Location ???
Universe ??? BC (Before Calamity)
Time 25 minutes until Walpurgisnacht
Everything is finite.
That has been the irrefutable truth since the Big Bang. What began as the formation of countless galaxies and the eternal expansion of the universe would one day lead to a far but certain era of perpetual nothingness. Life would extinguish, the stars diminished, and time no longer having meaning.
Every sentient being is subconsciously aware of this inevitability. That our time spent living in our respective worlds is precious.
Yet there will always be those who wish to deny this truth and defy their fate. Thus, this has led to the imminent destruction of all things—the End of Days.
Monstrous clouds of unknowable matter consume and assimilate every corner. Planets, comets, and energies reduce to dust. Ripples of cosmic strain flow through the endless vacuum, reaching every possible outcome in the multiverse.
It was as if existence itself was screaming. And those very cries of terror led to an ancient awakening.
Far beyond the vastness of space, outside the observable universe, lies a void where time is dead and meaning is obsolete. The only resemblance to any establishment or landmark was an inverted prism full of constantly shifting bricks, sailing over a sea of dead stars.
Within this chaotic pyramid of ever-changing rooms, decoration, and stability was a bridge that led to a pedestal near the core. Along the walkway stood sculptures of animal-headed deities in robes, each holding a variety of items, weapons, and tools. Gleaming out of the podium was a constellation map of every galaxy and a branching timeline.
But instead of a vibrant array of colors and stars, a growing splotch of distortion and darkness spreads to consume and assimilate each galaxy within its reach.
Something moved in the darkness, now alerted by the low tumbles and tremors shaking his home. A lazy yawn echoed in the empty halls, followed by the skittering of many legs. A sickening shadow emerged from the bleak blackness as if darkness had taken a horrid elongated shape that stretched infinitely.
The primordial horror crawled towards the light shimmering above. A humanoid torso of decrypted purple flesh, tendrils untraced from muscles that wriggled excitedly. Two arms with long sharp nails stretched out, with two more attached to the right shoulder and left elbow. Dressed in a pharaoh’s loincloth, bracelets, and usekh, the lower body resembling a myriapod, each pulsating segment pitch black, writhing in hands that were not hands.
A massive appendage whipping about atop the shoulders loomed over the celestial map, a narrow slit splitting apart to reveal a gaping wet chasm rinned by thousands of needle-like teeth. And within the perpetual deep black of the maw stretched a sinister smile.
“ØⱧ ₥Ɏ,” a silky deep baritone voice resonated from the eldritch horror. “₴Ø ₥Ʉ₵Ⱨ ₵Ø₦₣Ⱡł₵₮ ł₴ Ⱨ₳₱₱Ɇ₦ł₦₲. ł Ⱨ₳VɆ₦’₮ ₣ɆⱠ₮ ₴Ʉ₵Ⱨ ₮ⱤɆ₥Ɇ₦ĐØɄ₴ ₣ØⱤ₵Ɇ ₴ł₦₵Ɇ ₮ⱧɆ ฿łⱤ₮Ⱨ Ø₣ ₳ɆØ₦₴! ⱤɆ₳Ⱡł₮Ɏ ₳₴ ₳ ₩ⱧØⱠɆ ł₴ ₣₳ⱠⱠł₦₲ ₳₱₳Ɽ₮! ₳₦Đ ɎɆ₮, ł₮ ₱ⱤØĐɄ₵Ɇ₴ ₴Ʉ₵Ⱨ ₩Ø₦ĐⱤØɄ₴ ₴₵ⱤɆ₳₥₴! ₳ⱧⱧⱧ..!”
He dipped a finger to collect some of the corrupted star matter, scooping it off with a dexterous tongue. “... ₳₦Đ ₴₩ɆɆ₮, ĐɆⱠł₵łØɄ₴ ₵Ⱨ₳Ø₴,” he salivated. “₩ł₮Ⱨ ₳ ⱫɆ₴₮Ɏ ₮₳₦₲ Ø₣... ØØⱧ! ₥Ø₮ⱧɆⱤ’₴ ₥łⱠ₭~!”
