Lineage

I hefted myself out of the trapdoor and got to work looking around. The mansion was completely wrecked, making it hard to look or search for anything. Blood splattered every wall and floor, moving up to higher floors revealed the bodies of the guards, proving myself and Zane wrong, bedrooms filled with murdered couples that had been sleeping peacefully in their beds.

And all of this had been done as an attempt to summon my bastard grandfather back to this world.

I felt sick to my stomach at the fact I was even related to that monster, trying to force the thoughts of him and his lies out of my mind entirely as I searched for something connected to the Highmoore or some room that wasn’t smeared with gore. I came across the master bedroom and, to my relief, found that it wasn’t gored all to hell. I walked into the pristine room, noticing the single bed immediately in the wide expanse of the room, that was filled to the brim with chests, bookshelves, charts, maps, and papers. Picking one of them up at random, I noticed a date on it, written seventeen years ago, detailing Elron’s research into the Highmoore as nothing more than a casual hobby after having them mentioned to him at a bar by a friend.

I picked up a second sheet of paper, dated six months after the first, in which he talked about excavations of a possible Highmoore location that had yielded promising results after the first few days of digging. A third and fourth were together on a desk, written ten months after the first, giving a description of him finding several items, heavily damaged items, that appeared to represent female figures. He detailed the four finds and sketched them as best as he could which, to my disappointment, was nothing more than stick figures and lines drawn with annotations on them. I did get quite a chuckle out of the one he dubbed as the “Mother of Fertility”, no proper name given, as it was a stick figure with long hair and huge boobs drawn on it.

“About three years away from being given official royal responsibilities,” I said to myself with a grin. “And you’re still entertained by the sight of a stick figure with boobs on it. Way to go, Rick.”

The other two drawings were the same: stick figures with different features, one being dubbed as “Mother of the Harvest”, holding a sickle in her one hand and what looked like a barely stalk in the other, and another one which appeared to be holding a crescent moon-shaped blade, a crown also having a horizontal crescent on it, and the name Mother of Darkness scrawled above it.

“Hm,” I grunted, tracing the crescent moon with the tip of my fingers. “Looks like Luna’s got some competition.”

I decided to move away from that particular section and pick up a letter that was dated only a year and a half after the first one and finding something that unnerved me slightly. Elron’s handwriting had become a lot more sloppy than the first couple of letters, and his grammar had slipped quite considerably, but the more unnerving thing was the drawings he’d made. They were no longer of crappy stickmen with huge boobs, but instead were something deserving of an art museum in a high-class culture city.

I’d seen professional painters with less talent than Elron apparently possessed, having taken the Mother of Fertility from a stickman with a rack to a beautiful drawing that was almost completely lifelike, having perfectly shown what he believed the mother of fertility to look like with amazing line work and incredible paint colours. This Mother was drawn as a towering figure, no scale given besides the couch she sat on, but it was clear she was meant to be huge. Her enormous, curvaceous body was just barelycovered by cloth wrappings, similar to bandages, with each of her more private areas almost on full display bar from her nipples and vagina being covered by the wrappings. Her thick, bushy hair was coloured in as orange as a setting sun, with thick lips and bright eyes, clutching a small child at her waist, presumably as a symbol for her talent.

I picked up another piece of paper, dated two months after the first, that featured the Mother of the Harvest, this one having been drawn in a much more sexualised pose as it was clear that Elron’s lust for these women was taking control of him. She was completely nude in a field of barley, clutching the sickle she’d once had between her teeth, clutching at her enormous breasts with her legs spread wide open and exposing her nethers, drops of what I gathered were sweat coating her large form, this supposed to be the representation of a hard worker in this pornographic image.

Finally, and most exploited, was the Mother of Darkest, being drawn in actual coitus, with what I presumed was Elron, her thick, black hair being tugged on as she had her crescent blade held against her throat, Elron’s desire to possess and control her being made clear through the image. Her body was coated in a mix of semen and sweat, her make-up running down her face due to the tears down her face, her crown visible off to the side of the bed with semen coating it.

The image of the crown was an image often used to deface royalty, especially female royalty. It was an image used to convey the message of the monarch being a whore, or a slut, and that she wasn’t worthy of wearing the crown she possessed. The image was often included with a picture of the monarch having sex with a man in a demeaning position, the man often being a different race than her husband, if she were married, as the ultimate insult, and if she were married, it would be both her ring and crown covered in bodily fluids and often on a bedside table.

