot of tangled red, laced with beads of bone and silver, falling down her back in wild rivers.

She stood tall, proud, her thighs spread just slightly apart, her chest thrust forward, offering herself to her master.

Ossisoul moved closer. One skeletal hand slid up her stomach, tracing the curve of her ribs. His fingers cupped the weight of her tit, squeezing it roughly, dragging a thumb over the dark peak. Inzara moaned softly, arching into his touch. His other hand slipped lower, between her thighs. His fingers spread her dripping pussy wide, exposing the pink twitching slickness inside. He stroked her there; long, slow, possessive swipes, dragging his bony knuckles through the wet heat, smearing her arousal down onto the tops of her thighs. Inzara shivered, panting softly, her knees trembling slightly.

Zoran watched with burning, hollow eyes. Uncaring. Detached.

Ossisoul lifted his wet fingers to his mouth and licked them clean, his black tongue flicking across the gleaming trails of Inzara's lust.

"You are a masterpiece. Still warm and wet and vital," he murmured, voice velvet and venom. "They will not suspect. You will carry my retribution into the heart of Nazadstok."

Inzara moaned again, softer, lower, rocking her hips subtly against his hand. Ossisoul withdrew his hand and reached for the altar. There, upon the shining obsidian plinth, wrapped in black silk and bound in ancient cracked leather, lay a tome. Ossisoul picked it up reverently and offered it to Inzara.

"The vile power within these pages will bring ruination to any who decipher it. It was transcribed by eldritch beings from beyond the void, creatures who inhabited this world long before our ancient ancestors first wrought fire. You will plant this where their pride sleeps," he said. "In their great library. Beneath their gilded towers. It may take decades. Centuries, even. But one day they will find it, and its power will prove irresistible to them. They will open it, obsezs over its secrets until they decipher it," he grinned. "And Nazadstok will fall."

Inzara took the tome, clutching it to her breast, her tits flattening obscenely around the cursed book.

Ossisoul leaned forward and kissed her. His mouth devoured hers, blackened tongue plunging between her lips, his hands sliding up her flanks, squeezing her ass, dragging her against the cold iron of his body. Inzara moaned into his kiss, her cunt leaking down her thighs, soaking the floor at her feet.

When he finally broke the kiss, a thick string of saliva stretched between them, snapping wetly against her chin. He picked one more item from the altar; folded black cloth. A dress and coat, bundled together.

"Put these on," he whispered against her mouth. "Then go and bring the song of hell to Nazadstok."

Inzara turned. She strode past Zoran, aked, glistening, dripping. She paused at the threshold and looked at him. Her eyes burned into his hollowed soul; cold, violet and merciless. For a moment, something flickered in her expression. A whisper of amusement; a cruel, knowing smirk.

Zoran's grip tightened on his spear, but he could not move. Could not speak. Could only watch as the last shred of memory of who he had once been walked out into the night, carrying doom to a far off land the way he had invited it into his own.

---

Ash drifted through the broken windows like falling death. In the highest sanctum of Ossisoul's twisted Black Tower of Nostovar, Zoran stood sentinel, as he had for centuries.

He now wore blackened leathers, old and cracked from centuries of wear beneath a worn duster. At his hip hung a gift from his master; a massive seven-shooter pistol crafted by the finest magickal smiths in the land, under duress, their last act before their death. Its black iron frame was etched with eldritch runes that glowed faintly with grim light. His eyes, once alive with blood and rage, now burned a cold, flickering blue, like twin candle flames guttering in an endless wind, as cold as Tierra Muertas moons.

He stood silent, unmoving as ever he did when Ossisoul was not in need of him; until she was dragged into the chamber.

The ghouls came first, their twisted bodies half-shadow, half-necrotic flesh, chittering in low, awful voices as they dragged the girl between them. She stumbled barefoot, her olive skin smeared with dirt and blood, her hair a wild, matted mane of dirty gold.

She wore the tattered ruins of a silk nightgown, the sheer fabric shredded, clinging desperately to her trembling body. She was barely eighteen, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Her breasts were small but full, the pink tips of her stuff, thick nipples just visible through the tattered fabric. Her waist was narrow, her belly soft and tight; thighs silky and trembling, the soft skin shining faintly with a sheen of fear-sweat, muscles clenching with each faltering step.

She struggled, kicking at the ghouls; whimpering, but the ghouls only laughed. They threw her down at the edge of the black bed, a monstrous slab of black stone heaped with furs and chains. One ghoul grabbed the front of her nightgown and, with a snarl, tore it from her body. The thin silk gave way like breath, leaving her completely exposed. She cried out, trying to cover herself, fighting, but rough, clawed hands seized her wrists and ankles, wrenching her limbs wide apart.

