Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

EVERYONE STOOD SILENTLY for a long time. The quiet was more in the stark reality of what they'd just seen than the actuality of it.

Hel was a hot redhead.

—And you could say that again!

In fact, if Ravenna was been sincere with her racing heart, the scarlet giantess did look a lot like Rafel. Aya and Cora agreed too on this, but in their hearts. Since no one said a thing, Israfel was spared an uncomfortable inquisition. For the life of him, he did not know who the fuck that was. Nor could he hope to answer any churning question as to why they looked alike.

He rubbed his temples and said of the vision, "that was...something." He breathed. Discover exclusive tales on empire

The Highfather's mouth was ajar as a door to a Lady's garden. He couldn't believe he had just seen Hel. And it was a She? Damnations! It went against every word of the Martyr's scribes. The Templars and monks, and nuns.

Hel was cursed, not some thickly lush Ginger. It must be a deception from the father of all lies, he convinced himself. He was unable to stop from cursing out loud.

"Fecking Devil!"

Rafel blinked once. "Right. Er, is that all?"

He talked to the Countess rasping hard on the narrow cot as the [Spirit Fingers] of Rosa's scrying eased from inside her head. She sighed at the freeing feeling on her brain as she replied him. "Yes, that's all I saw. And before you ask, I don't know what it means. I'm not a witch of visions."

"I know," whispered Rafel, "you're one of blood."

While he was yet speaking and Constance's mind occupied with his voice, just as much as the girls roundabout, Rafel had snuck both hands behind his back and rolled his wrist in a crescent arc; he drew on the heat energy of his mana core and absorbed enough Hel magic to his fingers. As they closed into a fist, the curling flames solidified into a sharp plutonian dagger.

The breath and yawn of the blade was red, intense fire. It roared even at the long sleeves of Rafel's shirt.

Clutching the dagger, he inclined forward to the Countess who had just opened her mouth to speak again: "Do any of you know what it means then? It has to be important if Lucifer possessed—"

SLASH! THUNK!

The knife sank deep into Constance's heart.

At first she was just shocked at the sudden squelch; it soon hit her the sound had come from her. She glanced down for a moment, and then the pain hit. So did death.

Constance raised back a struck gaze to Rafel. Her pupils dilated in unbelief. "You, why?" Her voice broke. She hadn't seen it coming. No one did, really. Rafel had stealthily gone through with her execution: the [flame dagger] was hidden behind his back one moment and the next it had flashed across the chamber like silver lightning, finding hard rest in the blood witch's soft organ.

Constance coughed out a phlegm of blood. Her eyes had dulled to a dying pale. Rafel gave her two seconds tops before she hit the bed, never to rise again.

He left the fiery cleaver in her chest and watched it hiss at her pouring blood. The flames scalded her flesh, melting bone like wax. Helfyre was no joke; it defied the mortal law that said the fire should cauterize Constance's wound. At the rate of her exsanguination, two seconds might just be too much. Rafel thought he spotted her aorta.

The Vicar behind clutched to his gaping mouth as he watched the Countess fall back on the sodden bed and jerk, her lips dribbling more blood. In her final breath, she managed to squeak out to Rafel.

"Why. . .w-why did you save me from an exorcism only to kill me again?" She grabbed his sleeve arm, "Tell me. You owe me that much, demon, for sending me to the afterlife."

Rafel watched her grip on his tunic weaken. He pinned her with his leopard eyes and replied her dying wish with a defiant smile.

"You killed a friend of my friend. I wasn't going to let that stand. Ever. Take peace," he touched her cheek, "in knowing that you died by the hand of a prince of the Underworld. Because of your crafts and dabbling in the dark arts, no Hall of Valor waits for you. But since it was mine hand that took your life, your [Soulsire]: the witch goddess Hecate will be fair in her torment."

The woman's nimble fingers dropped to the cot's sweaty linens. She was dead. Rosa lifted her left hand and shut the blood witch's glassy, staring eyes. Ravenna didn't look away. The corpse of Constance Medici, the Countess of Avila D'aqua looked like a deer ran by the chariot of a drunken soldier. The Highfather stepped forward to pray offer the body.

Rafel's hard eyes halted him as he chastised the robed Vicar.

"Say no prayer for this woman. The blood of nineteen hundred virgins had she bathed in. Fetch out an urn and drain her blood. I will have hers."

He watched the old priest scurry in his black, whipping cassock to hasten to his orders. The blood of the Countess was scooped up by holy hands into a bowl and poured into a Loegrian urn shaped of the wings of a Cherubim—all before rigor mortis hit her corpse.

By the time the Vicar was done and handed the shut urn to Israfel's hollow arms, the noblewoman known as Constance Medici was paler than the graystone tiling. "Thank you, Your Holiness." Rafel started out without another word up the ascending stairs out of the chamber. Corazón fell to his side. Aya and Ravenna followed behind. Cora spoke softly to him. "You didn't like Skyla.

Why avenge her on my behalf?"

Rafel stopped midflight on the spiral stairwell and held the urn of the Countess's blood in one hand. With the other, he traced Cora's face.