It was shown here that while Elron once had nothing but adoration for these mothers, that had devolved into lust, and the lust had devolved into contempt. I picked up another piece of paper, this one nothing more than a drawing off all three of the Mothers bound in chains, each wearing their own named-tagged dog collar, lapping at a man’s penis, as their crowns sat on the floor behinds them, completely doused in seminal fluid. The only word on the page being in bright red lettering:

Whores.

I picked up the other letters I’d read, folding them into smaller versions and tucking them into my journal, deciding that I was going to show them to Luna when she got back to see what she made of them, but I knew that this was the case of a man who believed himself to be scorned. After browsing more letters, journals, and scrawlings, I confirmed this theory. Elron had become obsessed with them, constantly, trying to speak to the mothers as his love and insanity grew stronger and stronger, original letters of praise and love soon turning to letters of hate and disgust, angry at the Mothers for ignoring his calls, calling them whores and harlots for ignoring his love for them.

A sign I’d seen many times before from men who have been scorned by women they lust for.

I put my journal back in its pouch and continued to read some of the random letters, noticing a common name popping up between them all as Elron described the whispers of another Mother, but one that didn’t stand with the others:

The Mother of Rejection.

The name seemed strange to me, that there would be a goddess dedicated to denying and disallowing things in her domain, only for me to read other letters and see the name constantly changing before settling on what I believed its true name was:

The Rejected Mother.

The name made more sense, a goddess that was scorned by the others and cast aside for… something? I didn’t have the information to guess… why would a goddess be cast down from her… Cast down… Into the depths? The Rejected Mother… Rejected and thrown away for being not one of the Goddesses, not an original, not a real Goddess.

A False Goddess.

The idea lit up like a fire in my head, sending me searching through almost every book and chest Elron had, trying to find a more detailed description of the Rejected Mother, anything that would tell me something about her beyond the sweet nothings she whispered into Elron’s ear in the night. It was at this point more pieces began to fall into place: The prayer room downstairs with the runes. It was able to summon things that were locked away, that’s why the demons were using it to bring my grandfather out. They must’ve heard about Elron using it to summon the Rejected Mother and taken it for themselves. The torture room was used to house the sacrifices Elron would use to try and bring the Rejected Mother out of her prison in the city. Besides the Gabber Rock, it was all coming together.

Elron’s investigation into the Highmoore had lead him to discovering artifacts that the Rejected Mother used to brainwash him. It can’t leave its prison, but just like my grandfather, it can still reach out to anyone still willing. And after it realised Elron was too weak to come and save it, it began making him sell the information to people, promising them that there was a secret treasure locked away in the base of the city. The information was right in front of me in the scrawlings of a madman.

He was supposed to trick people into getting the Sapphire Chalice, something that could give the Rejected Mother the powers the other Goddesses possessed, and allow her to reign supreme once she’d been released upon the world. I searched through more and more things, journal in hand as I scrawled down as many of the anecdotes and cliff notes of Elron’s insanity, tucking away pages of vital detail into it before slamming it closed with my definitive answer:

Elron was under the control of the False God created and locked away by the Highmoore. It then forced him into putting out notices to attract adventurers to search for the Sapphire Chalice in the base of the city with the promise of treasure already there as well as the three million gold reward. Once Elron had the Chalice and the False God was free, he’d use its power to grant the False God all the strength it desired. But the problem was, a group of demons had found out about the summoning circle Elron had, killed him and his household, possibly sacrificed one of their own to begin the summon, but Zane and I interrupted it and killed them all. That would mean that the False God, the Rejected Mother, was still waiting for someone to come and release it, most likely furious that its puppet had been killed.

A smile spread onto my face as I realised that I’d just managed to solve a mystery this big without anybody else’s help. I whirled around with a grin on my face and prepared to head back to the Academy only to have an ominous figure standing in the doorway bring me to a screeching halt. The first thing I heard from it was dripping, the sound of water falling to a cave floor over and over again, then seeing it lift its hand up towards me in the most unnatural, jerky way I’ve ever seen. It pointed a finger that wasn’t its original towards me, seeing the stitchwork on each knuckle that showed the creature was cobbled together.

It, she, wore a plain, grey dress that seemed to have rotted over time, her hair made up of several different colours and thicknesses, and her face stitched together from different people, each individual piece trying to make her look perfect, but being the complete opposite. I drew my sword slowly, staring at the monstrous creature before me as it blinked and smiled at me, showing its horrendous teeth that were sharpened to a point.

“You…” it growled in a harsh voice. “You will free me.”

“And what exactly are you?” I asked in a cold tone.

“I am the one sealed beneath this earth,” it snarled. “The one locked away by whores with power they deserve not.”

