Theo Sequel: Otep's Last Case Ch. 07

Chapter 7, Dunes and Mysteries, A Monster unveiled:

Reikshold.

The capital city of the Monstergirl Empire, hewn from the shiniest marble and adorned with cross-species artwork exalting the fragile peace and mutual needs between monstergirls ("mamono") and humans, lit by the golden rays of the sun, was stained grey. Hammers fell by the thousands on anvils, hands turned gears and ratchets, and the air of possessive sexuality and easy love vanished into grim determination. The beauty of the city was marred: once a hell-hole due to Maou's tyranny, a nightmarish, obsidian town of spiked spires, slave pits, and sacrificial ziggurats, and was converted to a replica of Ermorean and Human Frankish architecture.

The peace lasted barely a century. Now, Agrat wept at what the city had become, though the humans inside were almost equal now. Even now, only human men were capable of bringing the new generation into the world, since all monster males died out, never to come back... Except in rumors... Men were running around her as well, engineers, craftsmen, artillery operators, and weapon porters, having shaken off the heady sexual atmosphere of the Monstergirl Empire.

Now it was a grim, gray, granite stronghold of metal forges, training arenas, and blocky, human-built prefabricated steel-and-pressed wood composite(a new human-goblin product) weapons factories and barracks. Agrat wept blood at the sight of the once idyllic Reikshold, of flowing beauty, pink-and-silver marble palaces, beautiful residences, and lazy, chaotic farmland where human serfs and monstergirls made love for fertility. The capital of luxuries, sex, and erotic captivity was converted over time to a militarized city, much like Paris when her human half was reeling and terrified, as Parisian citizens waited for the inevitable German invasion.

Agrat's human vessel, Wallenstein, had been plagued by nightmares for weeks...

*-*-*-*

A MONTH AGO:

"Judenhure!"

She was the little French Jewess, screaming as blows landed on her face. Her bloodied tongue felt the iron taste of the Maschinenpistole-40's rugged, slightly rusty metal cartridge as the man clad in a dark grey uniform slammed her across the room against the wall.

Paris had fallen, German armored vehicles trampling the city of her dreams into dust. Her kind was being hunted like animals. Red demons with Japanese appearances were devouring children. The world was burning. Hope was lost. Germany and Japan had conquered the world together. Newspapers had bloody runes with demonic language declaring the subjugation of humanity, rape, and suicide legalized. Russia was being ruled by a robed High Priest of Lucifer named Abaddon, who donated a thousand Russian virgin girls every month to the Third Reich. The United States of Hell's new president declared the nuclear destruction of Jew York, as the newspapers jokingly referred to the city.

"She looks tasty..." Growled an abomination in Wehrmacht clothes.

The Germans had horns, red skin, with a bulbous, tentacled penis reaching outside of their...

SHE WAS HELPLESS

Agrat had screamed loud enough to wake everyone in the palace.

*-*-*-*

It took her days before she could stop screaming and throwing whiskey bottles at the approaching help. She was a prisoner in her palace, and every monster girl and human was puzzled about what to do next.

She had tossed and turned every day, given up on drinking spirits and sex, and ate in a depressed, worn-out bathrobe with nary a moment of self-care: her concubines, doctors, and even visitors had been worried about the big blue succubus. It took another week of meditation, drugs, and magical communique from Lescatian wizards to rouse her into action, and only then did she have the strength to get out of bed and rain a flurry of militaristic edicts and orders that roused the Reik into war.

*-*-*-*

A WEEK AGO:

Agrat tried her best to relax on her sapphire throne, her hair wild, her eyes with black rings around them. She looked like a blue, homeless, crazy cat lady. The runes around her throne glowed as the Magical Council of Lescatie established its most recent communique with her, ethereal, robed shapes materializing before her.

It was time for the long-awaited contact with the East Ermorean Empire, the Empire of Lescatie. The human-only empire once opposed her dead husband due to the horrid slavery and painful genocides inflicted by the late Maou and wanted to contact her via a magical conference. Usually the Monstergirl Empire of "Mamono Reik" and the human empire of "Lescatie" were in a perpetual cold war, a secret agreement between both ruling classes to spend their aggressive tendencies. Agrat reined in her dark elven slavers and tamed them with her empathic magic, and always kept open communique for ransoming the captives of her aggressive monstergirl subjects in return for withholding lethality and non-combatant damages inflicted by both sides. This allowed her unruly, dominant dark-elven subjects to play out their domination fantasies while sharpening the border guards and keeping both countries' militaries fresh and ready for an eventual return of Maou cultists.

The time had come: Maou had been resurrected for the last time and was plowing westward from his birthplace in Zipangu, across Zhong, Khitai steppes, and eventually Ermorea, Hellas, and now about to reach her all the way in West Ermorea. Undying monsters, ghouls, zombies, and maddened cultists were ripping the world asunder, mercifully thinning out as they started to smash across the world. Yet the spearhead was cleaving Ermorea apart in its mad rampage, aiming for Maou's last place of death to unite him with his old remains to become a Demon God. Agrat shook her head: the conference had started, the ghostly figures transmitted across etheric waves were a medley of wizards.

"Greetings, Empress of the Monster Kind," spoke a kind, old man, their leader, Archmage Erasmus, with a greyed beard and rich mane of hair, clad in blue robes one size too small for his legs, and he wore pink bunny slippers. His welcoming message was anything but:

"With all due respect, your Eminence, you look like three-day dried cat shit."

The other wizards stared wild-eyed at Erasmus. He was surely eccentric, but this was WAY out of the line...

Agrat snorted. Then, a moment later, she started to laugh.

She laughed, laughed, and laughed until tears came from her eyes, bloody tears, as the figures recoiled in horror. But her laughter turned happy and friendly, and she cried and laughed simultaneously.

"Yes..." Agrat sobbed. "I look like shit..." Then she laughed, and Erasmus started to laugh. Their laughter, first self-pitying and self-deprecating, now became a genuine laugh, of relaxed happiness between two old people who understood each other. They laughed, louder and louder, until tears of joy ran down their cheeks. The rest of the council did not dare laugh, but relaxed once both sides stopped laughing.

"My once husband, the Monster Lord, is rampaging across the Eastern Steppes, and now is pushing through the lands of Hellas, apparently the Centaurs' homeland. The Ulytau Mountain repelled him, I suspect, magical purity repelling his undying body. He will come to claim his heart, which I had buried inside the Ruby Seal if you all remember what happened 60 years ago. We must stop him, man or monster. If he claims the Seal and eats his heart buried inside the World Seal, he will become a True Demon God. No entity in the world will be able to harm him." She spoke, having gotten her bearings.

"Were it that easy, Your Eminence, if I may..." A young woman in a red robe, her head adorned with the brass crown of the Pyromancy School, spoke. "Every Magic Aspect is united behind your decision. Yet we cannot even scry his location. Our Astral Observers from the School of Clairvoyance have gone insane, needing to be put into a drugged coma lest they tear themselves apart. Even if we manage to look into the location of Maou, our observation spells go haywire, and the ritual's casters lose their minds. How can we even cast spells at something we cannot even aim at?"

The mages nodded along, murmuring.

"I know what to do, humans. Dearest humans..." Agrat murmured, taking a bottle of whiskey and chugging it to the dismay of those present. Her lips quivering, the beautiful succubus empress sighed, her hands stopping their shaking. "You are by now aware of who exactly I am, right?"

The mages blinked. "The letter you sent was very cryptic. Can you explain in detail?"

Agrat gulped and nodded.

"You see..."

*-*-*-*

Half an hour later, every mage present at the conference had more questions than before.

"My succubus half is the first of its kind. Agrat Bat Mahlat, the Queen of all Feminine Demons, who once walked with your kin, who married King Solomon of the Jews in another world. The Jews, you see, are a group of humans following an insular religious order. In their world, they never fit in. Whether this was because their beliefs were wrong, or supremacist to other humans, is irrelevant. They never had peace. Exiled, killed, accused of things they didn't do. Some of my people over time became less religious, and of a very sexually libertine kind. This would have been welcomed in a world where prosperity was set. But they were in a country whose pride was injured, whose people were impoverished, while my people always stuck out and were wealthy. You can see where I am going with this."

The magicians had some ideas, none of them pleasant.

"The Jews became the targets of scorn. Rich, corrupting people around them with sexual liberation and materialism... Maybe some were evil, maybe not. But now, in that world, an insane, tormented man who was a member of this country had done the unthinkable. We were being exterminated worldwide, merely because we had the blood of Solomon. Like Maou exterminating all humans."

Erasmus sipped his tea, his face grim. "I heard of your description of weapons of this universe. Most unpleasant, like the goblin devices of today, yet infinitely faster and more powerful."

"Industrialized evil," nodded Agrat. "Machinery designed to kill millions. Weapons your world can only dream of. My refuge city of love, Paris, was overrun by the "German" people, whose regular, everyday people were in hysteria to kill off as many of my kind as possible.

"You must have hated them," A brown-robed, starry-eyed youth spoke, a young man barely 20 years old.

"No." Agrat shook her head. "Some of those who joined his party were entranced by the madman's hatred. But most were happy that he fixed their impoverished lives. The mass hysteria of panicking, desperate people is nothing to be joked about. Most didn't even know what was going on, many were just in it to be richer or safer. Humans trade freedoms for security easily when threatened. But I had to defend myself. So I ran a cabaret, my human half did, until she cast a forbidden blood magic spell that destroyed every invader in the city, but exiled her from the universe in return, bound to my soul, which was almost gone... Agrat was forgotten by the world, and Zuzanna Von Wallenstein was just as well. Her kindred soul called to me. I followed his desperate plea. And now Agrat and Zuzanna are the same." Agrat sighed, relaxed at having her tales and worries explained before people who could understand.

"I am the Empress of the Monsterkin, their Mother, Whore, Lover, and Protector, like Agrat was once in history, known as Inanna to the Sumeri, an even older people..." She sighed, finishing her drink. "I swore to keep humans from being tortured and killed, yet I barely persuaded the dark elves to keep them as slaves. I wish I could have done more for your kind, beloved humans."

The mages nodded with sorrow. "We have heard reports that human slaves in your lands are content at least, kept happy with plenty of sex and empathy magic."

"I do what I can, human..." Agrat smiled sadly. "My monster daughters are too lazy and undisciplined for real civilization. Even if we had males... Humans keep our civilization running, aside from goblins and what little dark elves can be bothered with honest work. Don't worry, I protect my own, and all humans' pleasures are fulfilled at the very least. I outlawed torture and excessive abuse, and my Anubis handmaidens inspect humans in captivity for good health."

"So do we hear, we will discuss more about this... issue..." Erasmus nodded, eager to leave the unpleasant truth of human slaves in their ally's lands. "Now, to the business of killing an unkillable god, you can't look at... What do you propose?"

