Demonic Games

Author's note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This story is a collaboration between myself and JaxJack1980 for the Halloween story contest.

Demonic Games

"We're royally fucked."

Whisper remarked in a decibel level that unintentionally matched his name as he came back to relay what he had found on his solo scouting mission to his fellow adventurers.

"What have ya discovered my halfling friend," asked Konrad the Goliath Barbarian to his rogue companion.

"Half a dozen high level cult priests along with our main target are about a 100ish or so feet at the back of the room on a raised dais prepping some demonic summoning spell by channelling their arcane energy together. I also count roughly two dozen low level minions along with another handful of those right bastard Darkhead fighters between us and them," reported Whisper to his three fellow party members.

"With Mordred and his fellow priests focused on the ritual, we won't have to worry about their spells," the buxom Tiefling sorceress Ella stated while the last member, the brooding half-elf warlock, Cassandra, nodded reluctantly in agreement.

"Well, I haven't even mentioned the worst part, the first 50 feet in requires us to travel across a 10-foot rope bridge suspended over an 80-foot chasm with scorching lava below," Whisper asserted. "Since none of us have a flying broom, carpet, or know the 'Fly' spell, which means we'd be sitting ducks on our approach. So..."

>

"Oh yeah... we're royally fucked," Karl/Konard finished by repeating Will's/Whisper's earlier assessment.

The small room was filled with a sense of quiet desperation. For the five people, the hours they had spent in a focused mental struggle had finally brought them to the cusp of their endeavour's. Their decisions over the next few minutes would either bring them the sweet glory of victory or, just as likely, the harsh anguish of defeat.

The intellectual journey that they'd been locked in the past several hours allowed for no further distractions, the half-eaten bowls of potato chips were forgotten about, the beads of condensation that ran down the near empty glasses of Mountain Dew to mar the tabletop on which they sat around were also ignored.

At one end of the table sat the man who had set the wheels of this do or die dilemma into action. Much closer to thirty than the others, Brian, the near omnipotent Dungeon Master, had carefully crafted the narrative he had brought to life, the adversities he had set before the young people facing him, the deaths that he had set in play with no trace of conscience or regret to raise the proper tension for this encounter. His t-shirt, bearing a 'Nuka-Cola' logo on it, was starting to stick to his back from the length of time he'd already spent in the chair.

The pungent scent of body odour was also becoming noticeable in the room over the last hour; Brian as guilty of the collective generation as anyone else, though no one had been willing to tear themselves away from the action in order to crack open a window.

"Well?"

Brian didn't say that time was marching on, that a decision had to be made quickly. He knew these four were well aware of the time sensitive stakes before them.

Two of the four were men, both attempting to hide the callow features of their youth beneath patchy attempts at growing beards. Neither seemed confident on what had to happen next, hands touching items before them nervously. A rustle of paper, a tapping of a pen. A hesitance in their psyche that was at odds with the mottos emblazoned on their t-shirts; the one called Will wore a black shirt with 'DOOM' in gold lettering covering his scrawny frame while sporting an unruly crop of unkempt bright red hair. The other, Karl, had his dark hair shorn close to his scalp while choosing to dress in an extra-large blood red shirt that barely covered his prominent belly with the words 'Hail to the King Baby' stencilled beneath an image of a bloody chainsaw.

If a decision was to be made soon, an action taken, then the source would be one of the two other individuals gathered in that room. The first of these seemed born to be there. Claire, a young woman not yet twenty, black hair in a shaggy short hairstyle with small streaks of purple set through it in an attempt at individualism.

Claire's clothing was in a line with her two male companions. Mid-rise, wide-leg black jeans that made for a shapeless look to her lower body. An oversized purple t-shirt with a strange Icosagon shaped insignia with 'Ready to Roll' written beneath it. The bright blue eyes that shone with keen intelligence behind the thick round lenses of her glasses were in almost constant motion, alighting on each face in the room in turn, weighing up the decision makers as keenly as she weighed up the decision to be made as well. When her eyes landed on the fourth of her companions, there was a brief tightening of the skin around them before her gaze moved on again.

The last person, who raised the ever so brief moment of negativity, looked as out of place in this room as the others might have looked attending a sporting event much less participating in one. Long blonde hair pulled back in a fashionable ponytail; Emma's face was slightly less so on account of her pursed lips and furrowed brow as she too found herself wrestling with the right decision to make. The Iowa State t-shirt had been cropped to show off her flat toned stomach, the t-shirt fitting her ideally proportioned chest perfectly. A cheerleader's rally or the chapter house of the Alpha Phi fraternity would have been a more appropriate location for her to be, nevertheless setting aside how she looked, she smelt as bad as everyone else in the room, a diet of snack food and pressure giving them all a particular pungent bouquet of co-mingled body odour.

Not aware of the other female's subtle disdainful glare, the comely blonde turned excitedly to her female companion and spoke in hushed tones for a few moments back and forth before they arrived at a plan.

"I'll use the last two charges of the Wand of Wonder to cast 'Greater Invisibility' on myself and E," Claire said to Brian after the two broke from their impromptu huddle.

"Okay... Whisper and Konrad see Cassandra and Ella disappear after they use the wand," Brian narrated as the omniscient DM while using the player character names for dramatic effect. "What do you do next?"

The girls tell Brian they want to sneak up to a specified distance from the head cult priest and his throng of worshippers. After two very high stealth rolls, they manage to successfully get their players into place.

"I cast 'Reverse Gravity' on an area that encompasses all the cult members except the leader," Claire declares before Brian has a chance to ask.

Brian nods and rolls a number of dice and declares afterwards that all the cult members have failed their dexterity saves and are flung up onto the ceiling, are stunned, and can only watch helplessly from above.

"And I cast Flesh to Stone on Mr. Wannabe Doomsday maker," Emma says, picking up her spell card from the deck beside her, passing it over to the man who sat at the head of the table. He checked it, nodded and everyone could hear the dice rolling behind the cardboard partition with the picture of a Red Dragon in flight. Behind his 'Dungeon Masters' shield, the man kept the players' eyes from seeing his notes and dice throws.

"Ok people, so Ella the Enchantress has cast a petrification spell on Mordred, the head priest of the temple. He just failed his first constitution roll so if he fails two more, he'll be turned to stone permanently. What are the rest of you going to do?"

"I rush up to join them and check for traps," Will said, picking up the dice in front of him.

"Jesus Will! Again? Brian, tell him please, he doesn't need to check for traps every time," Claire said in a clearly frustrated voice.

"I'm the Dungeon Master, I'm strictly neutral," Brian answered with a grin at the young woman's exasperated face.

"C'mon Claire, let him do what he wants," Konrad replied in his friend's defence.

As Will rolled to see if he was successful in finding any hidden traps, Konrad declared, "I look at the altar to see if there are any results from the priests' chanting."

"Nice Karl," Claire muttered in genuine appreciation.

"Good call Karl," Brian said, checking a sheet he had pinned to the inside of his Dungeon Masters shield. "Yep, you all see a mist above the main altar stone, in the torch light there seems to be a purple shade to the mist and it seems to be forming into an actual physical entity. The Demon Lord the Priests were summoning is crossing over from his dimension." Brian let that hang there for a moment and then said, "I need you all to roll perception checks for me now."

"Except Emma," Claire said.

"Excuse me?" Emma asked, looking over at the shorter, slightly overweight girl beside her.

"Well, you cast 'Flesh to Stone' and that's a concentration spell, you can't do anything until the spell fails or succeeds for like two more action rounds," Claire explained.

"Actually Claire, that's an old edition rule and current rules say I actually can actually participate in the perception check without breaking concentration," Emma replied in response to a slightly flabbergasted Claire and an even more stunned Brian. "Besides, aren't you concentrating on a spell of your own?"

Claire and the rest of the table were temporarily dumbfounded by Emma's unexpectedly cogent and factually correct interpretation of the game's arcane rules.

"Shit," Brian said, the four players all staring at him. "I mean shit, like shit hot call Emma, well-argued and researched. Okay so, uh, yeah, I guess it's all of you rolling then."

Will picked up his dice and rolled a two, Karl followed with a five, Emma unfortunately had a "fumble" or natural one result, and Claire rolled on the opposite end by getting a natural twenty which was cheered by everyone at the table, even Brian, "the neutral" DM.

"Nice one Claire. Your sorcerer character spots a parchment in the belt of the High Priest."

"Okay, I'll go retrieve it and take a look," she declared.

"Great, here you go," said Brian as he handed Claire a small intricately crafted black card which had some finely handwritten text on it in sparkling gold lettering.

"O arglwydd cythraul mawr Decarabia. Cymer fi i'th bresenoldeb. Nid wyf yn deilwng ohonot ti ond gallwch ti wneud i mi wybod. I ti rwy'n rhoi fy nghorff, fy mywyd i'w defnyddio fel y dymunwch. Eich boddhad yw fy ngwobr. I ti rwy'n addo fy hun," were the words that greeted Claire on the index card.

"What am I supposed to do with this," Claire asked, holding up the doggerel for the others to see.

"It's a spell and thanks to your Nat20 roll, you instantly know you need to cast it to deal with the Demon Lord being summoned. And you've got to really be sincere and convince me on it, you gotta actually mean it. Don't just read it like it's a shopping list," Brian instructed.

From behind his shield, he brought out an old-fashioned hourglass egg timer which he flipped over so that the sand began running through it. "It needs to be properly cast before the sand runs out because that's when the Demon steps into your world fully free to wreak havoc without any restrictions."

"Love it," Emma cheered, clapping her hands excitedly and leaning towards Claire to see the 'spell' more clearly.

"Hard-core with the props man, loving the details you brought to the game," Konrad complimented Brian.

"I should have seen the parchment first," Will groused, "It was my rogue who checked for traps and naturally should have found it."

"Die don't lie, Will. Besides, looking for traps ain't the same as looking for treasure. Maybe you'll learn not to be so obsessed with looking for danger and focus on looking for the good stuff first next time," Claire couldn't help but gloat a little at Will's expense. The guy was a decent gamer but almost had an OCD-like compulsion to look for traps at every opportunity in her opinion.