It was at this point I noticed that some of the bits of her face were bits I’d seen downstairs, all over the floor. She’d stitched together a body made out of scraps and pieces of corpses just to come and talk to me.

“You’re the Rejected Mother, aren’t you?” I asked calmly.

“Yes,” she nodded, her neck snapping loudly as she did so. “I wish to be free.”

“Sorry, honey,” I answered. “Not gonna happen.”

“Why?” she asked in a hurt manner. “You know nothing of me. I have done nothing wrong and yet I have been locked away since my birth. I was persecuted by creatures that looked down on me because I was not dubbed as ‘holy’ by them. All I wish for is to exist among people.”

“Wow, those vocal cords you’ve got must be pretty fucked,” I said in a sarcastic manner. “Because they sure make you pronounce the word ‘Control’ weirdly.”

“You mock me,” she snarled.

“Of course,” I winked. “You’re making it very easy.”

“Then you will die,” she snarled, gritting her teeth and walking towards me.

“Don’t bother,” I said, holding a hand up. “You’re a barely-cobbled together puppet with about as much mobility as a quadriplegic on an opium trip. You don’t stand a chance against me, okay? So just fall apart, go back to your body, and wait for somebody to come and kill you like a good little abomination, okay?”

She looked at me for a long second, cocking her head with an inquisitive look before sighing loudly, releasing her hold on the body parts and letting them drop to the floor, the magical stitchwork she used disappearing quickly.

“She tried to free herself by stitching pieces together into an undead,” I said, kneeling down by the pile of parts. “Even Greater Undead can’t function without a constant magic source. Keeping rotting, damaged, barely-functional parts from decaying further and still being mobile, especially from different body pieces, isn’t an easy thing to do.”

I stood up, looking at any of the other letters before deciding I had enough and could vocally explain everything to Luna once she returned to the Academy. I made my way down the stairs, avoiding the corpse of the dog monster before spotting something outside on the grass:

A cloaked figure with a large amount of blood on their cloak.

Deciding not to be an idiot and yell out to the, most likely getting them to run, I slowly made my way over to them, trying my best not to get them to notice me. I was a good ten feet away when they spotted me, which was much better than the thirty meters I would’ve been if I’d yelled, and they took off into a sprint.

I took off after them, noticing immediately that I was faster than them, but it wasn’t an enormous difference. I was gaining ground, but it would take a while for me to catch them. I hoped that I was in better shape than whoever this person was, as you can catch a sprinter as a sprinter, but if you can’t catch a marathon runner as a sprinter in a few moments, they’re getting away whether you like it or not. The gap continued to close between the two of us, they was almost within arm’s reach now before they did something I wasn’t expecting:

They stopped dead.

I charged into them, both of us tumbling down the hill we’d started on, and they immediately grabbed something out from underneath their cloak and clutched it tightly. Thankful that I was used to keeping calm while tumbling and being thrown about, I easily grabbed hold of their wrist, twisted it to a degree that they let go of whatever they’d grabbed, and we eventually came to a stop at the bottom of the hill.

They landed on top of me and began to throw extremely weak punches that were beyond sloppy, more in line with slapping and thwacking than they were hard hitting strikes. I easily grabbed hold of both of their very thin wrists and turned over, pinning them down with a knee in the gut and tearing the hood from their face.

Or her face.

“What the fuck is your problem!?” she bellowed.

“You ran from a murder scene?” I asked with a smirk.

“Because I thought you were the murderer!” she snapped, trying to struggle out of my grip to no avail.

“Do I look like I just swam through a fountain of blood?” I asked her with a cocked eyebrow. “Because if one of us looks like they were slitting throats, it’s you, honey.”

“I… I fell over on the floor in there,” she said, turning her head away from me.

“Yeah, horseshit honey,” I said with a chuckle. “So, you gonna come clean with me now?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she growled. “I’m going to the guards as soon as you let me go and charging you for assault.

“Who said Imma let you go?” I asked. “I’m done done interrogating the murderer yet.”

“I didn’t murder anyone!” she screamed, trying to headbutt me. I looked her in her eyes and smirked, chuckling softly before speaking to her again.

“I can tell you’re not focussing on your disguise anymore,” I said. “Your eyes have changed colour from blue to grey. So come on, hun. Come clean and tell me who you really are.”

She blinked at me for a moment, her face of innocence melting away to one of annoyance, her high-pitched young voice being replaced with a deeper, much more sultry one as she spoke next.

“Very clever,” she growled, her red hair, grey eyes, and human-coloured skin melting away to reveal the same demon colours as the demon in the torture chamber. I could hear her arrow-tip tail swishing in an annoyed manner beneath her as she stared at me with a discontented expression.