Agrat lit a cigarette, taking a drag. "Do you know the Americans of my world? They were masters of artillery and killing from extreme heights with flying machines... I have an idea that stayed with me when my daemon soul left the world, learning what I could before the world was sealed to me forever."

*-*-*-*

"It is insane." The Pyromancer Archmage shook her head. "This could destroy our world."

"The world will be destroyed, slowly over the centuries, if Maou becomes a Daemon God, human..." Agrat's voice rose. "Silver from a stellar object that was never touched by Maou's madness, blessed and hurled across the heavens, can literally kill a god once it is superheated and strikes from the heavens. We will bomb Maou with moon silver, and he will-"

"-be obliterated, yes..." Erasmus interrupted uneasily, grumbling. "As well as half of the continent, I fear, and many areas may be unlivable due to the effects of such a massive weapon. But will it work? What else will we rain on the rampaging Maou?"

"Everything." Agrat's face was set in stone. "My girls are excavating a fragment of the Ruby Seal to bring an old acquaintance of us back to life. Or what's left of him."

The humans' eyes were wide, and they stared at each other.

"But you said he is half-divine already. This had never been tried in existence. Don't you think we need to weaken the monster before we unleash such a desperate move?" Erasmus spoke carefully, his pet rat on his lap, his blue robes hanging around him as he floated on his magical chair as befitting an old, crazy wizard.

"You see..." Agrat smiled grimly, her demeanor becoming more lively, and her depressed pallor fading, replaced with the relaxed, confident smile of an Empress. "Every Divine Creature has a true name... and my most trusted advisor combs Northern Ermorea for the name, and she will not fail me."

The mages nodded along.

Agrat had lied, for a good reason--a lie within a lie. Spies existed everywhere, even in Kemet. Otep had sent her older family to the First Pyramid, but even there was danger.

*-*-*-*

"MOVE!" The crowd dispersed by a strong voice, uttered by a large woman with the lower body of a horse. Grim-faced, dirt-caked, the centauride matron bellowed, shooing slower monsters and humans aside, sweating as she pulled a wheeled cart with an oversized, monstrous-looking bow with cranks and a steel magazine full of bolts on it. The device was pulled aside by muscular minotaur women and hoisted with great grunts on top of a massive barge resting on an artificial river, to be sent downstream into Illyricus, where it would be shipped to bolster human ramparts against monstrous legions of half-dead, rotting, grey monster-and-human hybrids.

In another world, a similar empire called "Rome" would have called it a "cheiroballistra". Thousands of outlandish weapons, magically-infused siege equipment, shining mithril weapons, and tired-looking, grey-faced human men and women were being shipped eastwards to stop Maou's last rampage. Most were freedmen and women who begged Agrat to be sent east to fight for their kin, even though the empress would die for them. She wanted her monster daughters to take the brunt of Maou as penance for past evils. Yet the humans *wanted* to fight alongside her monsters, because it was a war for survival or extinction.

On top of her pink-and-white marble castle, nestled on a terrace with magical observation instruments, stood the Succubus Empress, holding a flag in her hands and behind her prostrated humans and monstergirls, observing her every move. Clad in blue-and-gold finery topping her monstrously large armor reminiscent of a French knight in another world, the empress stood silent, staring at the heavens. In her hands was the flag of blue, with lilies emblazoned on it, a sigil of a long-lost world, a long-lost kingdom, sewn together with another flag of a golden sun. She had commissioned a silver pole to stick it on: the dwarf smith-woman would be bringing it soon. The human wizards of Lescatie would be contacting her in another meditative conference soon. Erasmus had found a way to proceed with the Moon Project.

Fleur De Lis and Oriflamme, both flags, were sewn together. Not one of the beastly-featured Agrat loved the dramatic display, a remnant from her human host's French origin.

Agrat Bat Mahlat knew this day was coming.

All good things come to an end.

Once from another world, hosting the oldest monster in the multiverse that cavorted with Solomon the Wise, Agrat was fused with Zuzanna von Wallenstein, a French Jewess, an escapee from the Second World War. She had disclosed this information to her closest advisors after usurping her husband's monstrous reign, freeing the humans under his genocidal slavery and softening their position from genocidal cattle to indentured servitude, and eventual freedom (though the Dark Elven holdings would need another lesson one day)

Now he had come back, again. This time, he wanted no conquest, but genocidal destruction; he would drain the world dry and make a dead rock floating in space.

She had commissioned a massive, magically infused armor coated with lead lining inside and the mightiest mithril-and-adamantine interlocking plates that gave her the appearance of a monstrous, upright-walking shark. She had a massive sword on her back, even taller than herself, which only she could wield.

Zuzanna was never a woman of violence. A French Jew, she used to sing and dance for people. Yet the burden she took after sacrificing her soul to free herself and her people in her own world was beyond consideration. She was now a giant, blue-skinned succubus queen who caught the eye of the Lord of Monsters in this world and was wed to him (forcefully), and usurped his reign with her charm and sweet promises, assassinating him using a human slave boy.

And here they were: a feudal empire with varying treatments of humans, making peace with the Human Empire, and marching against Maou for one last time.

"Empress?" A tall, white-clad bovine monstergirl with three eyes and a gentle demeanor spoke in her soft voice. Agrat turned her head, looking at the gentle Hakutaku:

"Assemble every mamono and human capable of holding a weapon, and leave a skeleton guard. Triple the shifts, and let every craftswoman and man build only weapons. Free any indentured slave who wants to fight for their people, and seize every privately owned ship. Spend every coin in the treasury, order everyone that will listen to march east, and stick a sword into any grey-red half-dead monstrosity."

The crowd behind her murmured.

She turned her head again and looked at the sky.

"We leave to confront my husband."

Why did the empress address the undead Maou like that? No one knew.

"This has to end now."

*-*-*-*

This was supposed to be a world of free sex and love, where the individual would find their niche station in life and be merry amongst a million races.

We were in battlefield trenches, as spells, unearthly incantations, and giant siege weapons killed people by the thousands. On the horizon, our eyes bled as a gigantic mountain of bones and gore quivered our sight, an entity that was too painful to look at marching on us.

A dead god, the former Monster Lord Whose-Name-We-Cannot-Pronounce-Lest-We-Go-Mad marches against his former wife, a ten-foot-tall giant Succubus Empress, a motherly, aching goddess who cries blood for her beloved monster and human children. She wails against the heavens to protect the fragile peace, her former husband coming back from death a third time. I saw her throw herself to incoming siege weapons, absorbing their impact to shield young human operators from Maou's nightmarish spells, howling skulls launched by catapults made from human bones.

Monstergirls and men fight unspeakable beings of unliving origin, raised in gore and death, because "Maou", could just not let it go. His wife offered him to keep humans as residents, servants, even as slaves if he could at least accept that. He wanted them raped and eaten.

He could not let it go. So Agrat took it upon herself to lead monsters and men in Frankish knights' armor like a woman from her host's own universe, a French woman who had used her faith and fervor to drive the invaders away. Her host, having escaped the land in a time when an insane man had invaded it with machines and steel, knew of the story and knew how to subvert Maou.

For a time, it had worked; a slave in Maou's mines had even stolen forbidden blood magic and enforced a terror-guided peace between monsters (girls) and men.

Now her husband had returned from the dead a second time.

She had to make it the last time.

*-*-*-*

I saw two Gods clash on a plain.

Agrat bat Mahlat, the Succubus Empress of all monsters, led the largest army in the known world against an undying horde led by her old husband, Maou, or as his true name was known today, Mikaboshi the Exile. Under Agrat's benevolent hands, the Human Empire of Lescatie was militarized to its breaking point, with men, women, and children armed with every weapon imaginable, coupled with every monstergirl who still had a conscience. "Him of the bones"(I shall avoid using his name for too long for fear of attracting things beyond my sight, things that disrupted my sleep for several nights) on the other hand had raised every monster from the past who hated humanity and saw them as cattle, rats, and playthings using the darkest magicks. Reincarnating in his ancient birthplace in Mount Shinuyama, the Dai Oni, the Last Demon Male-King, enacted horrible retribution on the land. Slaughtering millions, he nearly destroyed Zipangu and roared westwards on floating mountains of corpses, to reclaim the last part of his true form, imprisoned under a mountain of rubies by Theophilos, the human slave of the Monster Empire who had learned fell magicks and employed a horrific vengeance campaign against Maou's reign. Theophilos had died when he destroyed himself and ten thousand willing souls as a sacrifice, with life given voluntarily to put an end to the madness that existed between men and monsters, sixty years ago.

Sixty years later, Maou had played a blind gamble and channeled his raw hatred to cling to his bones. Emerging as a gigantic skeletal Oni wearing his ancient samurai armor, the monster started his worldwide genocide for the third time.

Arrayed against him was the world, and it had not been enough. Anyone who died along the road was raised by his sheer presence. North Zipangu was a black ruin, the mad Monster Lord raising the dead to form a horrific bridge to reach the West. Zhong Guo was bisected by his mad drive to his earthly point of death, entire cities turned to black husks. The Bharati Kingdom of Ind was in a civil war between its followers and the kingdom's gods, Kali, turning to support the thing Mikaboshi to raise a world of the dead. It was later learned that his followers even reached a new continent east of Zipangu, and strangely, west of Ermorea, proving simultaneously that the world was round.

He drove through deserts and countries, wiping out humanity and any monster along the path, and added those who desired hatred to his horde. Ironically, he had become the foil to Agrat's united world of love.

It would take the power of a God to stop Mikaboshi's blind, mad rampage.

And it did. If you are reading this, you can relax: he is dead for good.

The mourning process outside is killing me. I will write more when I can.

-Memoirs of Slade, Archiver of World History, Excerpt from "The Final Demon War"

*-*-*-*

Basileion Hellenikon, Mount Pelion,

The surrounding meadows and plains of the kingdom lay dead. Lifeless, not even weeds grew.

The smoke reached the heavens, as did screams most unearthly, and shapes not of this world glided across the skies, bleeding the eyes of anyone who dared to look at them.

The lines of refugees trundled forward toward the fortified cities surrounding Mount Pelion. Faces sullen, sunken, dust-caked, not even babies were crying out of fear. Men, women, and children walked silently like the captive slave lines of the Dark Ages. They were free, for now, flanked by sullen, battered Hellene soldiers and steely-eyed, dirtied centauride maidens with recurve bows, walking in a daze for safety before black-furred, screaming, man-eating manticores from an earlier era chased after them. The beasts were now busy eating the dead, mostly the Hellenic Kingdom's tolerated and honored centauride outriders and a few poor Minotaur girls who had taken arms to help out the humans they once preyed on.

Their charity had been repaid with death, buying precious time for the outlying farmlands' humans. The Hellenic monstergirls died in their dozens fighting the undying hordes of a half-dead, half-alive Maou...

No one dared look back.

The poor people of Hellas, once raided by sex-crazed mamono, were bearing the brunt of Maou's insane rampage.

Hellas was in flames.