"Enough of that, Claire. Hurry up and recite the spell before time runs out," Emma politely chided as she gave Will a sympathetic look that instantly cheered the sullen teen's mood. Being a cheerleading captain, she had more experience that she liked to admit dealing with bruised egos and argumentative teammates.

"Alright, don't get yer pompoms all twisted up," Claire grumbled as she gathered herself to recite the words that seemed to be dancing on the card before her.

At first, she started in a slightly halting manner of someone who didn't understand the language she was speaking but Claire soon found herself reciting the words with an unnatural, rising confidence and grace that seemed to border on the supernatural. While not a religious sort by any means, Claire soon found herself wondering if this was how people who claimed to speak in tongues felt like. As the words flew easily from her, Claire could swear she felt a warm, tingling sensation come over her as she finished the last words on the note card just as the egg timer ran dry. She inadvertently closed her eyes as she finished the passage, and the room fell into an eerie silence afterwards.

"Woah, that was pretty badass, Claire," Konrad's complimentary words broke the silence as he spoke them in a near reverent and awed manner.

"Yeah, if that had been a cheer, you definitely would have riled up the crowd Claire-bear," Emma chimed in a few seconds later, her face shining brightly.

"Th.. thanks... I don't know how I managed it... it almost felt like something was helping me say the words," Claire stammered with a hint of embarrassment at the sudden unwanted attention focused on her.

"Not bad," begrudged Will. "But more importantly, did the spell work, DM?"

Four pairs of eyes swiftly turned toward the only person whose opinion ultimately mattered in the grand scheme of things at the moment.

"Huh? Oh right... one sec," Brian said as he hastily remembered his important role in the proceedings and fumbled about as he rolled some dice behind his shield and then paused dramatically before declaring his final official judgement.

"Okay... While Claire recites the spell, each word she intones lifts from the parchment in front of her, glowing in the air before you. Once she finishes reciting the spell, the words spin about themselves, faster and faster, falling in upon themselves until they are no longer recognisable as words, just a series of glowing yellow symbols wound about one another in the size of a coin. They pour down in a golden beam to lance onto the back of Claire's hand to form a glowing tattoo. There is a crack like thunder in the room as this golden tattoo sends a wave of energy out from the castors flesh. The portal starts to collapse in on itself as the Demon Lord is forced back into his infernal realm. The tattoo on Claire's hand fades away. Howls of anguish are heard from the cultists and minions as black tendrils from the portal lash out and seem to suck their life essence away as a form of punishment for their collective failure. With one final pulse of arcane energy, the opening collapses and the unholy breach is sealed, ensuring the realm is safe... for now."

Cheers erupted from the group of players and even Brian, the objective dungeon master, cracked a smile of goodwill as the sense of welcome relief washed over everyone. Even Claire and Will shared an awkward hug to commemorate their group triumph.

To highlight the victorious moment, Brian went into his tiny, bachelor-styled kitchen and came back with five mugs and a bottle of "elvish wine" that he had purchased at the most recent Ren-Faire to toast to their success; despite the fact that everyone else was under-age, they all accepted the drinks without any hesitation.

"To the heroes who have conquered the dread 'Tomb of Dark Desires'," proclaimed Brian as he raised his mug to toast the party.

"Groovy," Karl drawled in his best Ash Williams impression.

"Hail to the King, baby," Will joined in.

"Don't be excluding us Queens who also saved the day," Emma chimed in playfully as she lifted her glass high to join in.

Will and the other males did not mind Emma's assertion so much because her action afterwards forced her tiny crop top to slide up her toned body to reveal the undersides of her bra-less, perky 32B breasts as she strained to match the height of her male counterparts.

"Damn straight. Girls know how to get shit done," Claire finished the round of declarations as she oddly found herself siding with Emma once more.

The men also took a moment to watch her double D's strain the contours of her looser fitting shirt with much admiration as they all touched cups and downed their drinks with relish.

"Damn, those dudes down at the Ren Faire brew some potent drinks," Karl remarked afterwards while Will and Brian could only silently nod in agreement. Claire barely managed to keep herself from going into a series of coughing fits by chasing her drink with one of the remaining cans of Mountain Dew.

"Eh, it's not nearly as bad as downing a whole pint of 'Adios Motherfuckers' after losing a game of beer pong," Emma calmly stated while the others looked at her in awe. "What? You guys know that I'm a cheerleader and also in a sorority, right? I drink stuff twice this strong as part of our team's tailgating parties!"

As the celebrations wound down and everyone prepared to leave Brian's apartment, he tracked down Claire and presented her with a small envelope that he told her was her was an adventure token reward she had earned for being the one to successfully cast the spell to resolve the encounter.

Claire was still buzzing a bit when she walked outside Brian's apartment building. The chill night air managed to cut into the alcoholic buzz but that sense of victory from being the key player in the game... no stiff breeze was going to shift that warm feeling from her breast. For most college students, Halloween night was a time for partying, dressing up, basically taking Trick or Treating to the adult level. The idea of sitting around a table engaging in a role-playing game wouldn't interest even one percent of them... at least not the kind of role playing that involved throwing dice.

Emma stepped out beside her, pulling an expensive cashmere wool cap onto her head after zipping up her maroon Southern Passage winter jacket. She gave Claire a perfect white smile and Claire could only wonder how the other woman could look this good, this fashionable after their long gaming session.

"Want to walk back to campus together?"

"Tots," Emma answered. She linked arms with Claire and they began walking. They'd covered no more than thirty feet when a two-seater sports car, some fancy European make that Claire didn't recognise, pulled up to the curb beside them. The window rolled down and a guy their age, too made up in a stylized pretty boy fashion for Claire's tastes, leaned out.

"Emma? How's it going? Remember me? It's Anders. Anders Pruitt. We met at Damien's party a few weeks back."

"Oh my God! That's right. Always happy to lend a helping hand. What are you up to now?"

"Just heading to another party. Care to join me?"

"This late?" Claire didn't think it was a great idea for Emma to disappear with this guy, especially as she barely knew her.

"Fashionably late... only way to roll," Anders answered, though he never even glanced at Claire. "So, Emma, you in?"

"Like, you actually need to ask?" Emma dashed to the passenger door, slipping gracefully into the seat. It was only then that she seemed to remember Claire was standing alone on the curb. The cheerleader leaned across Ander's bulky frame so she could speak directly to Claire. "Sorry Claire, we'd give you a lift but... only two seats you know?"

Claire shrugged slightly to show her indifference and lack of surprise that Emma was ditching her so quickly for the chance to spend some quality time with Mr. Style sans Substance. "That's cool Emma. See ya next time, yeah? Oh, and Happy Halloween..."

Even before she finished waving them off, Anders had already revved the car's engine and barely gave Emma a chance to give a cheerful wave before the disappeared around a corner. Claire couldn't help but notice how Emma had braced herself with a hand on the young man's crotch to lean over to wave goodbye out the window. As Emma leaned back as Anders accelerated away, Claire saw that Emma's hand stayed in place and began to fondle the small bulge between the driver's legs.

'Well, that solves the riddle of her popularity I guess,' Claire thought to herself; bracing herself against the chilly weather, she continued walking back towards her dorm. 'She probably wants to show him how good she really is at turning flesh into stone in the real world as well,' she concluded silently in her head as she marched on alone while Emma and her new friend peeled off, the car's rear wheels fishtailing dangerously for a second before re-establishing proper contact with the pavement. They soon disappeared from view until the smell of slightly burnt rubber and a small puff of smoke like could have come from a tiny dragon were the only things that kept Claire company as she turned to trudge along in the bitterly cold autumn air back towards campus.

Finally reaching the upper-level dorm room she called home, Claire checked to see if an 'X' had been chalked onto the rectangular slate fixed on her door. This was the agreed-on sign that could be used by her or her roommate, Elsa, to let the other know the other one was 'entertaining'. Elsa had used it a fair few times, bouncing through a series of short-term relationships since the two had known each other. These relationships were spectacular in their brevity; their passion and the floods of tears Elsa would shed once the fling had flung its course. No secret sign in place, Claire slipped inside.

She shrugged off her coat, hanging her bag on the back of a chair and tousled her hair briskly with her fingers as the slight fatigue from the long gaming session crept across her body. It was only then that she noticed a scrap of paper lying on her bed. The sight of tear stains on the document made Elsa's scrawled signature on the bottom moot. There were just a few brusque lines of text, another dramatic implosion in her roommates love life, another broken heart that Elsa would soon repair with a fresh man in her life before too long. Until then, she had decided to head back home to her parents for the weekend, having no wish to have her heartbreak magnified by the atmosphere of out-of-control college campus parties.

That suited Claire down to the ground as being spared Elsa's histrionics was a prize far more valuable than even her victory in the game tonight. That thought brought to mind the envelope Brian had passed her as she'd been leaving. Claire walked to where she'd draped her jacket, pulling the small white envelope free and using a fingernail to slit it open. She tipped it to one side and let the circular token inside fall into the palm of her hand. The first thing that struck her was the weight of the token. Token was actually the wrong word, it looked and felt more like a coin than some cheap plastic token from a gaming store.

Around the size of a silver dollar coin, it seemed to weigh twice as much. The entire coin was a jet black and while she could feel the raised ridges denoting an image, symbol or words on one side of the disc, she wasn't able to quite make it out. It seemed like a bizarre and yet intriguing sort of gift that was a little odd for Brian to be handing over. She wondered for a moment if it was a nerdish expression of interest or affection on his part towards her; following that thought quickly with a 'God I hope not'. She liked him well enough, as much as she liked anyone she was willing to spend time together gaming with. But that was as far as that particular road went.

Still, it was a cool gift, or reward as she preferred to think of it. Actual loot from the monster's lair intoned the melodramatic voice in her head. Claire was interested to know now what was on the coin, and she started rooting around the room for inspiration as to how to read it. She started with a better, brighter light but no joy. Then she placed a piece of paper over the coin and used a pencil to try and make a rubbing from it. All she got for her trouble was a blank circular ring of grey.

Elsa was studying art, so Claire went to her roommate's side of the dorm room, hoping to find some means to lift an impression from the coin onto some paper. It seemed though that Elsa had either taken her things with her or left them in her locker in college. All Claire found was the remnants of tubes of yellow and brown paints, hardly a drop left in either one. Mix them together however...