"You should know by now, fair Corazón, everything and anything I would do for my harem."

"Even though Skyla was my girlfriend?"

"Yes."

Cora jumped on him, hugging him hard. She whispered with her arms around his neck. "Thank you for staking that bitch. I loved watching her heart bleed."

She pulled back and they continued upward. But about thirty more steps to clearing into the ratchet that led to the Sanctum of the parsonage, sudden darkness swamped them again. The torches flickering on sconces in the stairwell dimmed out as they were taken again into a vicious portal.

"Oh, come on!" Ravenna mumbled and shut her eyes, steeling her belly for the waves of nausea about to hit.

When the darkness cleared, the four friends were standing in a field. . .a field of black roses.

It smelled of harsh winter, decaying fall, and a thousand tombstones stretched into the horizon. The marsh was black and white. The skies above, the same. There was no other color in this world. As Rafel and the girls stared around this creepy environment, a fat crow cawed past.

And then a murder of the blackbirds swamped down from towering treetops, swinging around and beyond them to perch on several headstones of the many graves in the field.

A singular entity stood shrouded in the noir cemetery. By her shroud of crow feathers, Rafel easily guessed who she was.

"Two goddesses in one night? Ain't this some shit."

Ravenna stepped up to him. "Who's that?" She turned a meaningful eye to the tall, silhouetted woman in the field with them, surrounded by crows, petrified before a mammoth gravestone, backing them. Rafel was already moving forward for the 11ft goddess when he replied his delicate brunette.

"That is the Raven Maiden, my dear. We are in the presence of the Mistress of the Dark Arts. Behold, and shiver, HECATE!"

Ravenna did shiver. All the girls did.

"Well, now what?" Israfel approached the crow goddess, stopping a foot behind her. Only he could talk to her without the caution others took. Being nephew to Lilith still came in handy.

The towering goddess turned around. And she was smiling.

Nevertheless, despite the sweet perch of her ebony pigment lips, and the richness of her melanin skin, Hecate could not make the girls return her smile. Perhaps, it was the general omen of her dwelling. She still offered a hand which Rafel took and promptly kissed. The witch goddess spared no time on pleasantries and went forward with her purpose for the summoning—if it could be called that.

Hecate darned well did whatever she wanted.

She who could flood the earth from her sorcery.

She boasted this entire noir [Mahayana] Realm to herself. Hecate was SSS-Rank.

"Quiet, my children," she chastised the crows and they stopped cawing. "Come with, Hel child." She offered down to Israfel. He had to stare way up to meet the depths of her eyes. She led them forward as nascent souls drifted past. Hecate had elevated her crafts beyond physical and cosmic planes; she had mastery over Kaos and [Kratio] magic. All the creatures of this realm were hers.

Ravenna tried not to notice the many pairs of red-eyes Wendigos and gargoyles staring out the distant woods of the cemetery field at them. The beasts, only tamed at their mistress's command.

The four friends fell behind the crowfeathered, wiccan woman-god; the hips of the goth giantess were near impossible to ignore.

Hecate stopped one of the first gravestones when they had walked a short distance. She pointed a long, black talon from her cloak of feathers. "There lies the resting of Azrael Deathbringer. Before he was one of the Fallen, he was a Dwarf King of the bastard lands.

This was when the earth was new and ruled by the Ancient One." The spot she pointed at was a rise of solid Blackstone. But this grave was unlike the rest. The headstone was in the shape of a kneeling man. He was stone. His head bent to obscure his face. The chessil of his battle skirts had withered over time and cracks ran along the petrified legs.

But Rafel could still tell this man had been a warrior.

There was no inscription over the stone-man grave. The most profound feature was the priceless broadsword sticking out it's back. The hilt was long and proud. And the plutonic metal of the blade rippled the air around it. It shimmered in the bleak fog.

A sword in the stone. A stone-man?

Rafel said, "Unless I'm mistaken, Crow-Bride, this kneeling sculpture is quite large for a dwarf."

Hecate once again dropped her eyes to his level. It was an eerie, but beautiful sight. "The average mortal in that era was fifteen feet of height, so yes, the dwarves were quite large." She glanced back at the stone-man: "This was Azrael the bastard King before his fall. All you see around was that ancient battlefield and these thousands graves were his army.

But before his demise, Azrael had morphed well in [Soul Cultivation Realm], and so he was able to leap into immortality.

Lo, the sword of the Deathbringer! By which he was first slain by the Gorgon's viper stare, whence they then proceeded to embed his weapon into his back to deny anyone onward access to the darkness of his blade. Azrael slayed millions, wherefore at his soul ascension, it was fit for he to become the Angel of Death."

Hecate's eyes pinned Rafel, "as the one who delivered to me the soul of that errant Countess, I present this gift to you, Hel Child. A boon from the Raven Maiden. Reach out, Apollyon and take the sword of Deathbringer!"

DEATHBRINGER! DEATHBRINGER! DEATHBRINGER!

Hecate's strange melody went echoing off in this world of graves, just as Rafel stretched out his hand for the milennia-old longsword of Azrael, the fallen Bastard king.