Placing the last of the figurines back inside the case, Carnelia sighed as she closed the glass lid.

Golems, each and every one of them.

Leaning back in the lushly-cushioned chair that dominated the back corner of the room she’d taken for herself, she looked down at the display case holding the sixteen figurines, each one set in an indentation that had been made for it amidst the foam backing. Sitting on the small side table, the case’s contents looked more like showpieces – or perhaps accessories for some sort of boardgame – than the engines of devastation that she now knew they were.

As far as artificially-crafted servants went, golems were the apex of magical design. Faultlessly obedient, physically powerful, and most importantly of all, almost completely immune to spells of all kinds. They were more durable than reanimated undead, more reliable than summoned creatures, and more deadly than a dragon – a young dragon, at least – when sent against magic-users.

But that power came at a cost. Literally so, as golems were fantastically expensive to make. And while a large part of that was due to the sheer amount of spellwork which had to be utilized to animate them, enhance their resilience, and make them able to ignore magic, Carnelia knew that the bulk of the cost came from simply preparing their hulking frames. Sculpting, reinforcement, and preparations for enchantment could take months – and devour large chunks of a kingdom’s treasury – before a single golem was completed.

All the more so since the strongest golems were made out of the toughest materials. So while wood, glass, or even bones could be used for cheaper and quicker golems, the strongest would be made out of more robust sunstances...like those in the display case.

Eight made out of stone, noted Carnelia, idly running her fingers over the glass. Two made of iron. Two of brass. Two of gold. One mithral. One adamantine.

Carnelia couldn’t begin to guess how much money had gone into making those, but she felt certain that it was a sum that would have required many, many zeroes to write out. All the more so since she was fairly sure each of the golems had been imbued with additional powers; as far as she knew, most such automatons couldn’t be made to shrink down the way these ones had been.

And that wasn’t even taking into account the display case itself, which was enchanted to repair damage that had been dealt to any constructs which were placed inside it.

Taken altogether, an intelligent user could overthrow a small nation with that set.

And those staves are almost certainly the same, she groaned inwardly, looking at where the five items in question were piled haphazardly at the foot of her bed. Which means it’ll almost certainly be equally hard to decode their effects.

She could feel a headache coming on.

As a brachina – a pleasure devil – who specialized in psychic magic, material analysis was outside of her forte. Her specialty was influencing mortal targets as a method of indirect warfare, using her body, her wits, and her magic to manipulate others. Whether it was turning over information, performing treachery, or simply lowering their guard, making her targets do her bidding – sometimes without even realizing that it was her bidding – had long been her area of expertise.

Now she was reduced to cataloging magic items.

Powerful magic items, to be sure, but that didn’t change the fact that her talents were being wasted.

But I can’t afford to complain, Carnelia knew, rising from her chair to strut over to the staves, the exaggerated motion of her gait – hips swaying and chest bouncing – long since having become ingrained in her to the point of doing it even when no one else was around. Not when I’ve messed up twice in the first twenty-four hours of this assignment.

That was enough to make her clench her jaw, even as she picked up the first staff – a polished length of wood that was dark and whorled, capped with a claw made of silver and clutching a smoky crystal – and began to undress. Tossing her blouse to the floor, she hiked her skirt up around her waist before pulling the staff against her, curling one leg around it and burying the hard wood in her cleavage, fingers playing over the turgid stiffness as she rubbed her cheek against the head.

Psychometry, the power to read an aura by touch, always worked better the more contact she had.

Multiple auras, she determined after almost a full minute, eyes closed as she shifted in place, rocking slowly against the staff. A half-dozen? No, a full dozen, maybe more...

Seconds passed, with the only sound being her breathing growing heavier as she started to move faster, working harder to make the staff give her what she wanted.

Spell resistance, she noted, managing to tease the strongest aura out of hiding. And...spell absorption? It can repel magic but also drink it in?

Carnelia frowned then, her concentration wavering as an unpleasant memory came back.

Burly Brawl had also been able to repel her magic.

That the lumbering oaf had made a fool out of her was bad enough. That he’d done so in front of Lex, on his very first assignment to her, was worse. Nor did it help that the entire debacle had happened in front of those other wenches he’d brought back with him, making her seem less capable than them.