She managed to turn the dregs of yellow and brown into a small dollop of gold coloured paint and gingerly she applied it to the coin's face. Done, she pressed it against paper, lifting it to reveal... a squidgy golden circle that was totally blank. Frustrated, she picked up the coin and carried it towards the small bathroom, intending to clean the paint from it. As Claire laid it on the basin, she noticed a small crescent of markings had transferred from the coin to her thumb as she'd carried it.

"You clever, clever bastard," she said out loud.

Brian must have picked this coin up in a magic store or something similar. It looked like it was somehow designed to only leave an impression on flesh. Claire couldn't even begin to wrap her head around how that was possible but it was an infinitely cool mechanism. There was enough paint left on the coin so, remembering the game, she pressed it against the back of her hand. Lifting it clear, she now saw a ring of mystical looking symbols on her own flesh, bright, golden and perfectly clear in detail.

A circle lay in the middle of the back of her hand with four lines radiating out towards four different corners before each line split into a V-shape and ended. In addition, four smaller lines bisected each of these lines shortly after they emerged from the circle but did not touch each other. The overall effect resembled four crude stick figures that were sharing one head in the centre in Claire's opinion as she finished her inspection. Claire also felt a lingering warmth on her hand that mirrored the feeling she had experienced after finishing the incantation from the game.

"Interesting. Wonder if this is Brian's clever way of dropping a hint on what our next DnD adventure will be," Claire said out loud as she traced the images with the fingers on her other hand. "Bet this is some sort of sigil or emblem that might lead us to..."

Claire's train of thought was interrupted by a rather loud grumble that emanated from her slightly pudgy mid-section. Glad that she was alone at the moment, Claire looked at her cheap, old school digital dorm clock that she had bought at a local thrift store and was alarmed to note that it was already past her customary dinner time. She had been fiddling with the coin and the resulting symbol it created for nearly an hour,

"Damn, the cafeteria's probably closed up already for the weekend," Claire remarked as she considered her options. Not wanting to deal with another trip in the cold outdoors to do a fast-food run and too frugal to consider using one of the over-priced food delivery services, she rummaged around her food storage container that she had under her bed to see if she had anything that would soothe the demanding beast in her belly.

"Jackpot!"

Claire's triumphant declaration was made as she emerged from under her bed with her prize in hand: a black cup-sized container that had the image of a cartoon chicken spitting fire out its mouth along with some foreign language pictogram symbols; the only English words on the container warning that the contents within were "spicy flaming hot ramen noodles". Humming a little victory song from one of her favourite video games, Claire started prepping her meal by heating up some water in one of her few luxury items: a stainless steel water heating kettle she had splurged on as a birthday present to herself.

While waiting for the water to heat up, Claire suddenly remembered that she could do with some hot water on her person as well in the form of a nice, cleansing shower and quickly grabbed her toiletry kit and headed off to wash the stench of her gruelling marathon gaming session.

Fortunately, time was on Claire's side as most of the other people on her floor had already cleared out for a night of drunken hedonism that typified the Friday night plans of people her age. Claire herself had engaged in such activities in the past with enthusiasm, but her social life had taken a bit of a hit after she had broken up with her last boyfriend a few weeks ago.

In fact, these weekly DnD games with Brian and the others had been her most consistent form of social interaction since that unfortunate change in her social status. In the long run, Claire believed that she was better off having ended things with Duncan, he had been too demanding and prone to fits of jealousy. Still, he had provided a certain number of benefits despite his many flaws that she found herself missing at times like these.

Shaking her head of such unproductive thoughts as she finished drying off her hair as she stepped out of the communal bathroom and started heading back to her room. Claire started humming her happy little victory tune to help chase such dour thoughts from her mind as she started scrubbing the day's stench and grime from her body under the hot jets of water from the showerhead.

Also helping to lift her spirits and distract her from continuing to ruminate about her fallout with Duncan, Claire found that her kettle had properly warmed up the water for her meal when she returned a few minutes later. She quickly poured it over her ramen noodles to get them properly cooked and hydrated as her mouth began to involuntarily drool at the prospect of her upcoming meal. Adding some shredded mozzarella cheese and cracking an egg she had retrieved from her mini-fridge, Claire quickly mixed all the ingredients together to create her "gourmet" meal. Taking the opportunity to change into a large oversized retro Scooby Doo t-shirt featuring her favorite character Velma and a pair of men's style plaid boxer shorts while her luxury meal finished cooking.

While undressed, Claire took a moment to appraise her figure critically. In her happier moments, Claire would compare herself favourably to the iconic figure decorating her clothing as people had often told her that she had a striking resemblance to being a live-action representation of said character. Standing a modest 5'3 with generous 36DD breasts, Claire had no problems with these aspects of her figure. Rather it was the undeniable fact that she had never truly shed the dreaded "freshmen 15" weight gain she accumulated when she first arrived at Iowa State; had regrettably, only added to that number in the subsequent years. Still, some still found her Rubenesque figure appealing, no matter what her IG feed and doomscrolling said to the contrary. While glaring at her numerous bodily flaws, Claire's eyes were drawn back to the strange image that remained on the back of her hand. Rubbing the images softly, Claire was surprised that they still remained after her thorough cleansing in the shower.

"Odd," she muttered to herself out loud. "Wonder if there's some secret method to getting this off. Wouldn't put it past Brian requiring us to complete another mission in order to learn what needs to be done to get this crap off me. I really hope this isn't some sad attempt on his part to get closer to me."

Claire shuddered involuntarily at the thought. Not that Brian wasn't such a repulsive male specimen. Despite being nearly ten years older than her, he did have a bit of a quiet, nerdy charm to him. But rather it was the thought of introducing romantic elements to their DnD that made Claire a bit uneasy. Though she was by no means an old hand at DnD, Claire knew enough that the idea of letting such feelings invade an already intimate group dynamic could be problematic.

Sure there was an already underlying romantic tension to their group due to the mixed-gender nature of their group. But Claire assumed that any crushes or infatuations would be towards her more attractive female cohort and not herself. While Karl and Will were closer to her age, she did not sense any feelings of attraction from either member. In fact, she would say that her interactions with them bordered more on the familial or brother-sister type than anything else. While she had no real beef with either, Claire's feelings for the duo bordered more on the platonic than passionate at this point in time.

Unfortunately, the majority of her relationships with members of the opposite sex had also fallen into a friendly, but sexless category for Claire these past few months as a newly single young coed. To paraphrase from one of her favorite shows, the only thing that had been betwixt her nether's during that time had been solely battery-operated and went by the semi-serious nickname of "Dark Lord Priapus". In fact, another session with her "Silicone Daddy" looked like how she'd be spending another Friday night again it seemed...

With another start, Claire noted with a bit of alarm that she had let her fascination with the strange symbols distract her again for an inordinate amount of time and that her ramen noodles had already started to cool considerably while also becoming a bit soggy. She hurriedly finished her lukewarm meal before it became any less appealing in order to at least satiate one of her bodily hungers.

Basking in the warm afterglow of the unhealthy yet still satisfying meal that had been consumed, Claire was slow to notice an additional odd warmth that radiated from the symbols on the back of her hand.

"Jinkies, it looks like we have a mystery on our hands," Claire remarked out loud in a semi-decent imitation. The symbols were glowing again in addition to the increasing, but not unpleasant temperature change. "Time to fire up the ol' Mystery Machine gang." Grabbing her cheap but functional laptop, Claire attempted to search for any possible matches of symbology that would give a better picture of what she was dealing with.

Claire let out a groan as she found herself confronted by a system error message indicating that the college's Internet access was down for IT maintenance until the following morning. "Just my luck they schedule this when I really want to research something," she muttered bitterly before giving up and shutting down her computer.

Realising that she'd receive no revelation that night about the coin and the symbol now on her hand, Claire decided to head off to bed. Turning off the light beside her, she tried to steady her mind enough to rest. Easier said than done however as her vivid imagination continued to play the unresolved mystery along with the day's exciting events in her head.

As always, flashes of the game bounded and rebounded in her imagination. Rolls of a dice that could have spelt disaster, group decisions where she still felt Emma had gotten more than her fair share of the limelight, the boys tripping over themselves to make her feel needed.

More than that though, Claire liked to picture the adventures themselves, seeing her sorceress character Cassandra in her mind's eye, tall, toned and heart-stoppingly beautiful, everything that Claire felt she herself was not. Finally, like one of the spider-kin of the realm of Nefeffu, sleep stole up on her and she fell into a deep, surprisingly dreamless sleep.

Behind the solid curtain of her closed eyelids, Claire's blue orbs began to shift as something tried to intrude on the blessed sanctuary of her sleep. Partially awake now and retaining the sense to keep her eyes closed so as not to drift further out of her sleep, her senses began reporting back to her. Hearing, taste and smell had nothing to offer her in feedback, sight thought there was something going on but couldn't be sure with her eyelids clamped closed as they were. It was touch that finally brought something to the party, Claire's skin sensing a constant yet gentle disturbance in the room's air. That could have been the heating unit kicking in but then her actual hearing hadn't noticed the whirring sound the unit in her room was apt to make.

Not a great deal to go on and any other night Claire would have just rolled over and fallen back asleep. Tonight, though her imagination was stirred up and it only took a few seconds for it to start feeding images of masked rapists breathing heavily yet silently above her sleeping form. Well, there was no finding peace with that unsettling thought ricocheting in her brain. Claire groaned, muttering a curse at her own stupidity and opened her eyes.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!"

The young college student leapt straight upwards, still on her bed but with her back pressed against a reassuringly solid wall. On the opposite wall there was some sort of weird electrical anomaly maybe? It had that cold bluey white colour that Claire associated with lightning, and it seemed to be flowing in a circular pattern, sparking tongues of flames, all the same cold tinged hue. It wasn't exactly a circle either, more a wobbly, drunken oval shape that appeared to be a little over six feet in height, three feet across at its widest point. She could see some of her college notes stirring under an unnatural breeze, the same air flow that had coaxed her from sleep.

'It's a portal, like a magical portal in DnD,' her imagination quickly informed her.