The otherworldly being leaned his ‘face’ closer to further observe the decaying universe, lost in the lengthening storm clouds. A low chuckle tickles his throat. “ØⱧ, ₴ⱧɄ฿฿Ɏ! ₩Ⱨ₳₮ Ⱨ₳VɆ ɎØɄ ฿ɆɆ₦ Ʉ₱ ₮Ø? ₳₦Đ ₩ⱧɎ ₮ⱧɆ ₣₳₴₵ł₦₳₮łØ₦ ₩ł₮Ⱨ ₮Ⱨł₴ Ʉ₦łVɆⱤ₴Ɇ?”
He sank his digits further into the map to pull up that particular section of stars, planets, and galaxies, which reflected in the interiors of his domain. The outer god peered closely through the nimbostratus abomination and found the source of all the calamity. The results earned his hearty laughter.
“Ø₣ ₵ØɄⱤ₴Ɇ!” the anthropoid monstrosity mused. "₴₮Ʉ₱łĐ, ₣ɆɆ฿ⱠɆ ₥ł₦Đ₴ ₣ɆĐ ₩ł₮Ⱨ ₮Ɇ₥₱₮₳₮łØ₦ ₣ØⱤ ₴Ʉ฿JɄ₲₳₮łØ₦. ₳Ⱨ₳Ⱨ! ₴Ʉ₵Ⱨ ₥₳ⱤVɆⱠØɄ₴ ₮Ⱨł₦₲₴, ₮ⱧɆ₴Ɇ ₥ØⱤ₮₳Ⱡ₴! ₳Ⱡ₩₳Ɏ₴ ₴Ø ⱧɆⱠ₱₣ɄⱠ ₩ł₮Ⱨ ₮ⱧɆ Đł₴₲Ɽ₳₵Ɇ Ø₣ ₵ⱤɆ₳₮łØ₦~!”
He then extracted a bit of star matter that formed the constellations of the two anomalies responsible for this madness. A violet unicorn witch and a blackened cervine sorcerer, constantly glitching.
“฿Ʉ₮ ɎØɄ ₮₩Ø... ØⱧⱧ, ₮ⱧɆⱤɆ’₴ ₴Ø₥Ɇ₮Ⱨł₦₲ ₴₱Ɇ₵ł₳Ⱡ ₲Øł₦₲ Ø₦ ⱧɆⱤɆ! ₭ł₦ĐⱤɆĐ ₴₱łⱤł₮₴, ฿Ø₮Ⱨ ⱠØ₴₮ ₳₦Đ ĐɆ₴₱ɆⱤ₳₮Ɇ ₮Ø Ʉ₦₮Ɇ₮ⱧɆⱤ ₮ⱧɆ ₮ⱧⱤɆ₳Đ₴ Ø₣ ₣₳₮Ɇ ฿ł₦Đł₦₲ ₮ⱧɆłⱤ ₴ØɄⱠ₴. ₥₥₥, Ɇ₴₱Ɇ₵ł₳ⱠⱠɎ ₮Ⱨł₴ Ø₦Ɇ.” The outer god tapped the head of the nightmare stag. “Ⱨł₴ ⱧɄ₦₲ɆⱤ ₳₦Đ ₩Ɽ₳₮Ⱨ ₴Ⱨ₳ⱠⱠ ⱤɆ₴Ⱨ₳₱Ɇ ₮ⱧɆ ₩ØⱤⱠĐ, ₴₱łⱤ₳Ⱡł₦₲ ł₦₮Ø ₳ ฿Ø₮₮Ø₥ⱠɆ₴₴ ₱ł₮ Ø₣ ₥₳Đ₦Ɇ₴₴. ₩Ɇ₳Vł₦₲ ₥Ø₦₴₮ⱤØɄ₴ ₦ł₲Ⱨ₮₥₳ⱤɆ₴ ₴Ø ⱧØⱤⱤł฿ⱠɆ, ₳Ⱬ₳₮ⱧØ₮Ⱨ ₴₮łⱤ₴ ł₦ Ⱨł₴ ₴ⱠɆɆ₱. Ⱨ₥₱Ⱨ... ₳฿ØɄ₮ ₮ł₥Ɇ ₮Ⱨ₳₮ ฿Ⱡł₦Đ łĐłØ₮ ₲Ø₮ ₳ ₩₳₭Ɇ-Ʉ₱ ₵₳ⱠⱠ.”