They shackled her spread-eagle, heavy iron cuffs snapping shutaround her ankles and wrists with sharp clicks, the chains rattling as she twisted helplessly. Her legs, long, shapely, shaking, were forced wide apart, stretched until the soft, virgin folds of her cunt were completely bared to the room. Her sex was a delicate, perfect pink, the inner lips small, dewy, trembling with terror. She was a virgin in every line of her quivering, naked flesh.

Zoran's hand twitched at his side. Her face; the wet piercing of her eyes. The wide, pouting lips, the proud curve of her jaw. The defiant flare of her nostrils even through the tears. The swell of her tits, the stiffness of her deep pink nipples, the smooth beauty of her cunt... Her hair was a light soft auburn gold not red; her eyes not violet but a stormy gray-blue. But the resemblance was undeniable, an echo of something he had lost centuries ago. Some long dead part of Zoran inside him stirred as he took the sight of her in.

Ossisoul entered the chamber, passing the girl with nary a glance. He was unchanged by time but far more powerful than before, emboldened by the vitality cruelly stolen from the land and its peoples. Still in his finery, face still drawn and pale, hair still streaked with gray, eyes still black pits of pure cold malevolence. He placed a battered black kettle over the fire, and the smell of honeyed tea began to fill the room; thick, cloying, sweet enough to choke on. Zoran remembered that tea. It was the same brew Ossisoul had made for him once, long ago, the night he had first begun to slip the noose around Zoran's neck.

Ossisoul spoke as he worked, his voice cold and emotionless.

"You are to be punishment," he said, speaking over his shoulder to the trembling, spread girl. "For your father's meddling in my affairs, whether he knew it or not."

He plucked a cup from the sideboard, an ancient thing, rimmed in gold, chipped and stained and poured the thick, steaming tea. The teenaged girl chained to the bed whimpered, tears or anger and despair spilling down her flushed cheeks. Her shackled limbs trembled violently, soft olive skin glistening with sweat.

Ossisoul turned, holding the steaming cup. He stepped closer to the girl, hand extended, and the air itself seemed to hold its breath.

"This need not be an unpleasant experience for you, however. Drink."

Zoran moved; methodical, mechanical. His gloved hand dropped to his hip and slowly cocked the hammer on the seven-shooter. The metallic click echoed through the chamber, shattering the thick, cloying stillness. Ossisoul paused. The ghouls turned, hissing, shifting. The girl shackled to the bed whimpered, lifting her tear-streaked face in terrified confusion. And from Zoran's cracked, dead throat that had not truly spoken in centuries came a sound; a voice, low and rough like the whisper of the grave itself.

"No."

The single word rolled through the room like the tolling of a funeral bell. Ossisoul turned fully to him, and for the first time in a thousand years, he looked surprised. His blackened eyes gleamed with intrigue.

Zoran stood unmoving.

"You see her," Ossisoul said softly, almost with wonder. "You see the same thing in her as I do."

He drifted closer to the girl's bound form, his fingers trailing casually through the air near her spread thighs, not quite touching, but making her shudder and whimper.

"You see Inzara in her."

Zorans head twitched to the side, the slightest movement; a long dead part of him reacting to the name, recognising it. "I had suspected the possibility," Ossisoul mused, tapping his lip with one long, blackened nail, "That Inzara's infiltration of Nazadstok may bear more fruit than I intended." His eyes gleamed wickedly. "She had not undergone the full transformation which I bestowed upon you; she remained fertile. She may have used her considerable charms to complete our mission." He chuckled darkly, his eyes wandering over the girls prone, trembling form and spread legs. "Delightful. Perhaps this girl carries the blood of our little priestess."

Zoran's mind swam. Images flashing; Inzara's naked body, riding his cock, moaning into his mouth. The smile she gave him as she walked away into the night. The Ash-Kar burning, screaming, shitting themselves as they were torn apart. The slow death of Tel Mudera as it rotted into Tierra Muerta, the dead land. The undead Inzara, naked and glorious, leaving the chamber, her knowing eyes locking on his.

The taste of her tongue. The feel of her tits against him. Sigalas words... (She is beyond you).

"No."

Ossisoul turned, setting the teacup down with delicate care. He spoke almost gently, as if soothing a child.

"You forget yourself, Zoran." He stepped closer, voice lowering. "You sacrificed that part of yourself in exchange for the power and immortality I granted you."