Maou would reach inner Ermorea in weeks, provided he didn't focus his hateful gaze on the barely surviving human nation, and hopefully bypassed it. The Hellene villagers shivered with every thunderclap, wondering if Maou was approaching them or walking westwards. Every step of the Chthonic Titan that was "Maou" made babies scream in terror, and flowers die for miles. Buildings shook, and people prayed, cried, and even soiled themselves. Even the sight of the mind-burning "thing" in the horizon blinded those who looked at it, or made them mad.

Maou was on the move, and even approaching him needed an arcane ritual of enormous properties for now.

*-*-*-*

The War Room; Aquapolis.

The aphotic depths of the ocean were abuzz with activity.

Sibel and Ulfric sat in silence, listening to the news brought by the wounded, dirt-caked centauride speaking in the melodic language of the Hellenes. Behind them stood Sakri, the Dracolich(once a lizard girl, now raised by Otep from the dead), her leathery, pale skin brimming with necrotic energy that made every Aquapolis citizen, human or monster, shy away. She had her arms crossed, glaring at the war map before them, clad in a very, very conservative set of armor that hid every feature of her femininity, her resurrected undead face a mask of anger and frustration, unable to charge to the warzone described before her.

"He reached Hellas... The birthplace of all Western mamono"

Sibel's look showed the "thousand league stare". Her gaze was dull, lifeless, lips trembling, all beauty gone like a soiled doll. Ulfric's face was paler than his usual Northern features. His wife was even worse:

"Lescatie is a week away. The Black Horde was barely crossing the steppes a month ago. How? And what happened to Lescatie? Did the Black Horde just avoid them?" She almost wailed at the impossibility of the reports, and the black painting that signified the "Horde" which came to despoil humanity.

The centauride had no answer, her aquiline nose broken, bandaged, her big, brown eyes streaked with tears, her silken crown of hair matted with dirt as she barely stammered that she had no idea, and neither could she tell them how or why. "All we know..." She spoke in her Hellenic accent, "... he has the dead rising from the ground to add to his army, human strategos..." The horse-woman answered weakly.

"Get some rest." The shark-kin Karkaria spoke softly, adjusting her eyepatch, her lips curling in frustration, her second set of teeth retracting as pale pray, crackled lips pressed against each other. Her voice sounded like an old woman, so tired was she: "The Apotekarion will tend to you, down the hall, first door to the right."

With a tired sigh, the magnificent horse-girl trotted slowly out of the room, led by a white-robed human boy of Aquapolis, his soft sandals' sounds on the cold marble drowned by the sound of her hooves.

"We should hope that Otep finds the answers in the pyramids of her ancestors..."

Karkaria sighed, dismissing the adventurers with a wave of her hand, and gathering the scrolls with the help of young human servants who looked as tired as she. With slow, disorganized steps, the adventurers started to retreat to their undersea quarters, wondering how this disaster could be salvaged.

A ghostly glow lit the room as the crowd turned to face the translucent beauty whose beams of life, albeit aching with the unpleasant yet necessary necromantic energies, put them at ease. The blue-white glow of the ghostly presence, Alexa, Sibel's once-living friend, manifested. Smiling like a patient goddess, the apparition lifted her hands as if embracing everyone:

"Dearest friends," the ghost spoke. "Take heart. Otep is underway to find the clues we need." After a short pause, the ghostly lich (if she could be one, being entirely non-corporeal, yet Sibel saw her obliterate a four-armed abomination that took Otep's life back in Reikshold) continued:

"Let us move to a place of rest. Eat, drink, and recover yourselves. But before that, hear me. I must address you all." Her eyes, with ethereal tears, met Sibel's:

"I feel your aura; you worry about your loved one. He is a berserker, not a tamed wolf, man of the north," When Ulfric stirred uneasily, Alexa raised her hand to her chest, speaking softly. "Yet I beseech you, man of the frozen lakes, Cage the burning demon inside you. I saw you eat the madman's mushroom mixture when you came to strike down Kartarirya back on the surface when Otep lay dead. I see your body, veins darkened by poison. I beg you for the sake of my friend here, Sibel. Do not take that drug again. I will kill you when your heart stops."

Then her sorrowful gaze met Saakali:

"Isis' handmaiden, Otep's second-in-command. I know why you feel angry."

The scarred Jackal girl snarled, clearly offended, her clean but ragged uniform rippling with anger as if it had a mind of its own.

"You are jealous and angry because you didn't get to travel to Ka-Hi-Rah, the first Pyramid of Kemet. Otep left you here so that you could protect us." Alexa beamed, filling the room with a blue, calming glow, even its effect could be seen in Saakali's eyes. "You are not a leashed jackal. You are our protector of the dead. I plead with you, noble handmaiden. Calm yourself and tend to your friends. There will be many battles to come."

She then floated, scepter in hand, to the necrotic form of Sakri, who made all life shy away. Alexa extended her palm and touched the new Dracolich's face:

"I am so sorry I could not save you in any other way. But you must face Maou all the same. Take heart, at least, that your nature makes you immune to his madness."

"I'm dead, Alexa." Came the mournful croak from a scarred neck, a body still cold and gray. "It doesn't get any worse than that." Sakri was alive in a sense, though her body was cool to the touch, albeit fully regenerated, she did not stink or rot. Per the mamono rules of life, she was still alive, every inch of her body lived, yet she felt strange.

"You are alive and well, Sakri, believe me..." Came the ethereal voice heard by everyone. "I'm dead, I would know it. You need time to adjust, such resurrection on a scale needs time... Trust me." She put a soft, glowing, blue hand on Sakri's grey shoulder, the beautiful fingertips glowing with healing magic, as the Dracolich flinched.

"Warmer winds will be coming, I beseech all of you," Alexa spoke. "... rest, socialize with the sea folk, and relax. I trust in Otep."

*-*-*-*

Otep, the adorable Anubis, would be indisposed for a while, while her compatriots delved to the surface for answers and ways to stop the monster lord.

For she was locked in an embrace with her new boy toy, Niels, the young human she brought to her ancestral pyramid through the waters of the Netherworld in a royal Mandjet, a boat made of woven reeds and enchanted with the Pharaoh's holy breath.

For a whole week, they went on a magical trip alone on a pleasure boat through the Underworld's waters between the worlds, from Aquapolis to the Grand Pyramid of Abdju.

It was only natural that what would happen during the trip. The enclosed, luxurious magical boat with the shimmering portal tunnel had plenty of amenities, and the Anubis felt only warm, happy, and unbelievably horny. It was a nice respite after the endless months of fighting, sleuthing, and mass murder with cursed rebellions. She was now alone with her new human, alone in a Kemeti boat passing through the Underworld as it would be magically transported to her ancestral Pyramid, a temple, a sacred city, and a necropolis confirmed. There she would dig through the Akashic Archives, an ancient complex of records that withstood eons, ages, and continents' rising and falling. But first, a few days of... fun with her new paramour would be a welcome rest.

The sex position Niels begged for surprised her, but she didn't mind. It was an odd "sexual roleplay"...

Otep would stare at him as she rode his penis, legs at his side curled, sitting and gyrating her hips with a smirk on her face, crossing her arms as the magical device at their bedside played a soulful Kemet tune.

He had begged her to speak only in Kemet, belittling him.

She didn't mind. Her stony face, flushed and red with the lovemaking effort, sweated as she kept moving her hips, his hardness straining her pussy walls with every move. Up and down, up and down, she started to close her eyes, hissing and shivering, going faster until her entire lower body started to go numb. She increased her pace, feeling Niels's sweaty body under her legs quiver and shake, she tried to match their orgasms the best she could. Her plump, brown butt jiggled with every stroke (something she was starting to be badly aware of), his pale, hard, and lock cock buried between her plush, dark brown Anubis buttcheeks and deep inside her pussy. She felt his body starting to pulse and quiver, his breathing becoming ragged.

Mumbling a prayer to Isis in Kemet language and attempting to make it ominous, she lifted her big ass, careful not to let his manhood slip out of her, and slammed it as hard as she could, feeling his penis almost painfully hit her cervix.

The young man screamed in ecstasy under her as he orgasmed, her squeals and moans mixed with his own.

They collapsed on top of each other, spent, as Otep whispered in Kemet language in his ears, what it meant mattered little to him. He loved a priestess Anubite from the hottest sands in his arms, embracing his pale body.

"Otep..." Niels reached to kiss him. She obliged, closing her eyes and wagging her tail, her cute paws curling in joy. Naked Anubis and man embraced, showering each other's faces with kisses, entwined. Otep's soft paws with claws retracted cupped Niels' youthful face, her dark chocolate skin making the perfect contrast with the northern man.

...

"Now that's a cute sight."

Their blood froze at the sultry, foreign voice with an even heavier Kemet accent, hearts clenching in shame and fear. Otep snarled, her face suddenly taking a very canine appearance as she swung her head sideways, her eyes relaxing but donning a look of frustration and anger at the intruder. It all made sense now. They had arrived across the Underworld rivers, and their trip was over. The magical "Mandjet" had docked in the watery docks of the hidden pyramid, and a certain visitor had taken the liberty of barging in.

"OH GODS, SISTER!" Otep squealed in anger, grabbing a towel and covering herself. "HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF KNOCKING?!" She screamed in anger as she shielded Niels, who had the "rabbit caught in a magic lamp" stare in his eyes, frozen in bed.

"Yeah, but you didn't with all the screaming." The huge Anubis chuckled.

It was her long-separated sister, Nefteret. They grew up together until Nefteret emigrated to Kemet, back to her homeland to protect Pharaoh Hatshepsut the Merciful...

A polar opposite to Otep in mind and appearance, she was a massively tall, very muscular Anubis who had bullied Otep when they were small and had been deadlifting a ton of steel over her ample chest once. Niels blinked: the facial similarity was apparent, but Nefteret was an enormously strong-looking, almost brutish Anubis woman with pale skin, while Otep was of a dark chocolate-colored complexion and curvy. Throwing a blanket at Niels, Otep frowned, angry.

"Niels, this is Nefteret, my big sister." The younger, darker Anubis snarled without warmth. "Inherited the family's brawn, none of the brains, I guess..." Her voice was playful and teasing despite her angry scowl, and had taken on an air of politeness.

"And that pipsqueak is my smaller sister, Otep..."

Nefteret grinned at Niels, eyeing him as if he were a morsel of meat. "The Pharaoh was expecting you, we got your message, sounds like you want to nerd out in the library to find the magic word that will kick Maou's ass, eh?" She leaned forward to ruffle Otep's sweaty hair as if she were a puppy, who swatted her paw aside with a snarl. Nefteret wore little more than a Kemeti loincloth, which barely hid anything on her lower half, unlike the priestess' garb Otep usually wore, not the white cotton but a barely concealing brown loincloth and a top that strained her huge breasts, bare-pawed and nearly naked save for a giant sword on her back. Niels stared at the massively muscular monstergirl until Otep slapped him on the head.