'The correct term is an Einstein-Rosen bridge, and there is no magic,' the logical part of her mind pointed out, delivering a back hand slap to Claire's imagination.

"Shut the fuck up," Claire said aloud, not in the mood for arguing with herself although happy enough to talk to herself. "It's not a magic portal, it's not a wormhole," she declared.

'Einstein-Rosen bridge,' pouted her logical side.

"Jesus Christ... stop being an asshole. It's not real, it's a dream. Fuelled by too much DnD, the night that's in it and eating spicy Ramen noodles before bed," Claire declared with confidence. She patted her hair back into place, stepped off her bed and approached the portal. It appeared to sense her approach, the choppy surface of spinning flames speeding up, smoothing out until it appeared to have a polished flat surface.

'WTF?,' her imagination and her logic chorused in unison as Claire stepped closer still a hand reaching out towards the anomaly.

"Relax. Not real, remember? Just a dream, it's not re-." Claire's fingertips brushed the still surface as she spoke, a tingle of energy coursing from her fingers into her arm and spreading throughout her system. The symbol inked on her hand flared up with the same cold light of the portal causing her to stumble to a halt mid-sentence.

"Oh," she said, eyes widening at this new phenomenon.

"Shit," she finished as a hand, a freaking purple skinned hand, emerged from the other side of the portal, seized her by the wrist and Claire found herself literally pulled off of her feet and dragged through to whatever lay on the other side.

Claire reflexively prepared herself to be inundated by a glowing rainbow vortex of streaking images or something similarly fantastical as she was pulled into the magical trans dimensional opening just like she had seen befall the characters she had witnessed experience the same phenomenon depicted from her favorite TV shows and movies.

But she soon found herself rudely disappointed as she was not assaulted by such exotic, epileptic-inducing sensations. Instead, it was more akin to being pulled unexpectedly into another room as she felt a slightly disorienting feeling of seeming out-of-sorts without much fanfare accompanying it otherwise.

While Claire was disappointed that her teleportation experience had not lived up to her long-held imaginary notions, her feelings of being underwhelmed would quickly come to an end as she began to take in her new surroundings.

The place she now found herself in was definitely not anything like the drab, dreary dorm room she had previously occupied. For starters, everything seemed to be tinged in different hues of vermillion. Nothing escaped its taint as everything around Claire was bathed by its inescapable presence.

Secondly, the temperature around her was noticeably higher than what she had been experiencing in her dorm room. The clunky, inefficient heating system supported by her high dorm room fees barely seemed to be able to crack 65 degrees Fahrenheit on a good day in the harsh winter months but now, in contrast, Claire felt beads of sweat break out across her body, a reaction to the dramatic atmospheric change. While nobody enjoyed the sticky sensation of sweating, Claire had to confess that the warmth was very tolerable and in fact she welcomed a respite from the normally arctic conditions she had become acclimated to as a poor, suffering college student.

Lastly, Claire began to note the more palpable differences in the room that she had been pulled into. Chief among them was the fact that the bed that lay prominently in the center of it could never have been mistaken for anything that Claire or her roommate would have had in their possession. The simple dimensions of the bed were nearly double those of Claire and Elsa's beds combined. Add in the fact that the bed itself seemed to be expertly handcrafted out of some rare, dark exotic and probably obscenely expensive wood along with the multitude of rich, silken fabrics and gossamer-like sheets that adorned it that made Claire's eyes practically bulge out in cartoon-like fashion. Forget Egyptian cotton, the bedsheets on this bed seemed like they had been crafted by the gods of comfort and vice themselves. As Claire stood dumbfounded at the sheer opulence she was seeing for the very first time in her life, a faint cough made her aware that she was not alone.

"Stupid, stupid Claire. Of course you're not," she chastised herself in her head. "Something definitely pulled you through that fucked up portal, bridge, or whatever the hell it is."

"It's actually called a summoning circle, Claire."

A rich, deep voice startled Claire from self-ruminations.

"HOLY FUCK! You can read my mind?"

"Tisk, tisk such uncouth language is hardly necessary," came the words from a darkened corner of the room. "If there is anyone who should be upset, it should be yours truly as you were not whom I expected, promised in point of fact, when I reached into your mortal realm to pluck my latest offering."

"Woah, woah, woah," Claire exclaimed, backing away from the thick shadows that seemed to be drawn tight around the mysterious speaker. "Did you just say 'offering'?"

A laugh barked out from the shadows, short, sharp and chilling despite the rich sense of humour that seemed to sparkle through it. Claire back-peddled further still, her shoulders colliding with the wall of the strange room. Even through the sensible dark green pj's she was wearing, she could feel the spongy texture of the wall as she leaned against it. The warmth she'd felt on entering this place seemed to be coming off the walls themselves as the Jello like substance was high enough in temperature to make her imagine she was having a hot flush as she leaned against it. Despite the gelatinous texture, the wall was solid and her darting eyes couldn't pick out an exit from the room, even the wormhole she'd travelled through was gone.

"Dear me, no... oh, no, no, no," The deep voice spoke again now that the echoes of its unsettling laugh had fled. "No need for panic or distress, though I can well understand what terror a young mind can conjure from as benign a term as offering. 'Payment' would be equally accurate, but I fear a mite demeaning to the commodity being exchanged. Perhaps 'gift' is appropriate under the circumstances. Yes, that will do. You my dear are a gift, not the one that I was not expecting but a gift nonetheless."

"I'd like to wake up now please," Claire said, digging her nails hard into her palm. It hurt and she was distracted momentarily from her situation as she tried to remember if you could feel pain in dreams. Her hypophora finished with the answer that it didn't seem likely which meant, freaky as it was, all this was real. Unless.

"Okay, I'm not dreaming. What's happening here is a hallucination brought on by too much gaming and a toxic batch of flaming hot spicy ramen noodles. That explains the heat as well, I'm obviously running a temperature as my body fights whatever crap was in that bucket of shit."

"Please, I did already draw attention to your less than mannerly use of swear words. Hardly suitable for polite discourse."

"Really? Is this how low my life gets? That I actually channel my Mom when I'm hallucinating?" Claire shook her head in despair; her lack of a social life and apparent issues of self-worth were definitely becoming a concern.

The shadow that had filled the far corner of the room moved. Like, all the shadows moved... at the same time. It seemed to rise up, shapeless and shifting, writhing so that Claire could only ascribe 'anger' as an adjective to its movement. Her pupils dilated, eyes widening as fear flooded her body. The amorphous mass began to take on a humanoid shape as she stared unblinking at it.

"Bl- bluh... bl-bleh," her mouth gabbled independent of her brain as vagueness of the figure forming in front of her bled away, features, muscles, limbs becoming distinct.

Before her stood a purple skinned... man? Not a man, a demon maybe. His face was fine, high cheek-boned, full lipped, handsome in an otherworldly way... like a vampire in an Anne Rice book. His body as powerful looking as his face was attractive, every muscle perfect in its definition, like a seven-foot tall, purple, Greek statue of Ares. Swinging between his legs was yet another symbol of power. At first her panic driven brain feared it was a club. Then from its length she reconsidered, thinking it was a tail instead. It was only when he took a step forward, the last departing shadow uncloaking the massive set of swinging testes behind it, that Claire understood it to be his penis.

"Do I look like your Mother?" The growling question released a frightened 'eek' from her fear, numbed lips and a fresh heat, and fresh humiliation, came Claire's way as she felt a splash of urine soak the front of her sensible PJ's.

At once, his nostrils quivered, a look of distaste marring his supermodel looks.

"Oh, this won't do at all. No, not at all." He clicked the fingers on his right hand, one, two, three. A three-piece suit materialising to clothe his own form on the first snap, her clothes along with the wetness from her fearful bladder response vanished on the second. The third snap had Claire ensconced in a diaphanous gown, purple tinted naturally.

"Let us start over, I am Decarabia," the purple demon offered her a stiff, formal bow.

"Get a grip on yourself Claire, none of this actually happening," Claire silently screamed in her head as took in the whole humiliating absurdity of what was being presented to her at this moment in time. "YOU are definitely NOT in some HELL dimension where you just pissed yourself like a non-trained feral housecat at the sight of some deranged manga anime purple people eater demon creature with a shlong that would put Seabiscut to shame! PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER AND GET A GRIP SO YOU CAN WAKE UP SAFE AND SOUND IN YOUR SINGLE OCCUPPIED BED YOU PATHETIC DELUSIONAL LOSER!!!"

Finding a bit of solace in that scolding self-rebuke, Claire took a moment to compose herself and then planned her next course of action to put this imaginary farce to its rightful conclusion.

"Deck-kar-uh-bee-uh??? Okay, since that's what my unconscious cuckoo mind has decided to name you something so stupid, I'm gonna call you DeeBee instead cuz I ain't about to entertain the possibility that any of this shit is for real," Claire retorted with a large dose of insolence and returned the bow with a very sarcastic mock curtsey as she lifted the light fabric of her gown slightly with undisguised disdain. "I hope you kept the receipt for this dress buddy cuz I want my vintage 'Scooby-Doo' t-shirt back pronto! It took me ages to track down; I had to go to five different crappy thrift stores before I found one that was in my size and price ra.... ARGHHH!!!"

The rest of Claire's words were cut off as she suddenly felt the previously comfortable gown become painfully tight and start to compress against her body like a vice. The feeling was unfortunately not an unfamiliar one for Claire as she had a lifetime of memories of trying to fit into other too small dresses for family gatherings, weddings, and other happy occasions that required her to sacrifice comfort for style because of some archaic and misogynistic fashion standards created by people who cared little for a woman's well-being or sanity.

"Tssk, tssk, tsssk. I know you humans aren't the sharpest tools in the multiverse but I can't let such repeated acts of disrespect go unpunished little one," the purple figure stated in a dry, regal tone as he watched Claire's face soon turn a matching shade due to the lack of oxygen in her lungs. "Are we ready to be quiet and listen in a respectful manner as I explain to you what is truly going on?"

After receiving a frantic nod of agreement from her helpless form, Decarabia took an extra second to let Claire recognize the gravity of her situation and then gave a small flick of his wrist that caused the unpleasant squeezing sensation to stop so that Claire could refill her empty lungs with sweet, life-giving air.