But the most disastrous aspect of that misadventure had been that the backup she’d so foolishly summoned had seen her faltering. By now, they had already reported back on what had happened, which meant that Jezebel would soon be aware – if she wasn’t already – that her chosen agent was stumbling right out of the proverbial gate.

That wasn’t something Carnelia could afford if she was going to betray her mistress.

Jezebel’s father – Bel, the former Lord of the First – was, in Carnelia’s estimation, unlikely to ever regain his position as the ruler of Hell’s uppermost stratum. Reacquiring a rank that you’d previously lost was extremely rare in infernal politics, and the fact that Zariel, Bel’s predecessor, had managed to pull off just such a comeback made it that much less likely that Bel ever would. While Carnelia didn’t know all the details of how her mistress’s sire had originally taken his position, the event having happened long before she’d existed, she knew that it had involved his winning enough of Zariel’s trust to use it against her.

That wouldn’t happen a second time.

Which meant that while he might be able to delay the inevitable, Bel’s fate was ultimately sealed, as was the fate of everyone who still worked for him.

And since Carnelia hadn’t been able to relinquish her status as a brachina, that included her.

While all denizens of the Outer Planes were capable of evolving into greater forms over time, gaining strength as they acclimated more to the nature of their home plane and were able to graft more of its substance onto their soul, Hell had long since systematized the process. The diabolic forms that a soul could achieve, including their powers, appearance, and even weaknesses, were all set in a formalized hierarchy. Being promoted meant getting through a rigorous review process, one which – like everything in Hell – required not only actual accomplishments, but also an ability to navigate the complex web of blackmail, bribery, lies, threats, and other political concerns.

Unless you were willing to risk stepping outside of the normal advancement process.

The fact of the matter was that while the types of devils one could become were set, new forms were constantly being tried. But whereas the standard forms were authorized and approved by the Ministry of Promotions, every so often a member of the infernal nobility – those devils who had been promoted past the rank of pit fiend, the topmost of the standard diabolic evolutions, and earned the privilege of designing customized forms for themselves – would petition for, and even more rarely be granted, the right to introduce a new form into the standard hierarchy.

Such a thing was always done on a provisional basis, and had to serve a specific purpose; some area where the noble in question thought that Hell’s apparatus (which was another word for its personnel) could be improved. If the new form lived up to the Ministry of Promotions’ expectations, then it could be incorporated into the standard hierarchy, enhancing that noble’s prestige and giving them the right to design an even stronger customized body for themselves.

Of course, the opposite was also true, since if a noble’s design failed to achieve impressive results, they would suffer a major loss of face. Given the opportunistic and scheming nature of Hell’s upper echelon – beings who had not only survived, but thrived amidst the most cutthroat environment in all of Creation – such a setback had consequences that were often far worse than merely fatal.

And yet, there were many who tried anyway.

Jezebel had been one of them, introducing the design for the pleasure devil.

Like so many others, Carnelia had leaped at the chance to try out an original form; such a thing was essentially an easy promotion, so why not take advantage of it while it was available?

In hindsight, it had been a tremendous mistake.

The infernal hierarchy had no form which specialized in temptation via the promise of carnal pleasure. At the time she’d signed up to become a brachina, Carnelia had just assumed that was some sort of oversight on the Ministry of Promotions’ part; that they’d written off using sexuality as a vector for corruption because they’d judged it too chaotic – too similar to succubi, the demonic harlots who killed via copulation – to be in Hell’s interests.

She’d found out later that the real reason was because all such designs had been sabotaged over the eons.

There were several female members of Hell’s nobility – a distinct minority at that level, since most nobles chose a male form as an homage to the King of Hell – who were locked in a cold war over that very issue.

Fierana, daughter of Belial, Lord of the Fourth and who shared rulership of that layer of Hell with him.

Lilith, wife of Baalzebul, Lord of the Seventh, whose beauty and cunning were so great that she’d actually managed to “trade up” from being wife of Moloch, the now-former Lord of the Sixth, in favor of her current husband.