The girl whimpered on the bed, her arms and legs trembling in the chains, straining against them. One of the ghouls sneered, stepping closer, a low, wet growl in its throat. It raised a gnarled hand, claws curling to strike the girl's soft, tear-streaked face.

The runes along the barrel of the seven shooter flared darkly, and in a single, impossibly fast motion, Zoran drew and fired. The ghoul's head exploded in a spray of black ichor and bone fragments, spraying across the girls naked body. Before the ghoul's twitching corpse hit the ground, the gun roared again. Another ghoul shredded, pieces of spine cartwheeling across the chamber in a spray of gore. With inhuman precision and speed, Zoran emptied the gun. The black iron bucked in his hand like a living thing, the flashes lighting up the chamber in stuttering bursts of hellish light. Ghouls fell in twitching heaps, black blood pouring across the stone floor, steaming where it touched the ancient runes.

The corners of Ossisoul's mouth curled higher in a slow, dangerous rictus grin.

"There's my Reaver," he said, voice low.

Zoran stood over the corpses, smoke curling from the gun; his blue flame eyes burning hotter than they had in centuries. For the first time in a thousand years, he felt something akin to alive. Zoran moved methodically, mechanically reaching down to his belt for more bullets, sliding fresh rounds into the chamber of the black iron gun with practiced ease, each bullet clicking home with a sound sharp enough to cut the air.

Ossisoul folded his arms across his chest, as still as the dead; waiting.

Zoran finished reloading. He raised the gun, levelling it towards his master, and fired.

Ossisoul wasn't there. He stood behind Zoran, still, cold, malevolent. Zoran spun and fired again, and again; but each shot passed through only shadow and smoke. Ossisoul flickered in and out of sight, never where the bullets struck. And then; he was simply gone.

The room seemed too large, too quiet, the shadows pressing inward like hungry claws. Zoran lowered the gun and slid it into the holster at his side. Awkwardly, like a mannequin, a golem only recently brought to life, he turned toward the bed; towards the girl. She was still spread wide across the black stone and furs, chains digging into her pale wrists and ankles. Still naked and beautiful and trembling. Zoran crossed the room, boots echoing heavily on the cold black stone.

He stood over her, his blue flame eyes burning, studying her. The sweet curves of her small pert breasts, the taut muscles of her trembling belly, the way the soft pink folds of her exposed pussy twitched helplessly as she sobbed. Her face; so much like Inzara it made his dead heart twitch in his chest.

Her lips parted in a dry, terrified whisper:

"What are you?"

Zoran knelt, his movements stiff. His voice was low, broken, like stones grinding together in an empty tomb, the faintest muscle memory pushing a word from his thin, pale lips in a voice not his own.

"Damned," he muttered.

He reached up, beginning to fumble with the iron shackles. The cuffs bit into her soft skin, and as he loosened them, blood welled up around her wrists. He touched her only as much as necessary, his cold hands surprisingly gentle for all the brutality they had wrought. The tip of his thumb accidentally grazed the damp heat between her spread thighs as he unbuckled her ankle bindings; but he felt nothing. No stir in his loins. Just instinct and the fragments of shattered memory spurring him on.

And then, pain.

White-hot and all consuming, pain he hadn't felt in a millennium; a flare of agony like the stab of a Chimera's sting in the base of his spine as the sigil there burned to life. Zoran's body arched backward in mid-air, his limbs snapping rigid, his spine bending in a cruel, impossible arc.

He tried to scream as the memory of agony flooded his dead nerves; but only a strangled, choked sound escaped. Behind him, Ossisoul apparated like a conjured nightmare, his hand outstretched, black energy crackling from his fingertips. Zoran hung there, suspended like a puppet, every nerve on fire.

Ossisoul's voice was cold as the grave.

"Did you think I would not prepare a contingency for the remote possibility that you one day turned against me, Zoran? Disappointing. We will see about tightening the leash on you" He leaned in close, whispering: "Once I deign to repair your shattered body."

With a flick of his wrist, Ossisoul hurled him bodily across the chamber. Zoran crashed through the massive arched window, glass and black stone shattering around him in a glittering rain, ash and cold night wind rushing in.

For one instant, one perfect, horrifying instant just before he plummeted, tumbling toward the hard, broken ground hundreds of feet below, he saw her. Still naked. Still chained. And Ossisoul standing over her, tilting the steaming teacup toward her trembling lips. The thick, honeyed tea poured down her chin, over her gasping mouth, down her bare, trembling tits, slicking the pale mounds with sticky wetness that gleamed in the firelight. Her body twitched helplessly, the sticky-sweet flood pooling between her spread thighs. Ossisoul smiled, his hand stroking her hair.