"I hope you learned your lesson, mortal and that further lessons on manners and civility will not need to be repeated. Contrary to popular opinion, my type does not take pleasure in doling out such unpleasantness when it can be avoided."

"Can one-hundred-percent agree that I also do not want a repeat of that," rasped Claire as her body rebooted some core functions like breathing after Decarabia's subtle display of the negative consequences for further disobedience. "Trust me, I'm all eyes and ears for whatever you wish to enlighten me with from here on out. Wo-wo-would you be so kind as to start by telling me why I'm here?"

"Since those are the first polite words that have come out of your mouth, I shall grant you this boon, and fulfil that humble request regarding this matter that no doubt perplexes you. But first, won't you take a seat and get comfortable my dear. What I'm about to say may be a little difficult for you to hear and accept though I expect you to try your humanistic best."

Claire let this not-too-subtle jab land unchallenged and instead took a seat meekly near Decarabia in a lavish, but cozy looking chair that had materialized in all likelihood out of thin air at Decarabia's request.

"To begin, I believe my name and title should be sufficient explanation even to the ill-informed as to my nature and where you now find yourself. I am Decarabia, grand lord of the 69th realm of the Infernal planes or what some of your misinformed fellow humans colloquially call Hell. You are Claire Deladinky, aged 20, daughter of Martin and Winnifred Deladinky; currently an underachieving junior general studies major enrolled at Iowa State University with a paltry cumulative 2.7 grade point average."

Claire fought to keep the scowling grimace of scepticism from her face as she heard this purple freak recite her personal info. She still believed that this was all a figment of her overactive imagination and thus, this fabricated creature from her mind would of course have total access to anything related to her, no matter how small or humiliating the details.

"None of this is of any real importance at this time however. What needs to be ascertained is why you are here instead of my preferred selection, your lovely compatriot, Emma Swanson."

"Say less. Why don't you send me back to my crappy dorm and you can go pick up Emma at her sorority. I'm sure she'd be a much better partner and happy to enjoy whatever demonic games you've got planned. This stuff is totally right up her alley. If she's not there, she's probably still at some party with that frat douche Anders."

"If only it was that simple, Claire," stated Decarabia ruefully. "For you see, my summoning circle can only be used to bring someone here who has made an infernal pact with me. Which means that you are guilty of making such an agreement, not her."

"Not meaning to be disrespectful Mr. D, but that can't be right", Claire said in her most respectful tone of voice. "I never made any Faustian bargain to sell my soul."

An unwelcome heat came from Claire's left hand along with a purplish light that highlighted the image that remained imprinted on her hand from earlier in the evening. Decarabia smoothly glided over and held her hand in his strong, but surprisingly soft large hands before Claire could draw in another breath of protest.

"Then why is my mark on you, little one? Only those who have made a choice to accept a fiend such as myself as their patron can be branded in such a manner."

"What the fuck? Nononono... there must be some mistake... We were playing a game! None of it was real! I didn't know what I was saying when I read those words! Besides, I'm a sorceress, Emma's the warlock! She's the one who needs to pick a patron, not me! It's not fair, she should be here instead! Goddamm that asshole Brian! I knew he was up to something shady!"

The words picked their pace and intensity as Claire attempted to plead her case to the bemused demon lord who held her fate in his hands.

"Denial is often the first sign of guilt, dear one; you should save your energy for something you have a chance of succeeding at," Decarabia advised as he raised a hand to silence any further protest from Claire. "Let's deal with what is in front of us for the moment and not quibble over what can't be changed. You are here as my latest gift and I am currently in dire need of gaining the benefits of enjoying said gift..."

"PLEASE NO! I can't die like this..."

"Die?" Decarabia laughter swelled once again and Claire actually saw tears appear in his eyes before his head rolled back, the sound of his merriment echoing in the strange dimensional space they occupied.

"Oh my, oh my. Even though you were not the original bargaining piece, I must admit that you are a tremendous font of entertainment. No my dear, if it was as simple a matter as a death or a soul to be reaped for the power it brings, I would not have spent this time conversing with you. What I require would more readily be described as a sacrifice... of sorts."

"Shit, shit, a shitting sacrifice? And that doesn't mean me dying? Bullshit." Claire found in herself a sliver of steel, something that would have seemed unlikely to anyone knowing here. However, the prospect of dying can make heroes out of cowards and wretches of the brave.

"Please. Calm yourself. Allow me to continue, perhaps without interruption, and you can then deliver whatever outbursts you see fit." Claire subsided back into her chair. Yelling wasn't going to get her out of this and pissing off the Lord of the 69th realm of Hell probably wasn't going to do anything for her chances of waking up in her own bed alive.

"I was speaking of gifts and benefits. The one you call Brian is in fact one of my servants, a human one and not the most intelligent, but he makes up for it with a slavish loyalty. In exchange for a lengthening of his years, he provides me, once every year, with human females with whom I then strike bargains with. Are you following so far?"

"No, unless... are you saying you want to make a deal with me? For some sort of benefit? So, if I say no, that's it then?"

"Well if you say no, then indeed the benefit to me is erased," Decarabia answered, fingers steepling before him Monty Burns style as he settled back in his own chair.

"Then no, no deal," Claire said with a small smile of triumph.

"Yes... yes, please do not dupe yourself into thinking you have suddenly managed to outwit a Demon Lord by happening upon some loophole. That is not the case here. Obviously further explanation is required. Should you refuse my offer, then I have no further use for you. While I understand the concepts of mercy and pity, they are not high on my to-do list, so should you be of no use to me, I would endeavour to end this encounter in its most expedient manner, by killing you."

Claire could actually hear the echo of the sound of her gulping nervously as could Decarabia who nodded in appreciation.

"Ah yes, the penny drops as you humans are fond of saying. I believe another human expression, the carrot and the branch, leads me nicely to the offer part."

"Stick, carrot and stick," Claire corrected him automatically.

"As you say. Well death is obviously the carrot, so here is the lovely stick," Decarabia said before frowning at Claire's expression.

"Uhh, I actually don't enjoy correcting people but it's the other way around," she explained.

"Human nonsense, a stick possesses far more utility than a simple carrot. Never mind, I shall continue. Proclaiming yourself in thrall to me, through the recitation of the spell, was the first part. What I require now is a plainly spoken contract between us where you offer yourself to me, body and soul. Once this is done without reservation, I mate with you and the offspring from this becomes a general in my armies. After that..."

"Woah, woah, hold your purple fucking horses. Mate? Offspring? Like... what the actual fuck? Are you talking about me having your baby?"

"Yes, indeed. There are certain auspicious moments, planetary alignments, dimensional ripples and so on, that lend power to offspring conceived at certain times. Now, ancient Samhain, is such a time and a child conceived willingly tonight will carry a great deal of power."

"Samhain?"

"Yes... or Halloween as you would know it. You humans from the America's really do feel time and history began with you, don't you? Well, the ancient Celt's had far more understanding of the significance of this date than merely tricking and threatening."

"Treating," Claire just couldn't seem to help herself when it came to correcting the demon.

"Treating? Oh, I hardly think so. I fear we are wandering off the pathway this discussion is meant for. As I was explaining, there is a time factor involved here."

"Yeah, well just have Brian find you another baby-mama because I'm not for knocking up," Claire said, crossing her arms in front of her.

"As I said already, he has procured females in the past for my needs, at different times for different reasons. An alignment such as this, Samhain and with other alignments and cosmic events you have no need to understand, occurs once in a thousand years and while I am an immortal being, my patience is not without end. All Brian's research and my own intuitions were that your friend Emma would have been quite at home sealing such a bargain with me. Now it seems that we have something of a dilemma before us. If you do not help me, I will kill you. However the deal must be made with no reservation on the part of the sacrificial participant. Therefore, we must strike a deal. What is it you wish?"

"Uhhhh, uhhh." It was hard to find fault with Claire not having an answer to hand. It wasn't like this was a winning lottery ticket and her daydreams of a Ferrari and a Mansion with a swimming pool were about to become reality. This was a demonic pact and what the hell do you wish for when making a deal with a devil?

"Well while you are thinking on it, perhaps a display of what I am capable of bestowing will get your deal making juices flowing." Decarabia said. He waved a hand nonchalantly and from every direction, huge mirrors suddenly careened towards Claire, coming to a halt to surround by her and Decarabia in a veritable hall of mirrors. The chair she'd been sitting on disappeared in an instant, but she remained in her reclined position.

Like a conductor standing at a podium before a philharmonic orchestra, Decarabia twirled a finger and Claire found herself standing bolt upright, her feet levitating two feet above the now mirrored floor. Another flinch of his index finger and the dress she was wearing was torn into a thousand scraps of fabric, exploding outwards, twisting and curling into small tongues of flame before disappearing entirely. Claire was now utterly nude and while her automatic response was to wrap her arms around herself in a pathetic shield from this demon's eyes, her limbs refused to obey the screaming orders from her brain. On the subject of screams, her mouth had also fallen captive to Decarabia's powers, Claire unable to part her lips far enough to blow out a candle much less scream her head off.

"Ah yes, silence is golden," Decarabia said. "Now, to work while you reflect on what your heart desires."

A twitch of his little finger on his right hand and Claire's eyes bugged from her head at what she saw in the mirrors about her. It was if her flesh and bones became as malleable as wet clay, Decarabia now the sculptor reforming it. Her mass remained constant but changed in configuration. Gone was her sagging midriff, her oversized behind. What these area's lost, others benefited from. Where she had been five feet and two inches in height, Claire was now five feet, six inches tall. From the tip of her big toe and all the way up to the chin on her face, every part of her was now toned and crafted into a vision of perfection. Claire might not have been capable of speech, but tears of joy slid down her cheeks as she looked at her flat stomach, perfect breasts and shapely ass, none of which she'd ever known despite the promises of diet and gym regimens.

Her face remained her own, if now blemish free and with an air brushing to accent the positives, minimise the negatives. Her shaggy short hairstyle with small streaks of purple set through the black mane now hung to her lower back in lustrous waves, those small purple streaks deeper, wider and more vibrant than before.