Glasya, the daughter of the King of Hell, who had taken over as the new Lord of the Sixth, the first female devil ever to rule one of Hell’s nine layers on her own.

All three considered themselves the most beautiful woman in Hell, and all three were convinced that they were the only ones fit to design a form that lured mortals to damnation via dark desire. While they weren’t the only she-devils who specialized in temptation – Ardad Lili being an up-and-coming seductress in the infernal ranks – they were the most prominent, and undermined all attempts to horn in on what all three considered to be their sovereign right as the pinnacle of diabolical beauty.

So naturally, none of them had taken it well when Jezebel had slipped her design for the brachina past them.

But whatever schemes they’d had to scuttle her plans had proven redundant when Bel had been overthrown, the trio instead focusing on leaving Jezebel no openings to abandon her father in favor of making her own way in the infernal nobility.

And with Jezebel having been forced to remain in the camp of a devil whose star was fading, the fate of those devils who’d elected to become brachina had become grim indeed.

A few of the pleasure devils had managed to put in for a promotion, though as far as Carnelia knew almost none had been granted. Most had instead petitioned for an immediate demotion, knowing that it was better to accept the penalty of being reassigned to a lower form than they’d had before becoming a brachina – even if it was voluntary, Hell never let a step backwards go unpunished – than to tie their fate to an outcast who would likely never regain power.

The bulk of those demotions had gone through...but not all of them.

With so many petitions suddenly clogging the system, many brachina had realized they weren’t going to be able to change forms for quite some time. Desperation had thus led to other options being considered, few of them good.

Some had settled for becoming the concubines of other nobles, effectively abandoning all prospects of advancement in exchange for political cover, though given the fearsome reputations that Glasya, Fierana, and Lilith commanded, only a few minor nobles – most of them either foolish, or repugnant, or both – had agreed to take them in.

Others had thrown in with Zariel, hoping that the new Lord of the First would be willing to accept her old enemy’s subordinates into her ranks. As far as Carnelia knew, all of them had either been killed or delivered to Jezebel’s rivals. Zariel, as it turned out, was more interested in forging ties among the devils with power than in welcoming diabolic refugees who had none.

And of course, many brachina had been covertly slain by other devils, either in repayment for old grudges or to wipe out someone to whom they owed a favor or simply to take out a potential competitor. Such things were simply par for the course in Hell.

All of which had left Carnelia, and the few other brachina left, with no choice but to continue supporting Jezebel and her father.

But while Carnelia knew that some of her contemporaries were betting that Bel would somehow manage to regain his position as Lord of the First, she had no such hope.

What she needed was something major – some incredible accomplishment or dire blackmail material or something of significance – that she could use to convince the Ministry of Promotions to ignore the wishes of Jezebel’s rivals and advance her to a new form – a higher form – in the standard hierarchy.

She had no idea how to do that, but she was betting on Lex Legis being the key.

Of course, Carnelia hadn’t told any of that to Jezebel. Instead, she’d managed to convince her mistress that she’d be able to not only recoup the aristeia that Jezebel had (foolishly, in Carnelia’s opinion) invested in Adagio Dazzle, but also manipulate him into supporting Bel’s ambitions...and she knew full well that Jezebel had ambitions of her own. But being one of the few truly powerful devils her father had left, Bel was keeping his daughter on a short leash, so Jezebel had to work via proxy.

It was a situation that Carnelia was eager to take advantage of...except that she’d manage foul things up not only with Burly Brawl, but also with Gwynharwyf.

That almost everyone else had also been affected by Branwen’s aura of strife, fighting each other instead of their common enemy, made that only marginally better. As a practitioner of psychic magic, the fact that she’d been so easily swayed by someone else was particularly humiliating. It was one thing to lose a contest of wills with someone like Lex, who had the power to overwhelm Jezebel herself; it was quite another to be affected by some fey bitch who didn’t even seem to realize what she was doing.

The entire thing had left a bad taste in her mouth and scrambling to make up for her failures, which was why she had to at least perform up to Solvei’s expectations now. With Lex off on some unspecified errand, this was the best use of her time. The sooner she could work her way into the good graces of Lex’s “wives,” the sooner she could figure out how to get what she wanted from him.