A loud quake shook the foundations of the prism, causing rubble and stones to fall everywhere. The quake also knocked aside the sacred statues of the mythology the black pharaoh conceived.
His heinous visage loomed over the starry image of Beatrix Belladonna. “฿Ʉ₮ ₮ⱧɆ₦, ⱧØ₩ ₳ⱤɆ ɎØɄ ₮Ø ₱ⱤɆV₳łⱠ? Ⱡ₳₮Ɇ Ø₦ ₳ⱤⱤłV₳Ⱡ, ₮ⱧɆ ₴ØɄⱤ₵Ɇ Ø₣ ɎØɄⱤ ₱Ø₩ɆⱤ ₲Ø₦Ɇ ₳₦Đ ⱠɆ₳₱₮ ⱧɆ₳Đ ₣łⱤ₴₮ ₮Ø ₣ł₲Ⱨ₮ ₳₦ ɆⱠĐɆⱤ ₲ØĐĐɆ₴₴ ₳₦Đ ⱧɆⱤ ₩ØⱤ₴Ⱨł₱₱ɆⱤ₴, ₩Ⱨł₵Ⱨ ₩łⱠⱠ Ʉ₦ĐØɄ฿₮ɆĐⱠɎ Ɇ₦Đ ₩ł₮Ⱨ ɎØɄⱤ ĐɆ₥ł₴Ɇ. ₮Ⱨł₴ ł₴ ₳ⱠⱠ VɆⱤɎ Ø₦Ɇ-₴łĐɆĐ... ₳₦Đ ØⱧ-₴Ø ₣₳₦₮₳₴₮ł₵~!”
The eldritch abomination cackled with giddiness, unbothered by the situation happening to his home as it crumbled further into ruin. He cupped the violet unicorn into his hands, his malicious smile widening.
“ł ₵₳₦’₮ ₩₳ł₮ ₮Ø ₴ɆɆ ₩Ⱨ₳₮ Ⱨ₳₱₱Ɇ₦₴ ₦ɆӾ₮~!”
𝕯𝒶𝖞𝒹𝖗ℯ𝖆𝓂𝖘 𝖆𝓃𝖉 𝕹𝒾𝖌𝒽𝖙𝓂𝖆𝓇𝖊𝓈
𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓔𝓷𝓭 𝓸𝓯 𝓛𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓪𝓻𝓴
Location Isle of Parras
Universe Tir Nad Spiorad BC (Lost World)
Time 11 minutes until Walpurgisnacht
A distorted whoosh sounded from the arrival of Tegimen, the Glamorguis that once assumed the form of the manor, now serving as the Vice Lord’s castle. The eldritch beast settled its monumental structure in the heavily wooded area. Where the eldritch worshippers, known collectively as 'the Cult of the Nemesis', had established one of their camps.
A creak sounded from the drawbridge, which had toppled over the drenched grass, and vampire bats squealed as they escaped from the shadowy, cool interior.
The Legion of Black Roses emerged into the stormy night; their forces thinned after Clan Jakobson invaded their monstrous fortress. Their chieftain, Lord Haden, was successful in recovering his daughter, Oona Ewe.
Alma took the lead, the Baobhan Sith mounted atop Douglas, the kelpie reduced to a mindless sea beast. Her fleshy pale wings furled around herself, resembling a bloodied cloak that concealed her otherwise naked form. The antenna-like feelers shuddered in the air, her face contorting with disgust.
“Yuck! Still pungent ov sea water,” muttered the auburn-haired blood faerie, who dug her heel into her steed’s side. Scarlet eyes then fell on her subordinates. “Esmeralda, Camellia. Stand by an’ await further orders.”