“Now, wanna come clean with what you did?” I asked.

“No,” she said in a flat manner.

“Fair enough,” I shrugged, reaching over my back for my sword.

“Alright, alright!” she snapped. “I was hired for a job to torture some chick and kill her but I had to keep the body intact.”

“By who?” I asked.

“Those three chuckle-fucks in the mansion back there,” she said, nodding towards the direction we’d come from. “Happy now?”

“Why one of your own?” I asked. “Why torture her?”

“They said they wanted to keep entertained,” she said. “But I bailed out hard when the rape started. That’s not what I signed on for.”

“Huh, a demon with standards,” I said with a cocked eyebrow. “That’s not something you see everyday.”

“Huh, a human that’s not summoning me to fuck him in the ass,” she snapped in response. “That’s not something you see everyday.”

I blinked quietly for a second, moving my hand down to her undercarriage and feeling something a lot more masculine than I should’ve.

“Hey!” she snapped in an angry voice. “I’m not try before you buy! You want a feel of my cock, you’ve gotta cough up for it!”

“I haven’t run into a demon like you before,” I said, moving my hand off her dick. “I’ve read about you before, but never had the chance to meet one. You’re not making a good first impression here.”

“Like I fucking care,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“You said you were hired, right?” I asked. “What do you get hired for usually?”

“Dick or duty, usually,” she shrugged. “I’m either hired by thugs looking for a tough demon for places I don’t mention I have a dick, or I’m hired by forty year old married men with three kids to help come to terms with the fact they’re gay. Either way, it’s good money.”

“Fair point,” I nodded.

“Are you gonna let me go now?” she demanded.

“You killed someone,”

“So did you.”

“They were demons.”

“Wow. Racist.”

“They also murdered people.”

“And yet the first fault you went for was that they were demons?”

“... Okay, good point.”

“Exactly. Now let me up,” she growled.

“No, you’re a murderer and you’re going to jail,” I said.

“I can teleport, fucker,” she sighed. “For example…”

She then proceeded to fall through the floor as a purple vortex opened behind her that sealed before I went through it. She then reappeared behind me with her arms crossed and her tail swishing, her disturbed cloak now making her bulge very visible. I got up and turned around, reaching for my sword again before she waved her hand.

“Look, I don’t wanna kill you because I don’t know you,” she stated. “I did what I did for business, got paid for it, and now I just wanna go home, take a bath, and dump a load into whatever prostitute is desperate enough for a Futa Demon’s money. If you start a fight, I’ll finish one. If you don’t, we both walk away from here happy and contented. Whaddaya say?”

My better judgement told me it was a good idea to bring her to justice, but the lazy Richter that just wanted to go home and fuck Svea told me I should just take the agreements.

“Ugh… well, one sin has the same effect as a thousand,” I shrugged, lowering my hand from my sword and nodding. “Go on, get going.”

“Good choice,” she chuckled, reaching into her bra, pushing her huge tits around as she did so, before pulling out a small stone. “You seem like the adventurey type, am I right? If you’ve ever got a fun adventure planned and some spare coin laying around, use this to get in contact with me. I can help you fight off competitors, carry loot back to a cashing-in spot or teach you how to suck cock by a campfire, if that’s what you’re into.”

“I’ll keep the first two in mind,” I chuckled. “Third one’s not exactly my kind of thing.”

“Then if you’ve got a girl that wants a threesome but doesn’t like the idea of another dude, you know where to find me,” she winked, chucking the red gem over to me. I caught it and slipped it into a pelt pouch.

“What do I call you?” I asked after I put it away.

“Advalia,” she answered, blowing a kiss with her thick, purple lips. “See you round, hot stuff.”

With that she teleported away, leaving me standing alone at the bottom of a hill, with a new gem in the pocket and an urge to wash my hand. I put my hands on my hips and chuckled, once again amazed by the sheer number of demon species that existed in this existence.

“So… not only do I have several cat girls, a dragon, and my own mother ready and willing to fuck at a moment’s notice,” I said to myself. “I’ve also got a well-endowed-in-all-ways Futa Demon willing to work with and fuck me if I should ever need it.”

It was at this point I wondered: If I looked back on the past few days, could I tell exactly where my life went off the fucking rails or would it just be a number of things in combination? If I had to put my money on it, I’d probably say it was in the past few moments in which I groped a rather large dick attached to a female demon.

“It’s a good job I’m not homophobic,” I chuckled. “Or else I’d be cutting this hand off right now.”