"Beautiful, and all you... if you'll forgive the most minor of augmentation on my part. Happy?" The silence that followed seemed to catch the demon lord by surprise until he tapped the side of his head in an absentminded, and surprisingly human, manner. He clicked his fingers and granted Claire the ability to speak once more.

"Wh-what have you done to me?" She seemed on the verge of crying, raw emotion turning her voice into a hoarse croak.

"Frivolous desires are an open book to me," Decarabia declared, "A want inside of you that I was happy to use as a demonstration of my power and, if I am to be truthful, to my own satisfaction as well. I cannot however see what you would wish in order to sunder your body and soul into my care. Perhaps you can now enlighten me?"

If silence was indeed golden, the purple hued demon was rewarded with a treasure trove's worth as the uninterrupted quiet extended for a not insignificant period of time as Claire pondered his offer in her head. She debated the merits from numerous angles in her best "What would Velma Dinkley do?" intellectual impression; while her past academic performances were indeed crap, Claire possessed a hard-earned cunning gained from growing up in a world where everything seemed tilted against her that didn't allow for many bad choices. After several more moments of prolonged self-contemplation, she finally arrived at her final decision.

"Alright, Lord Decarabia, I'll agree to partake in your twisted version of 'Rosemary's Baby' if you agree to give me the following: One, I want to live an eternally youthful, perfectly healthy life of easy luxury and comfort where no earthly whim is out of my reach. I don't want to have to lift a finger of physical effort except to order the next extravagant item; Two, I don't want to experience any pain or discomfort normally involved in a pregnancy, demonic or otherwise. In fact, speed up the process so that I am pregnant and deliver the baby in the least amount of time possible, days or even better hours if possible; Three, erase my memory of the pregnancy and the fact I helped birth your little 'Antichrist'. Make it so I remember no details of this infernal conception and adoption. Replace this part of the deal with some other less unpleasant price I paid for my immortality and preferential favors. Fulfil all these requests and we have a deal."

Decarabia raised a single finely arched eyebrow and steadfastly locked eyes with Claire after she finished reciting her list of demands for a few inscrutable heartbeats. She felt that her very soul and the total value of existence was being dissected in a thousand different ways under his raptor-like gaze. After what felt like an eternity, he opened his mouth to render judgement; Claire's heart flip-flopped in his chest as she waited for the literal life-defining answer from his perfectly formed lips.

"Your proposal is... acceptable."

"Really? Wow. Well, that was a bit anticlimactic, but I guess I'm in no position to complain," Claire said in a surprised but relieved tone. "I was expecting some more back and forth banter at least or some attempt to trick me with a counter proposal that had a last minute revealed tragic loophole... Wait a second... you'll honor the agreement, right? You're not just agreeing now to trick me into having li'l Damien 2.0 without actually intending to give me what I want? Oh shit, what am I saying, y'all are demons..."

The devastatingly handsome demon lord simply raised a hand to stop Claire's rambling and replied, "Lies and betrayal are the speciality of humanity, not infernal beings. My word is always honored and merely have to consider Brian's existence to verify that."

Another subtle, but stinging rebuke of mortals' faults hit Claire, but she ignored it as well and pressed on.

"Fair point. So, how do we seal the deal on this Faustian bargain, so to speak?"

"Simple enough. Merely make your mark on this document," and with a snap of his long fingers a parchment appeared, fluttering from... well nowhere, to settle of a desk that had simply been willed into existence at the same time. An old-fashioned quill and ink pot waited there for her hand.

"As you will see, this specifies that all your previously stated conditions must be honored, in exchange for which, you agree to be the willing vessel that will allow me to sire the next of my offspring," Decarabia stated all of this in an almost bored manner.

"That's it? No ritual, no animal sacrifice? No need to sign in my blood or anything like that," Claire asked as if she found it personally offensive that the selling of her immortal soul did not require more intricate proceedings.

"No, should you wish for these embellishments, then these can be added to the contract quite simply. Perhaps I can offer some suggestions if you truly wish for an experience more in line with the images fed to you by feeble minded mortals seeking to induce terror in others through your 'motion pictures' as I believe they are called," the demon lord offered with a dry chuckle. "How about some howling from the damned to heighten the background ambience? A circle of Hellfire blazing around us as we complete the signing? Dancing imps with pitchforks? Sulphur so thick that it stings your eyes and nose?"

"Ok, you made your point but what about all the razzamatazz involved with the initial pact agreement earlier?"

"Razzamatazz? You are full of all sorts of surprises young Claire as I haven't heard that word used in nearly a hundred years," Decarabia said with a nearly excited intonation. "But to answer your query, that can be laid at the feet of Brian. He was born in a more dramatic age, and I fear he carries it with him to this day. Still before tonight he has always proved unfailingly loyal and adept at his task, so I forgive the melodrama he adds to our cut and dry proceedings. Perhaps this theatre makes the selling out of a fellow mortal's soul more palatable, you mortals are so ready to torture yourselves over your actions after all."

"Fine, fine. Point made," Claire picked up the quill, dipped the nib in the ink and raised it above the document.

For the first time since she met Decarabia, Claire saw the faintest trace of a smile touch his robust, ruby red lips in response to her actions. She might have had second thought only for her reflection in the mirrors still surrounding them. With a flourish, she signed her name at the base of the document, the wrench she felt inside her as she did so she reasoned away as her overstimulated imagination and not a tangible sensation of her soul quivering at her audacity.

"Oh sweet, ignorant child... my precious little plaything," he said, Claire not liking the sound of 'plaything' one little bit. "You still don't know the full magnitude of what you're involved in do you?"

That smile that had troubled her was back on his face and seeing it now, she saw it as the smile of a pure predator. In nature, he was the fox, she was the helpless chicken. Where they were was as far from the laws of nature as one could get but nevertheless the predator and the prey were universal truths regardless of what dimension someone found themselves in.

"Let me do you a final favor, as I have enjoyed your attempts to bargain. I shall allow you a... warm up I think is the correct term, yes, a warmup and perhaps some fond memories to offer you comfort as well." Kind words, offered in a reasonable tone and yet Claire felt the sphincter in her ass tighten hard enough to break a pencil as fear flooded her. Immortality, beauty, wealth... she'd have traded them all now for the chance that this was all just a dream and she'd wake up in her bed safe and sound. She threw out this thought like a prayer to the heavens, throwing in a promise to quit gaming for good. She knew by the gleam in Decarabia's eye that not only would her prayer go unanswered but that through her bargain, she was as far from the shield of heaven as one could get.

Her feet suddenly sank into the floor of the dimensional pocket, purple ooze threading through her toes and wrapping around her ankles. Gelatinous to the feel and yet holding her in place like shackles of steel. All around her the floor abandoned its solid state, ripples and small waves extending all about her for a full pace in every direction.

"What's happening... what's going on?" Claire's new long hair fanned out as she threw desperate glances to her left and right. Decarabia chose silence as an answer, drifting back from her without his feet moving.

The ooze, for want of a better word, now looked like a storm-tossed sea as the waves of it lapped higher and higher, shapes beginning to form amid the chaos and Claire's eyes bugged out of her head as her mind grasped what the shapes were.

Penises... cocks... long purple ooze formed tentacles with distinct heads that mimicked the bulbous head of a dick.

"Fucking tentacle porn? That's the favor?" She tore her eyes away from the tentacles that now moved through the ooze at her feet like sharks circling a victim.

"Well I entered your own memories, drew from them images of your former lovers," Decarabia said, "I felt they would help prepare you for what was to come admirably." He was sitting cross legged now, floating three feet in the air and Claire had the disturbing thought that he looked like her was about to watch her like he would watch a documentary on a TV.

Now that he'd said it, she could see a similarity in the writhing tentacles and her ex's... color and length of shaft aside. Not that it was a comfort, if anything the idea that Decarabia could search through her mind for her most intimate memories was as much of a violation of her as what was about to happen.

The first tentacle rose, a Cobra dancing to the snake charmers tune, moving to coil around her left leg, wrapping around her flesh from knee to upper thigh. A second elected to spiral around her right leg and Claire found their grip to be firm, warm to the touch and as alien to her flesh as their master levitating and watching silently.

More tentacle's rose, Claire's arms and waist suffering the same indignity as her legs so that she found her limbs firmly under the control of the mindless protuberances. With a pop her feet were released from the goop and the young woman found herself being lifted into the air. There was a pop-pop-pop from below her and three further tentacles rose to confront her eyes. They were mindless products, mere instruments of Decarabia's will and yet Claire felt a feeling, an aura, of independent intelligence from them. Intelligence, hunger and malice.

"Fuck," she swore quietly.

With deliberate slowness, two of the tentacles dipped lower and there were no prizes for guessing their destination. She bent forward at the neck, able to see them approaching her body. They shimmered suddenly and Claire could just make out a secretion along their tubelike bodies that she prayed would offer a lubricating property of some type.

That she wasn't screaming senselessly at the way events were unfolding was partly down to her strength of character, partly a secret hope that all of this was still a fever dream of some kind.

"Fuck," she swore again, a bit louder this time as the first tentacle entered her, pushing into her pussy with a strength that opened up her tightness with the ease of an axe splitting a log. The tentacle sank into her to an approximation of where her exes would have reached, holding still for a heartbeat. The shaft inside her suddenly rippled, the solid outer layer of the tentacle pressing against the walls of her vagina so that the rippling sensation was felt by every cluster of nerves it was in contact with.

"Fuuuccck," this time it was a moan of pure pleasure as tentacle one began to move in and out of her at a decent pace, thrusting with aplomb and rippling constantly to offer a magnitude of stimulation she'd never experienced with anyone before this.

"Fu-uucck!" Tentacle two decided to take a hand, well an arm might be more accurate, pressing its tip against the tightness of Claire's ass and drilling into it like it was seeking oil. Her hands curled into fists as the tentacle's wrapped about her limbs moved to pull her body into an X shape, the lone tentacle about her waist easily supporting her weight.

Now she was at the mercy of the piston-like thrusts of the tentacles, one slamming home into her body while the other withdrew. It had to be a dream because she was on the verge of an orgasm and how could she be? How could she be enjoying this? Claire threw a glance at the still figure of Decarabia who merely shrugged, no answer and yet the young woman suddenly knew what to do.