"Pig," Otep snarled in Kemeti, amused and slightly jealous. "You humans see a pair of huge jugs and your mind just goes poof!"

Nefteret chuckled. "I tend to do that."

Otep frowned, stepping out of bed to dress up behind a curtain, intending to change the subject as she grunted and heaved, trying to get dressed quickly. Behind the curtain, Nefteret heard her distracted question, eyes still on the young man.

"So, is Her Majesty informed of my visit?"

Nefteret stopped her grin and teasing attitude. "Yeah, the Royal Mummies are stacking up the scrolls for you to read." Then her playful demeanor returned. "So, how is a single word going to help you kick the Big Papa Monster's ass?"

Two soft jackal ears popped out behind the curtain: she had found her way into her white flax shirt.

"If you hadn't been goofing off in classes, you'd know all Nether beings, greater demons, and Oni have a 'true name', sister..." Anubis' ears wiggled, Otep finally deciding she was wearing enough and stepping back out. She snatched her golden Ma'at staff and slung it on her back. "Uttering the word can distract, weaken, or sicken the entity."

"Entitti?" The dumb white Anubis tilted her head. Otep's eyes could have rolled to the back of her head if she could.

"Creature. Bad things, sister. I guess you have been bench-pressing pyramid stones for the last twenty years again."

"Yeah... oopsie..." Nefteret giggled like an idiot, scratching her head. "You gonna keep that human?" She grinned, eyeing Niels, who was scrambling for his clothes.

"I..." Otep stammered. "He is mine, sister!"

"Hey, family shares everything, right?" Nefteret grinned wider. "He looks nice for a northern blond kid. Do you have any brothers?"

"Five, actually..." Niels was caught off guard.

"Oh, goody! Be sure to write to them when the war is over."

"SISTER!" Otep squeaked, seeing Nefteret grin like a hungry wolf, waiting until the couple could follow the underdressed, oversexed, overpowered muscular Anubis girl back across the ethereal port and into the Prime Material, back into the pyramid where Otep had received her priestess' seal and her rank as a Handmaiden of Isis. Under her shit-eating grin, Otep and Niels dressed up as decently as possible (much to Nefteret's fascination with "strange Western fabrics" as she watched Niels's dark blue uniform of an admiral slip on his toned body, and her childlike fascination with glowing medals and a steel sword on his hip.

"The Western humans know how to dress..." Nefteret held the small box of medals in her massive paws, Niels keeping a polite face when she rifled through his credentials.

"And you don't, Nefty..." Otep frowned, "I can see your..."

"Pussy?" Nefteret grinned: below the waist she only wore a loincloth, and it hung a bit loose, literally covering nothing but signaling that she wasn't a slave, but a citizen of the pyramid. Her muscular, beautiful bulk was neat, however. She had shaven her body meticulously, even trimmed her arms and legs' jackal-like hair, and her hair was tied behind her back, her "top" for the lack of a better word was a near-transparent flax chest wrap that showed her nipples and breasts, only keeping her breasts barely restrained for shape.

"SISTER!" Otep squeaked.

"My little sister can't even bring herself to say cunt, pussy or dick... awww..."

Otep growled, swatting her massive paw with her tiny own while ducking out of her way when she tried to ruffle her head. Growling like a dog, she stormed out first, pulling Niels by the arm.

"Come, Niels, we are going to see the Pharaoh!" She grunted Nefteret giggling and following them, across the gold-colored stonework corridors, etched with ageless, beautiful hieroglyphs, kept clean and enduring across the ages. Magical torches kept the corridor lit, a corridor buried deep under the ocean, tied to the world's hidden leylines for aquatic and ethereal transportation. As they kept walking, Niels inspected the walls: the entire world's history was etched here with pictograms, stories, and even poems written in the Kemeti language, and surprisingly, in Ermoean script. He had no time to read them, but the art was beautiful. Serene, two-dimensioned drawings of the beginning of civilization followed by gods helping humanity and uplifting animal species into the "mamono" they know today...

"Hey Otep, your squeeze has a toned ass..." Nefteret grinned as she followed the couple holding hands. "Yours got fat, though."

"SIS-TEEEEEEEERRRRRRR!!!!"

*-*-*-*

"She has muscles for brains, I swear..." Otep sighed as magical diagrams floated around them, the tangy taste of electrified air with the aftertaste of ozone filling her senses. The Teleportation Lift brimmed with arcane power, undisturbed for centuries, so thorough was the Kemeti engineering. The trio felt their world sway, the reality fold around them, and felt their bodies weightless, losing their minds in a sea of stars.

Then it came back.

The world's scent, taste, and feeling of weight reconstituted around them, and the trio stepped out, emerging to a truly marvelous paradise, a hidden valley under a pyramid that jutted upwards from a jungle deep inside the desert.

Niels's eyes widened, as Otep's own narrowed, breathing the air. Her voice was reverent when she turned her head, addressing Niels.

"Be honored, my human. You are now standing in the Valley of First Kings, the First Pyramid of Kemet, and the first city of the golden sands. Ka-Hi-Rah, the house of Ra, the first abode of the Kemeti Gods..."

"By the gods above..." Niels gasped.

They stood on the teleportation stone which was surrounded by a slightly dark city, partially buried inside a gigantic valley surrounded by mountains that reached so far high up to the heavens that they blocked sunlight from reaching inside the valley. But the sun wasn't gone. The pyramid in the middle of the city was a truly gigantic edifice and had a massive lens constructed on top of it to simulate forever-lasting, gentle sunlight that was similar to an autumn afternoon. Around them, the Kemeti had a wondrous city, bazaars, beast pens, shops, crafts sheds, and people manning them. It was a truly wonderful sight.

The Kemeti were people of a dark brown complexion, though some humans were completely black with curly hair groomed into tasteful designs. Monstergirls lived freely among them, were respected equals, and were venerated to some degree. A chubby brown cat girl, of Bastet species, lazed on the edge of a fountain, yawning as human servants fed her grapes and dried fish. She regarded the new arrivals with a sleepy expression and returned to her munching of grapes. The markets were patrolled by Anubis girls in light, white, flax clothes slightly more archaic than Otep's own, wielding Kemeti spears, cotton headdresses, and using far more eyeliner than Otep did. Niels could see a muscular, crocodile-scaled monstergirl with too many teeth in her big, grinning mouth and a crocodile-like, prognathic jaw, pounding away in her weapons forge, Lamias with features like desert cobras selling potions and strange concoctions, their faces veiled, their big, brown, Arabic eyes locked on Niels' own. One of them winked at Niels when Otep was not looking, and the man found himself blushing. When Otep looked at Niels, both the snake woman and man were looking elsewhere.

"Fat-ass cat..." Otep grumbled, shaking her head. A group of Kemeti warriors came to greet them. Their leader was a human, a very tall black man, clad in leopard skins, with a giant, curved, sickle-like sword on his hip that reached to his chest when sideways, his hair was woven into dreadlocks and didn't look like a wig many Kemeti used. His limbs were like tree trunks, his height nearing seven feet as he towered over the trio except for Nefteret. He was flanked by a veiled scorpion girl with a crossbow in her human hands, and a slender, leopard-featured monstergirl with a spear and shield in her hands, both clad in light flax clothes with a leather chest plate for protection. Behind them stood black and brown human men with spears and shields.

"Welcome..." The huge black man spoke with a thick, thundering, accented Common Tongue. When Niels held out his hand, his own nearly broke Niels', the young man holding a straight face as they shook hands.

"I am Shabaka, the Marshal of Her Highness, Hatshepsut. My medjai are the Pharaoh's first line of defense to protect her realm of Maou's shadow beasts. My queen is honored to receive the West's emissaries into her heavenly holds, good Sir..." His politeness was the perfect contrast with his appearance, exuding a reserve of destructive virility and masculinity. He looked more like a force of nature than man, his voice thicker than the biggest Oni Niels saw. His smile brightened when he noticed Otep:

"The Western Empress' Kemeti Policewoman..." His wording was strange, regarding Otep like any other human, perhaps this was the Kemeti way, Niels mused. ".. you finally returned to your roots! How was the land of endless grass, marble, and cold water?" He asked with a friendly smile. "Too many principalities and trees everywhere?"

"Marshal..."Otep curtsied, smiling. "The world above the Salt Sea is different in many ways, yes. Though changes are happening as we speak, to say nothing of the war." She drifted off, looking at the city with nostalgia. "Abdju has truly come a long way..."

"Abydos?" Niels interrupted her, and Otep scoffed, smiling dismissively.

"It is the Hellenic wording. It's Abdju..." She told him, and regarded Shabaka, again.

"We have come to discuss the war effort for when Maou attacks Kemet. I assure you, it's a matter of when not if. And I need access to the Akashic Library for an extremely important project. It-" Her words were interrupted by a curtly raised hand, and a dismissive sneer. Otep blinked, she did not expect that.

"As eager, hurried, and careless as ever, Her Highness will receive your report first, Noble She-Jackal," Shabaka spoke, his tone slightly wary with an air of condescension. "The Library is entrenched in the very fabric of reality. Altering the records, even reading them, may change the fundamental laws of the universe. It seems you haven't changed, little pup." Shabaka thunderously laughed, Otep's ears pulling back in wary aggression.

Niels didn't understand. The man was a human, he could not be older than his early 40s.

"I see your inquisitive gaze, little pale man..." Shabaka smiled, his eyes twinkling with mischievous intent. "The medjay age as slow as the Pharaoh's handmaidens. I was here, Marshal still, when little Otep, the An-pu handmaiden, was still wet behind the ears, earning her priestess' degree to return to the Blue Empress' cool, pale lands... To bring Ma'at's justice to the world where man and beastgirl fought... A noble endeavor." He sighed, shaking his head. "But it also means that she lost her roots. I sense that her aura, her soul, is altered by the changes in her life. The Prodigal Anpu must return to her family here, to be re-woven into the Kemet's spirit before Her Highness even considers such a request..."

Otep was upset, her ears pulling back like those of a cat. "Shabaka..." She didn't know what to say best but still held her ground. "I have seen war, and horrors like never before."

Shabaka stood silent, unmoved, his gaze cool. "You will report to Her Highness first. Quarters have been assigned to you and your human concubine-"

"I'm no concubine..." Niels indignantly stepped forward, the monstergirls' hands moving to their weapons, the human auxiliaries exchanging wary glances. Shabaka laughed like thunder, his mirth carrying no malice.

"Little man..." He spoke condescendingly. "The beastkin have many lovers and mates across their long, long lives. You thought you were the little Anpu's first?"

"Anpu? I thought her name was Otep."

"Anpu means Anubis in our language, Niels..." Otep leaned close to him, embracing his side possessively, her warm, brown, furry paw holding his hand. "Most of Kemeti's words are actually from Hellas' own records. He says the truth: I had human wives and husbands before you."

Niels' face was a stony mask now. Otep's ears lowered, the little Anubis beauty whimpering in shame.