The tallest vampiress wore a pale porcelain mask decorated with bloodied tear marks. A waterfall of straight black hair cascaded down to her ankles, much like the transparent dark silk dress that contrasted pallid skin. Shimmering red eyes met her mistress’. “Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own? Not to say we doubt your prowess, mistress, but-”
“Indeed! Tatyana could pull something treacherous of her own!” The masked mare's lover, Esmeralda, planted a milky hand on her slender, toned hip, a concerned frown that showed a sharp tooth on cherry red lips as her twin pink braids trailed in the winds, like the skirt-like attire of her form-fitting white suit decorated by crosses. She reached for a coiled whip at her weapon-lined belt. “Please, mistress! For your sake and our own! Allow us to–”
“No,” hissed Alma. “Ye are tae heed mah commands an’ stand down. A one-on-one meet-up was promised, an’ Ah won't show hesitation. Wit our pact tae Lady She’ba in play, Ah have nothin’ tae worry about from th’ Sovereign Witch.”
Both bat mares shuddered at the mention of the eldritch satyress that wore the dream faun’s face, recalling the horrid humiliation they suffered at the hands (and tentacles) of her Darkyung. The mother’s milk of the Ebony Goat of the Woods had altered them all to awaken buried potential, or in the case of Douglas, worked all too well.
Yet, the Baobhan Sith remained ignorant of their obvious superstition and distaste, giving a swish of the reigns that forced Douglas into a gallop. Both Vice Lords hurried towards the crashing waves of the raging sea, honing in on the fleet of distant ships that steadily approached.
Esmeralda waited until their mistress vanished before sighing with relief, her eyes on the sky that crackled under a cosmic storm. “We're alone, love. Can we trust the castle not to report on us?”
“I believe it's equally unhappy with the current circumstances,” presumed Camellia, her dress and hair flowing in the gale as she glided across the drawbridge, aware the glamorguis could hear whatever they said. “I'm sure it can take care of itself for a few moments.”
Esmeralda pressed her chin to the steel chains. “See you soon, okay? We'll try and bring you back a snack or two from our latest hunt!”
The moment the vampiric couple crossed over onto land, the castle's entrance withdrew and slammed shut. A shudder and groan emanated from the eldritch beast.
“I miss the days when the 'Womb of Conception' was ours,” lamented Camellia, in reference to what they'd called their mansion in its former configuration. “I thought Alma would be a worthy queen of the vampires. But my faith has dwindled after the latest blind choices she has made. There’s no mistaking it. She’ba–”
“Shub’Niggurath,” corrected Esmeralda with a spiteful sneer.
The taller vampire continues. “-can’t be trusted at any cost!”
“I still can’t believe Alma made us drink that harlot goat’s milk! Who knows what debased vermin we could devolve into if we drank too much!?” She quivered while strolling hand-in-hand with her statuesque lover.
“It's unthinkable! At least we're even stronger than before.” To demonstrate, Camellia's black locks moved like tendrils, her hair like silky steel that plucked a stray flower.
“Aww, for me? How sweet~!” Esmeralda took the flower and kissed her masked cheek.
“We'd better cease the chatter,” observed Camellia, as, after a short walk later, they came across a trail that led into a thick, wooded area submerged in darkness. The place where the Cult of the Nemesis resided in one of its main encampments.
The pair of aristocrats moved swiftly and silently towards the campsite, much like they had as monster huntresses on their homeworld. Gothic architecture partially made from clockwork technology made up a pea soup-ridden mistiness, where creatures lurked in the dark and preyed on people. It was because of them that civilians were safe, with a bit of blood taken as payment.
Most of the female persuasion do not drain their prey to death, unlike the gluttonous appetite of their sire and former master, Dhullex Faustus. The infamous vampire lord was once the ruler of their manor before they took it from the rotten old bastard!
Odd noises emanated from the night, the enhanced eyesight of the couple able to vaguely make out creatures that watched them pass, not quite mere animals from their appearance or the smells they breathed in. Creatures from the netherworld, or twisted experiments of the cult?
They paused behind a tree trunk and spotted a solitary tent. With a shared look and nod, the huntresses snuck inside. A few cultists with torches in hand stood on watch, but the pair moved to dispatch them with practiced ease.