Claire looked down as the rippling, plunging tentacles entered her lower body.

"Fu-fuck me harder," she moaned to them and God have mercy but they did, slithering in and out of her faster and faster, never stopping despite her stomach clenching, tonsil tearing orgasm. Her resulting screams were soaked up by the surrounding walls; no other sound was heard, save for the reverberating climaxes of her too frail human body.

The third tentacle soon sought entry inside her; Claire opened her mouth without any thought of defiance. The taste and texture of it was wildly different from any human cock but not entirely unpleasant. She moaned around it, gagging slightly as it moved deeper but discovered a matching rhythm quickly while working to master this bizarre, new experience of being made airtight by several demonic tentacles.

"You are a quick study," Decarabia said, his voice ringing with power and cutting through the fog of pleasure. "I may spare Brian despite his most grievous error. I believe your newfound adaptability to my needs outweighs what potential your friend Emma might have possessed. This surprises and pleases me greatly."

Hearing this pleased Claire as well; despite being stuffed by three purple appendages, she was happy to hear she had finally bested Emma at something, no matter how high the price she had paid in terms of dignity or the actual long-term consequences to her new mortal form as the penetrating invaders elevating the speed and depth of their intrusions.

Instead of taking the time to respond to Decarabia's words, Claire simply put all her efforts into showing her overly eager enthusiasm toward her triple violation by loosening the muscles in her throat while also tensing the appropriate muscles lower down her body to heighten the pleasurable sensations for herself and hopefully, the invading tentacles as well. Her renewed efforts must have been in the right direction as Decarabia soon let out a small groan of pleasure as a result of her actions. His satisfactory response wasn't the only one as Claire's nerves and synapses also sent signals of carnal bliss coursing throughout her body at the same time.

"Oh, you are a depraved little creature, aren't you? Manipulating all your hungry human openings properly as my little pets turn your wanton, willing body into their own personal plaything. The amount of pleasurable friction you are able to maintain as their massive forms go in and out of your greedy passages is truly impressive. Almost as impressive as the near bottomless accommodating depth of your throat. I guess that big mouth of yours was good for something after all, Claire Bear."

"Mmmph, MMmmph, MMMPH," were the only audible sounds the aforementioned mouth could make as the tenacious tentacles continued their brutal assault on Claire's new and much more visually pleasing female form.

"Yes, I think I much prefer you this way, my new little pet. Appropriately submissive and quietly respectful," Decarabia went on as he watched with the depraved spectacle before him unfold.

"Now, let's see how long you can keep it up, little Claire. Which one will wear out first: your body or my interest in seeing how much punishment your mortal form can take before I get bored and decide to just breed you properly?"

With supreme, near inhuman effort, Claire managed to temporarily quell the waves of pleasure running through her body in order to get one of her arms to reach and make contact with the purple appendage throat-fucking with reckless abandon. She had to tap her open palm against its massive girth several times before she managed to get Decarabia's attention.

Despite his earlier declaration of enjoying Claire's muted responses, Decarabia's curiosity took control and he had the tentacle fully withdraw from Claire's throat and mouth so that Claire would be allowed to speak without any impediment. He also had the other two tentacles slow their movements as well but still kept them buried in both her vagina and anus as a constant reminder of the vulnerable position Claire was in.

After taking a few reflexive breaths that also granted her some time to gather her thoughts, Claire lifted her head to make direct eye contact with Decarabia.

"Respectfully, my demon lord, I think you vastly underestimate the strength and resilience of my spirit. Remember, I've lived a pretty shitty life under pretty shitty circumstances for nearly twenty years," Claire stated in a tone of voice she kept respectful but still hinted at something darker, more primal within her. "Pain and suffering have been my only constant companions."

Steeling her gaze and resolve, Claire managed to crack a wide, unsettling grin as she fixed her eyes hard at Decarabia.

"Sooo... with all due respect, Lord Decarabia, put up or shut up as I'm not anywhere close to breaking under your underwhelming efforts..."

"Spirit? Good... excellent in fact. What we will create this night can only benefit from the doe birthing it possessing some favourable attributes."

"Doe? Be still my beating heart. You don't need to go all romantic on me," Claire said with heavy sarcasm that she recognised as being completely lost on the demon.

"Enough talk. I feel... yes...," Decarabia drew himself up to his full, impressive height, staring at Claire and at the same time, beyond her, into a distance only her seemed aware of.

"There remaineth not a moment more to be squandered on thy mewlings. The appointed reckoning draweth nigh. Samhain, and all that it heraldeth is upon us. All that Samhain concealeth within the gathering dark, and all that shall unfurl beneath its shadow, standeth now upon our threshold."

"Uh... what?"

"Silence thy ceaseless babbling and lay aside all further idle utterances. The time of words hath passed, the hour of deeds now arrived. Make thyself ready, pray to whatever pale deity gives you succour, what hath long been awaited may no longer be delayed."

Claire blinked, and Decarabia shuddered with distaste at her lack of understanding.

"Very well... in the parlance of your age... time to fuck bitch."

The tentacles that had held her aloft, used her, pleasured her... they disappeared. Not even fading away, mist-like... just disappeared.

And Claire crashed to what passed for a floor in this strange environment, landing on her knees unhurt as the surface absorbed the force of her landing, sponge-like.

Then Decarabia was standing before her and he had changed.

The protest that had been on her lips dried up and blew away like autumnal leaves.

The wry humour she had found in all of this madness, the mildly comical nature of a big purple demon lord granting her eternal youth in exchange for breeding her... that seemed inappropriate as for the first time she beheld him in what must have been his true form.

Decarabia stood as tall as before but now his skin was a deep violet purple, the veins that ran prominently across his pronounced musculature were as black as whatever passed for his heart. His physique was... well powerful didn't do it justice. Broad shoulders, enormous arms, barrel chest, prominent abdominal muscles and a thick neck.

The equanimity of his earlier countenance had also disappeared, his visage now stern and threatening, his face tense and angular. Sharp cheekbones, pointed ears and a broad, flattened nose did nothing to soften Claire's view of him.

Two enormous curving ram-like horns emerged from his temples, sweeping outwards and upwards before curling back. The were dark brown-black, deeply ridged. Floating above them was a crown of living flames, crackling audibly like a log-fire.

He was wearing armour now, every inch the demonic warrior lord. Blackened, crimson metal, plates of it covering his chest and shoulders, vambraces and greaves. She saw no weapon on his person, no sword or battle axe. He didn't need one. Decarabia was a living weapon and the giant cock hanging between his legs was an implement of destruction, its size and heft awe inspiring.

Claire rose to her feet, not of her own volition. And it wasn't like she actually moved to stand, she was pulled upright through some force, a demonic force. Her ascent continued till the soles of her feet hovered a foot clear of the floor which put her face almost in line with his terrifying features. No longer playing the magniloquent fiend, Decarabia seized her by the scruff of her neck, dragging her into a kiss that made up with lust what it lacked in affection.

His tongue probed her mouth almost surgically, tracing her own tongue, the roof of her mouth, caressing teeth, lancing deeper to touch her tonsils. Claire should have been gagging at this intrusion but somehow her body tolerated the treatment. It also responded to it, Claire feeling an unnatural wantonness within her. Another gift it seemed from the demon lord.

Her hands ran over his chest, fingertips barely able to discern between his hard body and the armour laced tight across sections of it. Her newly discovered appetite urged her on to reach lower and in moments her hands were filled to overflowing with his cock.

Through touch, though the image of it was burned into her brain, Claire explored it from root to tip, the appendage swelling to hardness as she did so. Erect, it must have been twenty inches long, fully three inches in diameter. Cylindrical in shape, it tapered near the tip but only slightly. The glans was broad, flat.

It was terrifying in its dimensions but that wasn't what had her frightened to her core.

How much she wanted him, that was the scariest part of all of this.

She had begun stroking his cock rapidly without really being aware of the fact, working the top third of it, fingers digging into the hard yet compressible demon phallus. Decarabia began sucking on her tits, Claire gasping in pleasure at the feel of his lips and tongue on nipples that burned and throbbed with delicious want. She was already stretched and wet from the tentacles, yet as he slipped a finger inside her, black nailed and bigger than her ex-boyfriend's penis, she felt the muscled walls of her pussy seize onto it, lubricating itself again, freshening itself for the main event.

His horns rubbed against her skin as he feasted on her large breasts, the rough texture an alien prickle that gave her no feeling of concern despite the wrongness of it all.

"Fuck me great lord," Claire groaned.

"Obeisance and wantonness... perhaps you should have been the first choice after all," Decarabia said. His cultured tone, so strange in this new form of his.

Releasing his manhood... wait, should that be demonhood? Whatever. Letting his giant cock go, Claire sighed as she felt it reposition itself between her legs. The Faustian bargain she had struck with this strange creature was moments away from commencing, his horse sized cock now rubbing itself against the base of her nether regions, the tops of her thighs.

Decarabia's eyes flashed and a chair of sorts formed behind him, growing out of the floor, an extension of both the structure and his will. He drifted back into it, drawing poor Claire with him, reclining back onto it and settling her in his lap. Another surge of his intent and she levitated to suspend above the giant cock.

'It was never going to fit!' How had this realisation escaped her until this moment? He was a demon and was carrying around a cock that resembled a person's arm in its dimensions. She was never going to be able to...

Claire was pulled down by forces that Newton, Brahmagupta or Einstein had never considered when theorising on gravity.

Decarabia's cock sank into her welcoming flesh like a spear, and she flung her head back, hair fanning out, mouth agape as if trapped in a scream. No sound emerged though, the air in her lungs pulled from her by the force of the cock entering her body.

Yet somehow she wasn't ripped in two. Somehow, defying physics, biology and logic, his appendage fit... perfectly. There appeared to be just enough mass to stretch her to the point of feeling comfortably full... and a degree beyond that, enough to ensure she remembered who was fucking her.

His talon tipped hands held the full, firm cheeks of her ass, squeezing that pale flesh before using it to lever her body up along the length of him. Then sharply pulling her back down. And up. And down. Like a doll, a monster's plaything, Claire was treated like a cock sheath, treated as nothing more than the life support system for her pussy, used for Decarabia's pleasure.