"This won't change anything, will it?" She whispered, ignoring Shabaka's smirk. "Look, Niels, we can talk about that later."

"We should..." Niels' reply made Otep blink in confusion and with a tinge of fear in her jackal heart. Certainly, he didn't expect to be her first. Maybe it was his hormones playing tricks in his brain regarding possessiveness? Humans... Otep blinked, loved them, fuck them, have their babies, but their sexual habits brought from the Lescatian Federation were something that was not broken easily. Was it because humans had a history of sexually transmitted diseases, mamono's healing spells rendering them useless?

Food for thought. At least her fear faded when Niels asked her without coldness in his voice:

"Where are we going?"

Shabaka gestured to an adobe building next to the giant pyramid, a multi-storied, still palatial set of residences:

"Your room in the Medjai's Lodge is already set up, visitors. You, white man, can rest or take your time. Otep will report to Her Highness Hatshepsut alone, for it is a private and magical session."

"How so?" Niels's brows rose as he shifted uneasily. Shabaka smirked, giving a brief laugh much to his annoyance:

"The Pharaoh will read the soul of her handmaiden. It will take many hours, and no one may interfere due to the nature of the ritual. I must insist that you, white man, stay out of the pyramid until you are summoned as well." He coolly added with his deep voice. "This is not up for debate: wander the city, stay in your room, no one will ever harm you where the Pharaoh's great personage resides. You will be summoned as well." Otep turned and held Niels' strong hand with her cute, meaty paw:

"It's alright, Niels. She is near divine, unshielded contact could kill you."

That calmed Niels down. He coolly replied, scratching his five-day beard:

"I will be around, black man."

Shabaka laughed and left with his guards: it was a burst of soulful laughter, loud like a thunderclap, yet with no anger, as if the smaller pale guy with three decades of life barely mattered to him like a tiny buzzing fly.

*-*-*-*

"I'll be back, Niels."

Niels gasped, "Gods, you look beautiful."

Otep was dressed in a Kemeti dress, of the whitest flax: it covered her from neck to ankles, yet he could see her body clearly underneath per Kemeti fashion. Her furred arms and legs, with cute jackal paws on each end, lay bare, her forepaws clutching her golden Ma'at staff. She wore nothing else, blushing, her face bearing the beautiful, traditional Kemeti makeup, especially the kohl-drawn Eye of Horus on the right side of her face, lips painted a morbid purple-black, her hair tied behind her back in one long ponytail, smelling of most exotic perfumes ever, her fragrant head of hair topped with a cute golden snake circlet. The outline of her body under the fabric was clearly visible: her beautiful, small yet shapely breasts, her toned, hourglass figure with her toned, muscular abdomen, and her large, childbearing hips, wearing no underwear. When he squinted, he could even see a faint, curly outline of her pubic hair-

"I'm right here!" Otep playfully scowled, crossing her arms and pouting with her golden staff still clutched between her arms. "I'm seeing right through your sinful heart, my human..."

My human... Niels' eyes twinkled.

"And you wouldn't have me any other way." He posed heroically in his blue Lescatian Navy dress uniform, hands on hips. Chuckling and shaking her head, Otep gave him a peck on his lips.

"It will take an hour or so, I will magically relay everything I know about the Northern realms you humans know as Ermorea, which we know as 'Aamu". All my knowledge, thoughts, and experience will be assimilated and added to the Akashic Libraries."

"Is it safe?" Niels' face showed worry.

"Perfectly. I do this once each quarter of a century. This is the third time."

"So..." Niels blinked, thinking, his expression turning to one of confusion, then wonder, then a sly grin, as he started to formulate his snide, annoying conclusion. Within seconds, Otep's lips pursed in mock anger as her arm shot up:

"So, I'm dating a hundred-year-old-"

A soft paw pried his lips shut.

"You finish that word, and I'll kick you so hard in the nuts, human... so hard that you'll sit to take a piss!" Otep's strained, amused yet slightly angry grin made Niels chuckle and promptly shut up. The Anubis' expression turned into a loving, yet hurt stare as if she was disappointed and saddened by the joke.

"I was kidding." Niels quickly tried to embrace Otep, who pulled back and crossed her arms, scoffing.

"Hmph!" She turned to leave with a playful smirk: "Fine, I forgive you, it's not that I haven't been naughty before you. As a little favor, my dear Niels..." The Anubis turned to leave, her cute, fluffy tail sticking out of her flax dress' tail hole, her plump ass swaying:

"I don't mind you bedding my cousins in Kemet: this once." She turned her head again:

"After we leave here, and provided we survive, we will stay loyal to each other, understood?"

The young man smiled. "Is it an invitation? You really don't mind?" His hopeful response made Otep suddenly stop, and with a lightning-fast, one-step dash, (gently) smacked him on the head with a chuckle.

"Idiot."

With these words, she disappeared into the corridors, flanked by two, spear-wielding, topless, young Bastet feline women wearing shendyt skirts and nothing else.

*-*-*-*

Niels had left the room after spending a few minutes savoring one of the delicacies left in the room. The Kemeti had a great hand in making sweet treats. Tiger-nut cakes topped with honey and dates, small cheesecakes but fluffy, and with goat cheese, smelly but VERY sweet. He sure would put on some pounds before he would leave.

Washing his hands, he decided to exit the building and enter the hubbub of the market. In his magnificent uniform, some of the Kemeti peasants nodded and smiled as he passed by, though a few were amused that he wore too much. Niels, on the other hand, felt like being in a dream world. The people were mostly black or very dark brown. Women wore far less than he imagined: albeit monster girl-run, the kingdom was an independent force from Agrat, and humans and monsters lived freely side by side. Still... a lovely, black woman, topless and wearing only a skimpy loincloth and having shaven, bald hair, a toned body with the color of dark ebony, passed him by with a smile, a pair of water buckets tied to a plank on her shoulders. She looked at him with a smile even as he disappeared into the crowd. She didn't look like a slave, though she was nearly nude and wore only a thong that hid nothing of her body. And people pretty much ignored her, to his shock, some women went completely naked, wearing elaborate necklaces and priestly headgear, their dark-brown skin glistening in the sun, next to well-dressed people regarding them with respect. One man was naked save for a spear, another black woman was in robes, and they laughed and talked like long-lost friends. A totally naked, very young, bald, black girl carried water from a well to a smithy, yet she wasn't harassed, politely greeting and chatting up the Ammit crocodile smith woman as she poured the water to cool down the blades in making. She then leaned against a wall and watched the woman work, who tipped her a few copper coins, the girl putting it in a small purse tied around her round, beautiful hips, crossing her arms as she regarded Ammit's handiwork and eating an apple.

It must have been the air. It was hot. And people were respectful regardless of the dress code. It seemed day laborers of low wealth went around naked, and no one harassed their women, just like several beautiful, dark brown Kemeti women carrying sacks of grains to a glowing, exotic windmill with ethereal sails much like a bird's, the completely naked women pouring the sacks down a gold-colored funnel, and going back for more to a storehouse. It was...

... beautiful.

"That is a life worth defending." Niels nodded to himself. Strange, black, alien people, but people worth fighting for. He also reminded himself not to look for too long at those black bodies, women with lovely curves covered in sweat, working, talking, laboring as their breasts and buttocks contorted and shook.

He shook himself and tried to focus, because the day laborer girl at the smithy shop caught him staring, and smiled sweetly, with complete innocence, blinking slowly.

"Damnit, I was staring for too long."

Time to buy something for Otep, a gift perhaps, to make up and of course, make her happy. He had his purse, plus a handful of gems given for bribes and such by the Admiralty, snug in his chest pocket. Browsing the market for gift shops, his eyes squinted: a pair of Lamia women in dark veils and concealing robes ran a perfumery stall. He remembered one of them.

And her eyes were beckoning him, looking into his soul. He found himself slowly walking over to her stall, the lovely, thick-bodied woman's eyes closing in an earnest smile, and opening again. He felt light, almost floating on clouds... Her gaze was hypnotic, snake people had this narcotic effect. He felt his heart race and groin heat up, so enchanting was her lustful glare, snake eyes boring into his soul. He felt drawn, inevitably, like a moth to the flame. And with a few steps, he now stood before the snake woman, her leathery

"Salaam Alaikum, good sir..." The Araby Lamia hissed under her beautiful face, half-hidden by the veil, her voice still had the serpentine lilt of her kind, albeit. "What brings you to the humble shop of mine? A gift for the guardian Jackal, God willing? What is your name, pray tell?" Her voice and movement were hypnotizing by themselves, an enchantress of the sands, snake-blooded monster... woman.

"I am Niels, from the Nordic Territories of the Lescatie Empire, lady." He bowed slightly, regarding her wares.

"Haniyah Bint Afsah, at your service," The Lamia bowed, sweeping a hand over the jewelry present on her stall, the other snake women giggling and making way for both.

"She'll invite him for coffee, don't you think?" A young Lamia giggled, likely a Medean breed of Lamia, a brown beauty judging by her peacock earrings and elegant, flat-topped headdress, henna tattoos gracing her palms. "Widow maran, blond white devil-"

"Sshh!"

Another nudged her as they slithered away.

The selection of wares was more than adequate, a medley of mostly golden earrings, circlets with snakes on top of them, and the ubiquitous Oureaus crown for Anubis girls. The necklaces had a great selection of stones set in them, including Lapis Lazuli. A few items were slightly darker, such as handcuffs, ankle chains, and a few collars, made of silver and gold:

"Though non-recognized, the relations of a willing abidah and her master are allowed and tolerated," The snake woman winked. "We just treat them as anyone else."

"Good," Niels nodded, focused on the necklaces. Otep never carried one.

"Does Sir have other wives?"

"No!" Niels blurted in slight outrage.

"A pity, gods allow men in my pantheon up to four wives, virility is a man's sacred duty to satisfy them all..." Haniyah smiled with a lusty gaze, not even bothering to hide her intentions. "But I suppose the guardian Jackal will take offense at such a notion..." Haniyah didn't say "As will you,"

Niels said nothing, wearing a half-smile. Haniyah's eyes glowed with hope, her lip curling into a half-smile as well, a fang poking out of her mouth.

"This will be beautiful for her." His hands lifted a shining, golden necklace, impossibly thin and lovely. A series of lapis lazuli stones were set as if forming a pair of wings on each side, topped with a small golden scarab, inlaid with rubies for eyes.

"My lord knows how to spoil her beloved Anubis!" Haniyah smiled, stretching in the dim sunlight, revealing a beautiful, flat belly with a small diamond stud on her belly button, as if she was teasing him, although her face was veiled, whether from social or religious customs, it made a delicious contrast. "I would be willing to make a good price for you," She hissed, "A young man expert in magical items and music had pawned it off for a paltry sum, his aims broken." Her words carried mystery. "Perhaps you would be willing to take it off my hands, say..." The serpentine tongue was as sweet as ever. "500 gold pieces?"