And if he decided he wanted to enjoy her again in the meantime, so much the better.

A smile crossing her lips as she recalled the incredible bout of marathon sex that had marked her introduction to the stallion who was currently her patron, Carnelia rubbed herself against the staff even more vigorously, coaxing more of its auras to swell up inside her awareness.

There we go, she cooed silently. There we go, let’s see now...planar travel magic? That will come in handy, and-

A metallic clink broke her concentration, causing her eyes to open as she looked toward the sound.

The iron flask, one of the magic items Solvei had given her to analyze, had fallen off the nightstand.

Carnelia frowned. For some reason, that particular item had been periodically shaking and fidgeting of its own accord, and it had become distracting.

Fighting down another sigh, Carnelia placed the staff down, fixing her clothes as she retrieved the flask. Picking it up, she turned it over, holding it with both hands as she worked her psychometry on it-

Release me!

Carnelia very nearly dropped the flask as a voice from inside it echoed in her mind. What?

Let me out!

Blinking once, Carnelia tentatively reached out telepathically...

A few minutes later, she couldn’t hold back a grin.

This was it! This was what she’d been waiting for! If she turned this over to the Ministry of Promotions, they’d have to give her what she wanted! She’d be able to leave Jezebel’s camp without repercussions! By the time the pale bitch learned what happened, it would be too late!

Nor would Lex be able to stop her, since judging by what Solvei had said, he had no idea what these items were, let alone what this one contained. He’d be left high and dry, unable to do anything except curse himself for having been fool enough to trust-

“It would have made more sense for him to let her die; he’d pledged to Jezebel that he’d protect her, of course, but that sort of promise was pro forma nonsense. It would have been easy to say that she’d been killed because she was incompetent, and then indict Jezebel for that, accusing her of deliberately sending an inept go-between as an excuse for pressuring her for more treasures...or even severing their relationship while keeping what he’d already gained from her. Either option, Carnelia knew, was far more valuable than her own life.

And yet Lex had saved her. Why?”

The memory came out of nowhere, making Carnelia feel as if someone had suddenly squeezed her heart, doubling over as a cry of pain escaped her lips.

What...what was going on?

Shaking her head, she forced herself to ignore the sensation. She’d undergone pain conditioning – both physical and mental – during Jezebel’s training after becoming a brachina. This was nothing compared to that. She’d take this, betray both Jezebel and Lex-

Immediately, the pain came back, causing Carnelia to sink to her knees.

It wasn’t, despite her initial impression, a physical sensation. Nor was it caused by any of the magical controls Lex had placed on her after accepting her into his service. She was very familiar with curses, geases, and charms of all kinds, and she knew that they didn’t act like this. They would have either waited until she’d taken action – rather than punishing a treacherous thought – or would have tried to gently nudge her mind away from contemplating stabbing Lex in the back-

This time she couldn’t hold back a whimper as the unknown feeling, some kind of emotion she wasn’t familiar with yet was powerful enough to cause a physical reaction, caused her to shudder, feeling almost nauseous at the thought of double-crossing her lover...

Wait, her “lover”?

That was just something she called Lex during their telepathic conversations in an effort to turn him on. Not how she actually thought of him. Why-

A knock came from the door behind her. “Carnelia?”

Recognizing Mei Li’s voice, Carnelia tucked the flask into her cleavage before shakily standing up, taking just a moment to reassure herself that she was alright before opening the door. “Yes?”

Smiling excitedly, the kumiho's tails wagged behind her. “I just finished speaking to my Aunt Yuyan, and she wishes to meet my husband! Is there anything among the treasures you were given that could help bring her here?”

Pausing at that, Carnelia glanced back at the staff she'd been examining, recalling the planar travel magic it held.

Still perturbed by what had just happened, she didn't let her trepidation show on her face as she nodded. “I believe there is.”

Author's Note

Carnelia investigates the magic items Solvei gave her, only to be shocked by what one of them contains, and even more surprised when thoughts of betraying Lex cause her unexpected pain!

What's happening to Carnelia? And what exactly is inside of that flask?