Camellia's dark hair snaked out to ensnare the limbs, throats, and mouths of the startled acolytes, pressure applied until she deprived them of air. Esmeralda likewise unfurled a small crossbow and unloaded a series of darts that tranquilized the cultists, who toppled into the dirt.
They traded a kiss of victory, their silhouettes dancing across the dimly lit tent to unveil much of their lovely forms. Much as they disliked the cult, they didn't dare kill them, lest they face worse scrutiny and punishment. Together, the vampire lovers stalked their way inside the tent flap.
But what awaited them inside was the last thing Camellia or Esmeralda hoped to see: a solitary stone-forged coffin with a familiar insignia of a boar-faced bat embedded on the lacquered lid.
“No,” breathed Camellia, her eyes pinpoint behind her pale mask. “N-no, it cannot be..!”
“I-It’s just a replica,” Esmeralda feebly sputtered. “It has to be!”
The sarcophagus was ornately fashioned and ancient, although its old owner wasn't nearly that old. Despite how hard she trembled and balked, the petite thestral found herself inching closer towards the ominous coffin.
“Esmeralda,” her lover warned. “Please, don’t–”
But it was already too late, as the lid opened with a creak the moment her delicate fingers touched the top.
The mummified cadaver of their former master lay within, arms folded over his thinned chest. The remains of the noble alchemist and self-proclaimed lord of the vampires, who had forced the once unscarred beauty Camellia and cocky youth Esmeralda into becoming his brides.
The tall vampiress huffed heavily from the awful memories. Her pendulous breasts were so full, and pale veins were visible across her supple flesh. Her wide pink nipples were stiff in the cold under the transparent, thin black shift. Dread made her knees weaken, and she clutched onto her love for support. “Faustus... he’s here!!”
“He once claimed it was impossible to destroy him! That he'd be reborn in some fashion.” Esmeralda cautiously touched his chilly arm, skin stretched and dried over a skeletal frame, his once royal purple suit faded, and his hair matted. “Fuck..!” She whispered. “It’s faint, a-and slow, but I feel a heartbeat!”
“Stay back!!”
Camellia pulled her more impulsive partner away from the coffin, only to shriek in surprise when his hand shot up and seized the top of her shift. She reeled back herself, her top torn open to allow her large, pendulous bosom to wobble out in the open. Claw-like nails raked the surface of her milky skin, drawing a thin red line to drip blood.
Esmeralda reacted to intercept and catch the droplets on her palm before they could fall into their sire's cracked lips. “That was close! Gods, if he were to feed on us again..!”
Camellia wrapped an arm over her naked breasts, clutching over the tiny wound, before admitting, “I dread to linger on the thought of how powerful he would become should Shub’Niggurath nurse him with mother’s milk! Is that why they brought him here? To use him as a weapon?!”
“We can’t let that happen,” sneered Esmeralda with heated breaths. “He’s vulnerable right now. Let’s drive a stake into the old fuck’s heart and be done with him for good!”
“You know that won’t work,” Camellia said bitterly. At best, he'd likely crumble to dust and reappear somewhere else. Although,” she stroked her chin. "That would also mean he won’t be in the cult's clutches. Yes! Perhaps that is the best course of action!”
With their choice made and the consequences be damned, she moved back and held her shredded shift up. Esmeralda smiled wickedly and withdrew a silver sword from its sheath. “Farewell, 'master'~!” The blade, aimed over his heart, drove down until–
“ʟíռ!”
She yelped when slippery wet tendrils snapped into the tent's folds, coiling around her wrist with an iron vice, locking down her trembling arm. “Gaagh! Release me, you-!”
The cultist that held her wandered in, hooded and with an open cloak but otherwise nude, and from her slit rose a nest full of tentacles. More ropey coils rose from the tunnels that dripped, arcane creatures attached to the uteri of the females and males with similar attachments on their peni. They captured Camellia in a similar matter, outnumbered dozens to one by the cult.
As the couple were forced outside the tent, Esmeralda cried, “No! We have to take them! We can’t–!”