It was a huge sum, but Niels knew what was coming. "Three hundred."

The Lamia put a hand on her chest and gasped. "Sir! Surely you jest! That would leave me with nothing at all!" Her ample chest swayed as she purred back: "Four hundred and fifty," She suggested, her amber eyes glowing like that of a snake.

"Four hundred," Niels was taught well by Otep in the art of bargaining. It was less of a commercial and more of a social act with monstergirls. Except for Dark Elves.

"Aywa, most acceptable..." the snake-woman nodded, holding his hand and shaking it gently, her hands were slightly scaly, with sharp, but well-manicured nails, soft to the touch, tingling with pleasurable energies. Her fingers had golden rings, a sign of great decadence. Niels didn't pull his hand.

Neither did she. Her fingers lingered on Niels' hand, her eyes gleaming. His loins warming, Niels fumbled for his fat purse with platinum coins with his other hand without letting go. Haniyah smiled, chuckling.

"A transaction like this is dangerous in the open, as safe as it seems." She purred, holding his hand in her palms, warm and lusting. Her body was hot, hotter where her ample chest was situated where Niels' hand was held between two, large breasts. "Perhaps good sir would be so kind to conduct it in my humble abode?" The Lamia gestured behind her, a not-so-humble adobe house with two floors, yet adorned with fineries, silk carpets, and many exotic flowers.

Niels knew what was coming. But Otep had given him ONE pass for cheating on her. Why not?

"Of course," He smiled. "Lead on,"

The snake woman lifted her tray and slithered back inside her house, her undulating, beautiful, yet so alien. Niels gulped: her hips were covered by an elaborate, gold-belted silken skirt, barely hiding her round, plush, henna-tattooed asscheeks where her snake body began. Despite being thick-robed, she was able to wear both concealing clothes and reveal everything she wanted. Niels wondered how her face was. Truth be told, he didn't care. She was so alluring that if her face was not as comely as the rest of her, he would breed that monster.

He would find out.

The house was warm and smelled of spices, perfume, and shameless wealth, wooden furniture tastefully decorated inside, engraved with arcane writings, erotic pictures, and arcane, religious hieroglyphs. A medley of pillows, large couches, and a veritable ocean of body-sized pillows made the massive living room look stuffy. With a creak and rustling sound, the Lamia slithered on her bed of pillows, gently putting her goods on top of a large oak table with a rattle, her delicate, strong hands removing her veil with slow deliberation. Niels gazed at the woman's face before her.

An Araby noblewoman no doubt, Haniyah was a brown, mature beauty that would turn the head of any Ermorean man. Full lips, big, beautiful, almond-shaped eyes with serpentine irises like gold-coated amber orbs, and a pointed, aquiline nose with a golden septum ring were revealed as the veil lifted, much like the opening of a treasure trove revealing untold riches. Her face was similar to an Araby noblewoman, only rarely seen under their veils in their visits to the Reik and Lescatie, the former for obtaining pale, blonde concubines from dark-elven slave traders, the latter for trading, and coordinating war efforts against the Maou's black hordes or remnants of the earlier war.

Haniyah stretched her body with an audible sound of soft leather stretching. Niels now realized she was rather large: not fat per se, but her serpentine bulk was more than two-thirds of her lovely body. The delicate merchant woman slowly turned a key stuck to a box and turned it with slow deliberation, the brass key clicking in place, revealing an ornate, beautiful scale.

"Please, pour your payment onto the left scale, good sir," Haniyah spoke with a slight hiss in her exotic, accented Common. "All my servants have the day off, so we have the house to ourselves."

An interesting thing to say...

...

The snake woman's deft hands and eyes measured every platinum and gold coin with deadly precision. Her quasi-human features with scales gracing parts of her neck, chin, and sides of her eyes focused on her wealth were so alluring, combined with her hypnotic eyes and the music outside, Niels almost forgot about the war, his worries... his world up north. Her scent, her magical eyes as she studied every coin, and her undulating, snake body topped on such a curvy, brown body were enchanting him almost as much as Otep's.

For a moment, nestled within a fragrant, sandalwood aroma-laden, well-furnished home, the merchant Lamia measuring every coin with precision, Niels wanted to let go.

Let go.

Take Otep, take Haniyah. Go somewhere, doesn't matter where, isolate yourself from the universe. Leave this war, yet...

"Maou" the nameless Monster Lord would murder the world. He had a duty to attend, and a world to fight for. All this gentle hospitality in Kemet would take but a week at most, then he would be in a trench, fighting horrors he wouldn't comprehend, hoping Otep found out the "True Name" of Maou in that magical conference.

The final clinking of coins roused him from his reverie, and two golden snake eyes focused on his blue orbs as the metallic song of pouring coins ended:

"Sir is troubled," Haniyah whispered, deftly packing away her payment, the scale, and leaving the beautiful necklace in a lovely, heart-shaped glass box on the desk in front of the man. Tilting her head, the Lamia cooed gently:

"Sir," She purred, reaching forward and holding his hands with her own. Niels felt her palms, incredibly soft, smelling of a strange, bark-based perfume the southern lands were famous for. Yet the top of her hands were rough, serpentine scales giving her Lamia heritage away, Niels' thumbs feeling the hard scales with a curious touch. Niels had touched lizards and snakes before, these scales were softer, no doubt treated with soft oils and cosmetics, as well as belonging to a monstergirl. The Lamia held his hands with her soft-palmed grasp, staring at him with an almost hypnotic gaze, her full lips forming into a smile that made her gentle features shine even brighter.

"You are safe here," Haniyah hissed gently. "You should let go of your worries, at least here, when your beloved is preparing for her royal audience..." The lamia did not approach any further: they were intimate enough for now.

"How do you know?" Niels blinked, his grasp weakening as curiosity and suspicion took over.

"Effendi," Haniyah chuckled softly, her body rippling, making little waterfalls of the thin, soft silks draped over her body like a second, diaphanous skin. "You are the talk of the souk, the bazaar. The young, white Ermorean that arrived with the little hero jackal of Kemet, what woman would not want to meet the beautiful trophy our honorable Otep had brought from the cold north? The day laborers chatter all day as they work wearing nothing but their skin, it is a good way to pass the time."

"Lady, you are too kind," Niels answered, sighing as his body relaxed from her touch. "I am a nobody, merely a man that passed boyhood and got promoted to admiralcy of a country that doesn't use many ships, to begin with, all this war..." He trailed off, his handsome face softening to a tired, worn expression. Now all he wanted to...

"Coffee," The lamia spoke with a sweet hissing suggestion. "A hot cup of coffee, lovingly made by the hostess, should help with your worries, my lord..." Without even waiting for an answer, the lamia lifted herself up to her... coils?(Niels wondered if these species had a description of feet or legs)... and added before slithering away with a smile: "Please wait, I will be back shortly." Her large, serpentine body made a soft rustling sound as it undulated towards what seemed to be a kitchen of sorts.

He sank back into the sea of pillows, eyes half closed. Niels was suddenly too tired, lying on his back with a lazy expression. The scent of various spices, henna, feminine perfumes, and the scent of a monster woman had gotten him drunk. He had a good guess about what she intended, but that was part of the "rest" and transaction. No doubt the discount involved his body and seed to "have fresh blood" in the bloodline of these dusky monstergirls.

A silent spell before the storm, he wondered...

"I'm so tired."

As his eyes closed, his body relaxing, the lamia lady was busy in the next room: with a snap of her fingers, a magical fire came to life to rest on a beautiful, burnt brass brazier, Haniyah suspending a small, long-handled pot made from beaten copper, every circular indentation on the metal giving it a scaled appearance. Certain the young man in her home was suitably relaxed, the Lamia opened her mouth, and squeezed her gums with her long tongue, dropping a few droplets of her venom into the coffee. To an ignorant observer, this would be seen as shocking murder. Yet Haniyah's bloodline was an expert on aphrodisiacs and had transmuted their venom into something... else. She had no ill designs, only a warm lust brewing in her loins, and a little bit of affection for such a pale, strange newcomer.

"Coffee, sir?" The huge Lamia slithered back into the stuffy, warm living room, heady with heavy sandalwood smoke, and many little incense perfumes giving the air a cloying air. In her hands, she held a small silvery tray with two cups, lovingly prepared. Quietly, Haniyah handed the young man one and coiled up right across him, watching him sip the frothy, chocolate-colored, beautiful beverage, lovingly prepared and served in an ornate ceramic vessel. Clinking their glasses like Lescatian nobles clinking wine, both sipped the coffee, smelling the wondrous aroma and savoring the soft, bittersweet beverage, looking at each other's eyes. Both sides knew the end of the event, yet social gestures, sounds, and didn't care.

A few sips later, Niels knew the telltale sign of Lamia venom, sweet, and fragrant. Haniyah's veil came off, and her face was beautiful.

It was the face of a brown, Araby woman with snake eyes, scales on her cheek and neck adorning her lovely head. Her face had Arabic tattoos on her cheek and lips in enchanting patterns, as well as housing almost magical charms no doubt. She was blushing: taking off her veil, even as a monstergirl, had a significant value in Kemet, and her culture. Only intimate men deserved to see her face in full view. And Niels knew full well about her intentions.

"Dearest Sir, please enjoy my house's hospitality. I gave my servants the day off, you would have liked them... I saw you eye the naked day laborers, especially black women..." Haniyah smiled, her fangs jutting out of her lips. "I don't judge, each race, even humans, crave what they lack... A lot of our duskier humans and mamono-kin eyed you on your way. Many Nubian beauties would want your presence if your guardian jackal was... more permissive of what nature gave men..." Haniyah sipped her coffee, sighing. "A good, young, healthy man like you deserves at least four wives, as Al'lat, Al'uzza, and Manat intended."

"Not as much as I would have liked your company," Niels slammed his words home. And they connected, making the gentle snake lady gasp and laugh.

"Sir! You honor me..." The Lamia gasped and laughed, and held his hand. "Words like these will get you anywhere here..." Her eyes widened when Niels scooched close, facing her directly. Reaching, he pulled at a string on the lamia woman's side that hung out of her voluminous robes. He did not even know why he did it. The string was like gold, glowing with an enchanting beauty. Haniyah smiled, unveiled, leaning close to him, as if inviting. It was a silent, welcoming expression, lips curled in an enigmatic smile with a snake fang jutting from her upper lip.

He held the golden thread with his deft fingers, pulling it off, eager to embrace the thick, serpentine Lamia flesh and breed her.