Only it was more than that, it was her womb and its purpose to bring forth life that truly interested this demon lord.

No matter. Whatever the end result of this savage fucking, the side effect of his drive to breed her was jagged, jarring, mind blowing micro-orgasms. Each crashing descent onto his impaling cock generated the same amount of pleasure as an entire bout of lovemaking with her ex-boyfriend had done. The micro-orgasms were manageable, but the cumulative effect... Claire could feel herself drawing in sanity-sapping sexual tension, a spring coiling inside her, each micro-orgasm adding coil count to make it stronger. When it released...

"JESUS CHRIST ON A FUCKING BYCYCLE!!!!!"

The nonsense ripped from her larynx, her brain shutting down after this expletive as she came harder than anyone had in the history of sexual climax's.

And they'd only been fucking for a minute, two at the most.

Something broke inside her. Nothing physical, his power or magic or whatever it was made sure she could survive both the breeding and the subsequent birth. What broke in her was a dam of morality, goodness and decency. She didn't care that her church going parents would dislocate their arms blessing themselves with the sign of the cross at the idea of their sweet child fornicating with a lord of hell. She didn't care that she was soon to be impregnated with the spawn of a demon. All she cared about was experiencing pleasure like that again and again and again.

Perhaps some of his power had leached into her during her transformation or more likely he just read her intent, but when Claire gripped Decarabia's armour plated shoulders and pushed down on them, the back of conjured chair on which he reclined sank rearwards so that he was soon lying prone upon it, Claire twisting and grinding in his lap.

Seizing his goat-like horns as a rodeo rider might grip a saddle's horn for purchase, Claire began to ride his gargantuan cock, throwing herself onto it with utter disregard for propriety. Screaming like some pale fiend from a corner of another infernal dimension, Claire launched into another stupendous orgasm, her internal organs somehow oblivious to the cosmically deep penetrations of his cock, while the muscles of her now bullet proof vagina dance and shimmied wildly as they rejoiced in the abandon of desire.

He let her have her moment, allowing her to set the pace, tone and progression of her own pleasure. A gift, no strings attached, that cost him nothing in its granting. Somehow Claire knew it would be the last act of her own volition as he set out to bring to fruition an act a thousand years in the planning.

After some time, and innumerable small, medium, large and cataclysmic orgasms, Decarabia used a trickle of his power to cease Claire's wild humping, binding her in tendrils of stiffened air and lifting her via their invisible chains off his inhuman body.

"Now, the final act. As thou hast requested, once thou art with child, the process shall quicken, and thy memories shall forever be altered as to our bargain. The act of siring, this will not proceed with such undue hast."

Once more, the chair-like structure he had been reclining on altered shape in response to his wishes. It reformed into something that almost reminded Claire of a vault table like she'd used in her high school gymnasium. Only this was slightly lower in height and less than half as long. The invisible restraints that currently held her aloft, now carried her to the structure, turning her over so she was face down as she was settled on top of it, the edge of one end resting just beneath her breasts, the other pressing just above her clit. Her arms and legs were pulled down and tight against the solid looking sides of the 'vault', purple tendrils emerging from it to bind her tightly in place, encircling her wrists and ankles.

She knew now that this was no piece of sports equipment, it was a breeding bench.

Decarabia stood behind her, his aura and physical size so great that she was acutely aware of his location despite being unable to lay eyes on him directly.

"Oh God," she muttered.

"Far too late to invoke a deity without claim or influence in my realm," came the distracted reply. "Though all will know of what is wrought here. Samhain, when those who once understood the barriers between realms knew to respect and worship those with true power, will see the conception of a new power in this cosmos. Demon and human, begat of the ancient and the modern. Terrible and beautiful in its power and might."

'I thought the mothers of Gods were always virgins in the folklore', Claire thought somewhat irrationally.

He entered her again, and she knew he would not disengage from her until he had seeded her. Beneath her, the floor on which they stood slowly grew translucent and she could see star constellations laid out before her like a show at the observatory. Every so often, thin streaks of purple hued flame would strike out, forming symbols that reminded her of those associated with the occult, or those she'd seen in Dungeons and Dragons Player guides for priests, mages and warlocks.

The demon lord was fucking her mercilessly, her newly remodelled ass rippling and making fleshy clapping noises as his pelvis struck hard against them, his farmyard dimensioned phallus goring her pussy.

"Uhhhh, Uhhhh, Uhhhh," she panted, more alive than ever before yet skirting the edge of death as she coupled with a creature whose power could extinguish the spark of her life with the same lack of effort needed to blow out a birthday candle on a cake.

The star show beneath her wheeled faster now, solar systems, galaxy's, galactic superclusters, galaxy filaments... the universe unwinding itself beneath her. Had she breath in her body, the heavenly show would have robbed her of it. As it was, the fast, destroying pelvic thrusts of the demon busily breeding her had already taken care of that.

"Nh-uhhh, uhhh, uhhhh." Claire came with every pounding stroke now, her orgasms now a singular entity, a long, drawn-out abandonment of lucidity that sent saliva dribbling from her lips as her head lolled in time to the thrusts, her struggling pussy likewise drooling on the other end of the bench. Even the throb from her breasts swinging like pale pendulums passed unnoticed as everything revolved around his cock and what it was doing to her.

She had no ability to track time, barely able to manage enough instinctive control to keep breathing.

And still he fucked her. Tireless as a tide crashing onto a beach.

"Cernunnos, arglwydd ffrwythlondeb, gwel y rhodd hon a chyffwrdd a hi a'th nerth," Decarabia intoned solemnly behind her as he flooded her body with so much seed that a thick, sticky stream of it leaked slowly from her stuffed pussy despite it being plugged by his massive schlong.

A heavy silence filled the air after Decarabia finished his ominous sounding chant while making several powerful final thrusts into Claire's fertile womb, his still hardened member depositing a few more streams of his demonic semen for "good" measure.

Despite not knowing the language he had spoken, Claire's mind found itself instantly comprehending Decarabia's last words: "Cernunnos, lord of fertility, behold the moor and touch it with your strength." An image of a massive ancient horned creature from the beginning of time also sprang forth as the strange words invaded her skull.

Along with the pregnant silence that dominated the air, Claire also found herself feeling a newfound emptiness within her. The alien sensation radiated from her sternum as if a part of her had been taken away. It was particularly noticeable as it seemed to counterbalance the rapidly growing and overwhelming fullness she felt in her nether regions that began expanding to her abdomen.

Alarmed, Claire looked down at her relatively newly given body and was distressed to see a pronounced bulge expanding from her previously toned mid-section. Before she could start to panic and voice her concerns, a series of debilitating and exquisitely painful sensations erupted from that region that soon had Claire hunched over in a curled foetal position battling to maintain consciousness.

As her vision blurred and darkened, an all too familiar voice managed to pierce through the agony.

"Don't worry little human, this is all just a nightmare that will soon pass and you will hardly remember any of it at all. Take comfort in knowing that your end of our bargain will soon be paid in full and you will soon reap the just rewards of your actions..."

A rich, hollow, mocking laugh was the blissfully the last thing Claire experienced before she passed out.

"Serves me right for trusting a demon," Claire thought bitterly just before everything went dark.

********

"... Claire? Claire baby, can you hear me?"

"...??? What?"

A myriad of sensations rapidly filled Claire's consciousness as found herself awakening to see a circle of concerned faces looking down at her. She quickly recognized the concerned faces of her D & D play group: Brian, Cassandra, Karl, and Will.

"What's going on? Why are all of you hovering over me like a pack of rabid zombies," Claire managed to croak out with her trademark sarcastic wit as she slowly brought herself to a sitting position.

A collective sigh of relief came from her fellow players at her words and small grins broke out among their faces, even Will's.

"Claire-Bear! You nearly gave us all a heart attack when you fainted after you finished reciting the final passages of that binding spell," Cassandra exclaimed as she rushed forth to give her a full-on body hug that would have put a Goliath to shame.

"I did? How long was I out for," Claire managed to get out while being squeezed by the diminutive but deceptively powerful cheerleader.

"Only a minute or so," Brian supplied, still wearing the relieved grin on face along with a mixture of something else. "Cassie was about to start performing CPR right before you woke up."

"Kinda wished you stayed unconscious for a few more seconds," Will half-joked. "Seeing two hot chicks locking lips would've made this an epic end to our session."

"Hot chicks?!! Right, nice one Will," Claire scoffed as she got to her feet and made her way to the bathroom, pushing past the perplexed looks on everyone's faces.

She quickly entered the obviously single bachelor style bathroom decorated in homage to Star Wars and took a look in the mirror to assess the damage.

Claire stood awestruck at the foreign image looking back at her. For some reason, she had expected to see some overweight, homely looking woman to greet her with a sneer. But why had she expected that? As she regained her facilities, Claire found herself remembering who she really was: Claire Sutherfield, eldest daughter of the Rhode Island Sutherfields, and Queen Bee of the Gamma Gamma Pi sorority house. Why had she thought for a moment that she was some ugly duckling loser with the fashion sense and social charms of a goblin? And why did she know what a goblin was?

"Claire-Bear? You okay in there," the concerned voice of her BFF Cassie's singsong voice permeated through the cheap wood door. "Not to sound like an uncaring bitch, but we need to get going soon as a couple of boys from Alpha Beta are coming soon to take us back to the house so that we can get ready for that new young Senator's Halloween soiree."

Right, the Halloween party. It was all coming back to her now. She had recently broken up with that douche Anders and as a fun Halloween gag, she and Cassie had joined Brian's D & D campaign to kill some time before tonight's party that promised to be the social event of the season and rich with new potential replacements for that loser Anders.

"Hold yer tits, Cassie. I'm coming out in a sec," Claire yelled as she splashed some water on her face to give herself a much-needed jolt. "Time to make our getaway from these dorks and see what all the fuss was about this new young Senator who seemed to come from out of nowhere to capture the upcoming vice-presidential nomination along with some old geezer who looks like he might drop dead the next minute. What was his name again? Oh, that's right it was Derric, Derric Aba. Why did that name remind her of something? Oh well, must not be that important...