Then the ground rushed up, and with a shattering, sickening crack, everything went black.

--

The sunrise bled thick across the desert, a low, crawling boil of red against the endless brown and gold of Tierra Muerta. They had travelled all through the night until they found the tracks of the Iron Horse, and followed the twisted rails through the barren desert. The horse plodded slowly but surely under Vanity, Zoran trudging at her side like a shadow. Ahead, Blackwood Creek rose from the plains, shimmering in the dawn haze.

Vanity sat upon her horse stiffly, exhaustion making her muscles ache, but her mind was racing. The words had tumbled from Zorans cold dead lips ceaselessly all night as they travelled; his loathsome confession made her blood run colder than any desert night. But more than that...

"I lay like a broken doll at the foot of that tower for weeks. Figured he'd forgot all about me. Eventually I pulled it together enough to drag myself away on my knees and belly. Pulled myself leagues south, away from that fuckin' tower on instinct. By the time I crossed the border outta Nostovar I was on my feet." He chuckled. "Found some high plains shitkickers a few leagues south o' the border," he said, his grave voice almost amused. "Real mean sons o' bitches. Looks on their faces when I staggered into their camp won't leave my memory for a long time. Spent a helluva stretch in that camp; weeks, maybe months, re-learnin' how to speak and gettin' to grips with the parlance o' the times from those men. Mostly while they begged for their lives. By the time they was all dead, I was damn near myself again. Since then I've just been on the run, tryin' to find some way to get out from under him. And maybe..." He sighed, an affectation; no breath, "Maybe save her."

Zoran adjusted his hat, the long shadow of it hiding his burning blue flame eyes. Vanity's jaw clenched, her heart hammering in her breast.

"The girl, in the tower. When was that?"

His voice came like a whisper from a tomb.

"Near as I can guess, 'bout seven years past."

The bottom dropped out of Vanity's stomach

"Tell me more."

Zoran stopped. Vanity pulled the stallion to a halt next to him, her eyes shining, voice raised in desperation. "Fuckin' tell me. I know you know what I'm askin'!"

Zoran spun, fluid and quick, to face her, his eyes burning cold and blue.

"I get it. The answer is yes, Vanity Hellsong, she looked just like you. I don't know how or why, but she's the spit of you. And more'n that, the gods-damned pair o' you look just like the double o' her. Inzara." Zoran stepped closer to the horse, eyes locked on Vanity. "Even more than that, you feel like Inzara, just like her. Back in the mud an' blood an' shit at the mausoleum," he said, his voice a slow grind, "when I had my fingers buried inside ya, your cunt clutching at my fingers; it felt the exact same way hers did. Even your asshole. Tight little twitch every time I pressed deeper. You feel just like she did. And your body looks just the same as that girl in the tower."

The words were raw and unforgiving; Vanity's head spun. She stared at the far-off skyline of Blackwood Creek, heart hammering against her ribs like it wanted out.

It couldn't be.

"Tell me more," low, almost a growl.

Zoran lifted one shoulder in a slow shrug, his voice like broken stone as he turned and began walking again.

"What else you want to know? Small. Strong. Beautiful, even covered in dirt and blood. She fought when they bound her. Didn't weep 'til they shackled her spread wide. Her eyes -"

Vanity's hands twisted tight around the reins. Pain flared in her jaw from how hard she was clenching her teeth. Zorans voice faded as her mind reeled.

Chastity.

Her older sister, abducted from her family farm when Vanity was only twelve. Her disappearance had broken their father. Had spurred Vanity to become a monster hunter. It couldn't be. But it had to be. The way he described her. The words Ossisoul had said, 'punishment for your father's meddling'; who else in all of Tierra Muerta could he have been describing? By Mother fucking Night...

She turned to stare at Zoran, still talking. A thousand years old. A Reaver. However he described it, he had been a murderer, a rapist, a monster even before he was turned to a Wraith. But he was her best hope of stoppong whatever was awakening beneath Boackwood Creek, and now, even worse; he was her only hope of finding her sister.

She swallowed down bile as Zorans voice came back to her ear.

" - Same scent. Same countenance. That what you wanna know?" His eyes locked on her once more, looking her up and down. "She's damned near identical to you in every fuckin' way -"

He shrugged as he turned to face the rails ahead once more, Blackwood Creek looming on the Sanguine dawn horizon.

"- 'Cept she ain't a demon."