Her silken, brown robe slid off, passing past the big body of the brown woman, revealing huge breasts and a thick, smooth body, Haniyah gasped and held her mouth when her robed slid away like water from her flawless, serpentine body, revealing her naked, half-human, half-snake body, flawless and toned, thick yet strong and sturdy:

"S-sir! What are you doing?" She gasped, one hand covering her breasts in mock shame, even her submissive, soft behavior arousing him further: so shameless was her smile, as if she invited him between... between, INSIDE her body. Niels reached forward and removed the hand, clasping both and kissing the beautifully henna-painted, delicate, scaly hands, Haniyah's eyes growing in appreciation. Reaching forward, he kissed the lamia on her lips, breathing in the smell of her skin and breath: femininity, a hint of spicy perfume, and the pheromones of her beastly, serpentine body were making his head swim, and rouse his loins like never before. Even Otep was more human than this, yet... He craved her! Haniyah closed her eyes, pulling him into her bosom and inserting her tongue inside his mouth. Suddenly, the woman's snake half lifted with the corded, creaking sound of her immense serpentine muscles, Niels feeling the world shift around him as the Araby Lamia embraced him like a snake devouring her prey.

She was lustful. Big, serpentine, smelling of spice, perfume, and arousal. And she was a big fucking snake, with the body of a woman from the waist up. It was amazing.

Niels, like many military attaches and ambassadors, was educated in physiques and courting monstergirls. Though legally not allowed per Lescatie laws, he was in Kemet, and it was allowed. Plus, the serpent woman had invited him deep inside her warm... home, so to speak.

Haniyah had also stopped pretending. With a sharp inhalation through her nose, hissing, the snake-woman of the sands wrapped her body around his waist, locking him in a kiss that was more aggressive than his first attempt. Like a dam breaking loose, the dusky, serpentine monster woman threw herself at the blond, pale human, her sweet, soft, and wet lips embracing his rougher own, her long, forked tongue. Niels loved the sensations: the strange, scaly mouth and the exotic body in his arms was a nice last cheat pass Otep had given.

For several minutes, with loud smacking noises, their bodies danced, heat and perfume coating the man and snake-woman in a heady haze. Niels didn't even realize she had used her clawed hands to strip off his clothes, holding him close, his erection aching as his body weight rubbed his shaft against the snaky body, her thick snake body like hard rubber against his aching bulk. He felt her hot, warm pussy below her navel, where her human body joined the serpent one, a deep, warm, wet crevice. He didn't even have time to groan when Haniyah, now her glowing, predatory eyes locked in his, shifted her hips, quickly guiding his aching member deep inside her wet, warm folds.

He had almost climaxed when their bodies joined within seconds, the Araby Lamia almost wailing in pleasure as he entered her. His balls felt her wetness since her tail had wrapped around his waist, pushing him so deep inside it seemed as if she wanted him to breed her: she craved it. Her body shuddered when he thrust inside her, her snake tail thrashing and knocking down a few plates.

Neither of them noticed in their savage lovemaking, locked hips as they thrust against each other, Haniyah just as eager and hungry to be bred by this animal of a pale man as her wet crevice engulfed him. Niels loved the way she...

Hissed.

"You wouldn't fuck a snake, would you?" Had his friends told him once. If they only knew the strong, curvy body before him, her snake muscles putting any strongwoman on Lescatie to shame, combined with her Araby upper body, her smile, and wink... He thrust down, hearing her hiss and her fangs, so beast-like presented next to his neck dripping with aphrodisiac venom. He felt the sweet fragrance drip on his neck, his ears buzzing with pleasure.

He had to get more. HE HAD TO BREED HER.

He slapped his hips as the tingling of his first orgasm started to form in his loins and mind. Kissing Haniyah's lips, his tongue felt her fangs, her breath, her moans of "Sir... faster... oh God above, grant me a child!!!" It was driving him insane. Increasing his pace, Niels' joy rose to new heights as he bred the snake woman. His cock burning, he thrust and thrust, Haniyah thrashed around him like a whip with her mouth in a silent wail open once free of the kiss, she hissed and squealed to the heavens when Niels groaned, and went limp.

Haniyah's body was on fire.

She felt him, her benefactor and guest, plunge his hardness inside her warm, hot, rose garden, hissing and panting and feeling his seed pour inside her. The Lamia groaned, shuddering in an orgasm of her own, gracefully allowing her womb's fields of life to be irrigated with rich human seed. She gave thanks to the pantheon of her kind, Allah and his wife Shamash, and her daughters, Al-Uzza, Manat and Al-Lat for such a bountiful, fertile man to fall on her bountiful bosom. Like a serpent in the secret garden of Man, she grinned and coiled around him, setting him up in a sitting position and impaling her body on his still hard member:

"Good sir... did you think this was only once...?" She hissed in his ears, licking his nose. "I shall drain your loins of every bit..."

"I wouldn't have it any other way..."

"Oh, effendi..." Haniyah gasped as her mouth closed on his with lust. "Take me!" She hissed, her body undulating as her entire being tried milking the man, gyrating her ample snake hips on his still-hard member and feeling every spurt of seed. She would milk his cock, undulating like a living sex toy locked on his hips, moaning and kissing him until they both wore each other out. The Medean maran girls outside giggled at the moans escaping from the windows, rubbing their henna-painted hands with sharp, serpentine nails together.

Inside, the couple made an exquisite sight, the shadows from the lamp showing the lustful man thrusting his hips deep inside the Araby Lamia under him, her tail coiled around him like a spring, moving like the waves crashing against the ocean, as the boards creaked. Niels took a deep breath, inhaling the aphrodisiac-scented sandalwood incense, the blaring of reeds outside adding to the Eastern atmosphere as he copulated with the snake woman of the sands who was lost in desire, giving his neck little nibbles.

The second orgasm hit him like a fist, groaning almost in pain when he released seed inside her ample body, again.

This would be an interesting evening... The talisman glowed with energies on the desk...

*-*-*-*

The slow path, the steps leading to the pyramid, was the focus of her kind and sacral kingdom, and it was never boring. It was always a divine pilgrimage of sorts, Otep mused, slowly ascending on the sandstone pathway to see the greatest Pharaoh Queen, Hatshepsut, the first of her mamono kin and the gentle, yet placid ruler of Kemet. Clad only in a single sheet of revealing white flax that barely hid anything, not out of lewdness but out of religious significance: after all, people came naked to the world, and clothing didn't matter much before the gods. Her golden staff cradled in her chest, Otep climbed the steps, Bastet and other Anubis, no, Anpu handmaidens flanking her to stand before a magnificent golden throne.

Seated on it was the greatest Kemeti mamono. Her delicate, dark-brown body covered in erotic bandages that left little to the imagination, the short-haired Hatshepsut, the Tomboy Pharaoh reclined regally, her bare, beautiful light brown feet nestled on silken pillows. Her slender body was tall, taller than anyone else in Kemet, her headdress of upper and lower Kemet giving her the air of an empress beyond time and space. The woman's face was broad, large, bountiful lips and her heart-shaped face created a visage of beauty typical of dark southern deserts, topped with a short, bushy wig that almost looked like real hair, no doubt that part of hers was enchanted as well. Her slender, chocolate-colored limbs were adorned with jewelry that looked neither too gaudy nor too humble, thick, shiny golden bangles on her slender ankles complimented her body in contrast, her fingers were graced by magical rings that brimmed with the magical force of ages, each adorned with the symbol of a Kemeti divinity. Her throne was set inside a circular diagram that was etched inside the sandstone ages ago, creating the perfect throne, conduit, and magical amplifier.

"Leave us," came the sweet voice, her beautiful, dark, almond eyes gazing upon the trembling, humble Anpu...

Otep.

Within moments, Otep stood trembling before the greatest queen of the sands, knees shaking.

"You are afraid," Came the soft, gentle voice, lips moving slowly, even slower in the fearful mind of Otep whose small, cute jackal heart was racing faster than a hummingbird.

"I am, your Majesty..." Otep spoke in accented Kemet, prostrating herself before the massive throne, her staff on the ground. "I have gone native in Ermorea, I dare not pronounce your holy language correctly anymore, and I am a pretend Medjai in Agrat's court. I am afraid..." She whispered, lovely lips touching the hot stone in abasement.

"RISE"

The magical command yanked her to her feet. Hatshepsut's face was love and grace incarnate, pitying her debasing display of prostration.

"Daughter of Ra, you have failed at nothing. You defied death and kept Dunia from tearing each other apart. Your family's adoption of Theophilos' daughter was the "Point of Divergence" that changed his heart from going insane: I can see it clearly when I saw the branching realities from your eyes. Then you fought on his side and cleansed Reik of injustice and terror inflicted on her human subjects. You are the hero the world needs."

"My queen, I am just a tiny-"

"Nonsense," Hatshepsut chuckled quietly, waving her off. "You are more worthy than you ever realize... I know what you came for..."

Otep's ears perked up as she scrambled to her knees in a docile puppy-like stance: "Holiest of Holies... This is why I came for as well." She whimpered, gazing upon the beautiful face that regarded her with loving pity: "I must look through the lines of History, and consult the Akashic Records to determine the True Name of the Demon King to weaken him."

Hatshepsut nodded, her eyes closed in bliss:

"This will be arranged. This is why I have brought you here." Then the ancient mamono's Common Tongue slipped as her eyes twinkled with the power of ages: "Thou wilt kneel before me, body and mind bare, so I will unmake you, and remake you in the eyes of the Gods. Thou wilt be anew, young, and blank as you ride the leylines of history to determine the words of hope... the true name of Maou."

"N-now?" Otep whimpered. Hatshepsut's eyes glowed in a pure, glowing singular azure pair of irises as she slammed her beautiful feet with a jangle of magical jewelry. The Pharaoh-Queen ignored her as she bellowed, suddenly her demure, gentle demeanor shifting to an imperious, commanding posture, her eyes flashing white. Her voice became like a cold gale, reverberating in Otep's bones:

"BE OF ME"

Otep screamed in pain as the ancient energies shot up from the feet of Hatshepsut, and squeezed the little, cute Anubis, diving inside her soul to read everything between the moment she left Kemet and returned. Otep's ears shot up, tail stretching and fluffing in terror and awe:

HER SOUL WAS BEING PICKED CLEAN, UNMADE, AND REMADE

"I SHALL DEVOUR YOUR VERY MEMORIES, BEAUTIFUL AND HUMBLE SHE-JACKAL. THEN YOU WILL BE REMADE."

The words came in a terrifying fashion, yet Otep suppressed her panic. A psychic bond of such magnitude required methods of mental manipulations too similar to rape and cannibalism. She had to endure Hatshepsut's terrifying eternal force of spirit-crushing down on her, as every bit of her mental presence had to be assimilated into the Pharaoh's own, her memories picked clean.

"REVEAL TO ME, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE ALL THESE YEARS?"

Otep was suspended in a magical hand as the unconscious Anubis writhed in magical binds as Hatshepsut read her soul.

The Entire Valley of Kings stopped their daily business, gazing terrified at the pyramid thundering with magical energies... Except for two people locked in savage lovemaking, one snake, one man...

Otep's eyes went white as her being was unmade, her consciousness soaring to the stars.

She saw her birth, her last male Anubis father, her mother, the stormy youth before they migrated to the Reik, and then her family's deaths, assassinated by blood cultists of Maou. The Pharaoh's fingers plucked her soul out of her damaged body, and Otep felt only azure, cleansing pain as the infection of her resurrection was being cleaned; yet her bones felt excruciating pain as damage of decades was being crudely repaired.

Soaring to the stars on the Ley Lines of Kemet, Otep saw every possibility in the cerulean storm of quantum branches, scenarios playing like a telepathic-vision machine theater within the shattered, unmade skull of hers, as her very being dissolved into nothingness, to be reconstituted later:

-In a world where her family wouldn't adopt Theo's sister, he would have gone a much darker path. Theophilos would give in to his darker self, becoming the Boogeyman: leading humanity to a rampage and genocide across the world, he would have murdered Agrat one night, shattering Maou and Agrat's essences in a vile blood ritual. Otep wept in this timeline as she saw monster folks, devoid of mana and souls become weaker and weaker, the last Hakutaku crone dying an old woman in a mercifully neutral Inn at the age of 181. The world would belong to humans only, who would reshape it in a grim, soulless, hungry empire turning its hatred on others with different skin colors. Racial and Imperial wars would culminate in a mutually assured magical devastation that would render Dunia a wasteland in three centuries.

-In a world where Otep died during the Blood Riots weeks ago and her resurrection failed, her mantle would be taken by the mourning Niels, who would have led the coalition against Maou's Black Horde. Yet without Otep, the war would fail the Coalition, and Niels and the rest of her compatriots would be killed in a last stand in Reikshold. Maou would reclaim his old heart and become the Red King: a vile God of Sacrifices, Murder, Rape, and Cannibalism, turning Dunia into a bloody, red-black Demon World of agony where generations of all races would breed, fight, rape, and eat each other, in that order if lucky, for the amusement of the Red King on his Brass Throne in Kemet, the very throne where the blessed Pharaoh now sat.

-In a world where Theo died fighting Maou in the first war, the Lescatie Empire would eventually disband. Together with Zhong Guo and other human-majority polities, the Ermorean world would legalize monstergirl citizenship (only for "orthodox" species like elves, dwarves, valkyries, and gnomes, the rest were tolerated residents) and would try containing Maou's return together with Agrat, eventually failing. Maou would be a forever-fought evil over the centuries: he would be defeated each time, and as time passed, Agrat would die, and male monsters would reappear. Otep thought that this timeline was not too bad, except that the world would eventually run out of resources and riches and would slowly degenerate into a dying desert world locked in conflict over millennia, even Maou degenerating into an old half-dead Oni geezer and dying at the hands of a marauding band of humans when the conflict itself was forgotten. The planet would be lost in time, forgotten since no one bothered to develop anything besides methods to kill the other side with swords.

-The raid on Theo's village did not occur: the war would go on, and the dark elven clans would scour other villages. Theo would die in the first and last Demon War as another child soldier. The villain Maou would be destroyed by Agrat, the target of an arcane act of assassination called "soul-slaying". Agrat would fail to contain the darker urges of surviving male monsters and female monsters that preyed upon and ate humans. The word "mamono" would be a stigma, and the rest of the world and its human polities would eventually become anti-monster empires, even rewriting history that "mamono" were all demons sent to torment man. Agrat would become the mad queen of a crumbling Ermorea of vile monstergirls before being destroyed altogether, her soul unable to take the burden of leadership.

Otep saw hundreds of versions of herself, crone, maiden, mother, and sexy desert dancer in a Pharaoh's court. She saw impossible geometries and alien machinery reaching for the stars, her grandchildren standing in front of a device, talking about the weather in snappy black suits.

Virtually all of the branches in space and time hinged on a particular action, else Dunia would be lost in the cosmos, lifeless rock like millions before it. She realized it now: Maou was the vessel of a primordial entity, genderless, hungry, and atavic.

SHE KNEW THE WAY TO SOLVE THIS

IT WAS BEYOND

TRANSCENDING HATRED AND UNITING IN PEACE

...

Then her consciousness soared back across the ether in front of the Pharaoh. Otep felt her body knit back, bones, marrow, tendons, veins, and muscles. Her flesh was repaired, her neck scar healed, and the poor little Anpu- no, Anubis could only muse that she wished she had brought Sakri, or even Saakali with her. The Pharaoh's holy hands (and feet) would have healed Saakali's disfigurement.

"Welcome back, little Anpu..." The Pharaoh smiled benevolently, chuckling as the little Otep prostrated before her and kissed her delicate, sun-kissed feet, her lips touching the paler, soft, divine soles of the Pharaoh Empress Hatshepsut, gracefully extended to Otep's face in a loving gesture. Hatshepsut bit her lips and giggled quietly, having her feet kissed was a tradition but not too well-known for obvious reasons. And she had come to enjoy it over the centuries... If only for a brief moment. Her serious expression returned as she whispered with a bowed head, looking down at the poor little Anubis who had just returned from an immense experience of being unmade and remade in the eyes of the Gods.

"I have looked into your heart."

"So you have seen my soul, your Majesty..." Otep whispered, eyes teary from joy, gratitude, and...

"-and I sense your sorrow, little one..." Hatshepsut's smile turned melancholic, having read her emotions. "And your worries, fears. Rest assured no one will know of what I have read. Yet we must talk about your worries and conflicting emotions before I will let you through to the Akashic Libraries. Follow me." The Pharaoh stood up, not caring that the royal bandages revealed more than what was appropriate around her thighs, and gestured with a thin hand towards the great, blocky yellow stone gate behind her:

"There is much to discuss, for if you enter the library with an uneasy mind, you will destroy us all."

Otep was shivering in fear: why was the burden of an entire world laid on her little jackal shoulders? Glumly she followed Pharaoh Hatshepsut... Into her lair and to the Akashic Libraries that stood since the beginning of time...

*-*-*-*

RUBY SEAL

MEGIDDO HILL

"Come on, girls!" The forewoman bellowed, picks, hammers, and goblin steam drills chipping away at the bleeding ruby cavern buried inside the hill, now overgrown with weeds and soil. Agrat herself stood half-naked in leather-and-spider silk miner's uniform, her great, blue arms heaving and striking, tearing chunks of bleeding ruby shards, formed from an ancient Wish spell, made from ten thousand willing sacrifices to seal an ancient god's bones. All around her, humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, and Dunia knew what other medley of monsters there were, mining and digging like crazy, following her instructions. An old, yet still beautiful, brown-skinned, mature human woman in black robes chanted spells that dissolved parts of the cavern so that the mamono miners could dig faster. From her wrinkled lips poured arcane syllables that hummed with magical energies, reality shifting with every pulse that hit the red, wet, almost alive crystal formations filling the soft, loamy earth.

"I remember..." Agrat whispered. "We fought here. Maou stood like a titan, and he attacked him single-handedly."

The silent reverie was broken by a scream, a skeletal, fanged creature swiping at a minotaur miner, the girl squealing in pain as her arms were slashed, spraying blood. Before Agrat could summon the magic to strike down the insolent beast...

... the skeletal demon shattered when a crimson bolt of blood and magic slammed it against a crystal growth. The entire mining party, terrified, turned to regard their savior, two goblins running to rush to the wounded minotaur girl's aid with bandages.

From the heart of the shattered ruby crystal came a sound like cracking bone and screaming steel, and then--amid the dust and gasps of the surviving monstergirl miners--a figure stepped forward. Bloodied, barefoot, and wrapped in the tattered remnants of what might once have been noble robes, Theophilos emerged from the relic of his imprisonment like a demon reborn. His once-boyish face was now a man's: rough with a greying, dark beard, jaw sharp, eyes wild and bright with power long held in check. Veins pulsed beneath sun-starved skin, his chest heaving as he stood tall and alive, the air around him humming with blood-forged magic. His hair hung like a mane, tangled and matted from years entombed in red crystal, and yet he grinned--grinned--as if he'd just walked out of a tavern brawl, not a centuries-old stasis. He glanced around at the wounded, the shocked, the survivors, and then at the oncoming shadows in the distance, monsters and cave-things that had no idea their day had just gotten worse. With an almost feral joy, he cracked his neck and laughed.

"Catch you fuckers at a bad time?" The wild, bearded man chuckled. "I always wanted to say that back home. Movies, you ought to know them."

His words were completely ignored by the group of monstergirls that had just dug him out of a wreck of bloody rubies.

"Fuck..." A goblin miner girl's eyes grew as big as plates. "It's HIM!"

"No fucking way..." A kitsune girl in a miner's hat with earholes gasped, her tails fluffing up in alarm. "Empress, it's true!"

Agrat smiled and met his eyes.

"Welcome back... Theophilos."

The wild man grinned, his body reconstituting from years of neglect, regenerating with wild energies even as they looked at him. "Haven't heard that name tattooed on my back for decades. It's John Tailor now. I sold solar panels and curios to monstergirls in my world. So the dreams of this world were real. I thought I was insane, living for so long... always dreamt of here..."

"Very real," Agrat smiled, nodding in acknowledgment.

Everyone stood silent. After a moment, the dusky sorceress stepped forward and slapped the man on his face as hard as he could. The entire party jumped, shocked.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" She screamed in a voice of pure outrage.

"Melinda." He licked his lip, bloodied. "Still mad at me?"

"YOU ASSHOLE!" Melinda wailed, slamming his chest with her hands. "OF COURSE I AM! YOU USED ME! I NEVER HAD A RELATIONSHIP AFTER WHAT YOU DID" That made John tear up a little, his face a mask of sorrow:

"And I never forgot your name, even beyond death and reincarnation. Is it not a sign I cared? I did what I had to do." The huge, wild monster of a man pleaded in a soft, gentle voice. "Eighty years I lived in my world, thinking I was a boy from another world, haunted by your cries when I had to betray you for petty revenge."

Sniffling, the grey-haired woman stood before him, almost half his size. Then, she hugged him, crying. The monstergirls surrounding them made way, cautious of the man who harassed the old Monster Lord into oblivion, and now his fragment resurrected here, reuniting with his loved ones.

"A man can never rest in peace, can he?" He smirked, seeing the mining party before him:

"Human. Elf. Dwarf. Minotaur. I guess everyone is working together now. 60 years ago, you fuckers used to fight each other as much as you fought humans." Theo... no, John, chuckled. "Looks like Maou is back for the third time, eh?"

He slapped the Succubus Empress' ass as he passed her by, many party members frowning at his crude treatment of their Empress Mother.

"We got a lot of catching up to do. I want a bath, food, and weapons." He paused. "A LOT of weapons. And I have an idea or two about weapons back on Earth if you are still using these shit cannons and blunderbusses."

"He is back." Agrat grinned. "As are you. Now we finish it for good."

"AND get me a fucking cigar, have gone dry for gods know how long. I think I died in intensive care back in Iowa. Long story, if you like potatoes." The man started to walk towards the exit, guided by torches and mining lights.

"TO BE CONCLUDED: Moonstruck"