“But to what end?!” Camellia wondered aloud, hoping the cult's representative would see reason once they explained themselves.
Regrettably, their expressions dropped when their mistress in question waltzed onto the scene. The eldritch satyress leered down at the vampire couple, vines and tendrils wriggling about behind her back, toothy maws drooling with excessive slime. “I’m sure you both have a reasonable explanation for this, don’t you?” she calmly asked, frowning deeply.
“W-we didn’t mean any harm or treason,” imported the masked batmare. “But that foul man you’re keeping in a crypt! He–”
“-captured us!” Esmeralda added with a spiteful tone, the nubile huntress’ blood hot as her family arsenal was plucked from her. “Deflowered and abused us! We can't allow him to live again! Surely, you can understand that?”
“Oh, you poor dears,” mused She'ba, playfully pouting. “Of course I understand! I would never allow any of my subjects to suffer such heinousness. Love should be shared freely and without restraint!”
“Then be rid of him, Lady She’ba,” begged Camellia. “Please, for our sake! Do not resurrect him!!”
The lord of the woods pursed her lips and hissed with slight unease. “That’s the thing. I do need Dhullex, unfortunately. He serves a vital part in my plans.”
“B-but you can’t,” Esmeralda said, baffled. “If he rises, he’ll feed on everything with a pulse! Nothing can sate his sanguine hunger! All that will be left is a lifeless husk wandering aimlessly in a growing wasteland!”
Her voice died as the eldritch goddess’ expression twisted into delighted smile.
“You... You’re counting on that!?!”
“That, and so much more,” confirmed She’ba. “In order for new crops to grow in my paradise, I need to pluck out the weeds and diseased planets. What better way to do that than with a ravenous swarm of locusts, so to speak~?”
“No, you can’t!!” cried Esmeralda, who struggled to break free before a cultist shoved her hard into the mud, face first.
“Esmeralda!” yelled Camellia, her face torn back to the ebony satyress, who now looked at her with scorn.
“I am not without mercy. But I won’t condone the actions of wolves pretending to be sheep in my flock..!”
Her thorny vines snapped into action, shredding the yowling vampire mare’s dress off until she was rendered naked. Her voluptuous form and voluminous pallid breasts on display for all to see. Her panic cries grew louder when she even tore the mask off her face and shattered it into pieces.
“Nooooaaaaggh!!” Camellia wept, hand covering her scarred face. “Y-you said you wouldn’t allow this for any of your subjects!!”
“And I meant it,” assured She’ba, eyes narrowed. “But you aren’t exactly loyal to me, are you..?”
The defiant tearful glare from the pale beauty was all the outer goddess needed to know. With a nod, she had her servants strip Esmeralda's white costume in a similar matter. Piece by piece, her more lithe and toned flesh bared as the manifestation of lust licked her chops in anticipation.
“P-Please don’t take our wills,” pleaded Camellia, tears streaming down the corners of her eyes. “We can't end up like Douglas! Alma was to provide us the liberation we craved!”
“Just do it,” threatened Esmeralda with a snarl. “Nothing we haven’t gone through before. You won’t hurt us!”
“No, no! By all means, speak your minds,” taunted She’ba, who bent down to loom over the petite thestral, massive bust wobbling in her dress. “I want to know what it is you think I’ll do... so that I can do something much worse!”
Esmeralda tellingly stayed silent, quivering with both fear and unwanted lust. The cheeks of the lovers colored once the slick, rubbery tendrils began their molestation. Supple flesh pinched, pulled, and rolled, unable to fully suppress hissed moans that escaped from between their clenched teeth.
It was then that they realized the moment they'd stepped into the camp, a supernatural lust had started to affect them. Weakened their wills. Rendered them vulnerable. Pushed to submission.
Their tensed bodies were forced to relax until they submitted on reflex, much like when their master had first taken and sired them. Frozen when his teeth penetrated their necks like ice-cold knives and compelled them to drink from him. They moaned in unison, sharing a mild, moist climax that shuddered across them like electricity.
“The effect of your master’s abuse runs deeply, doesn’t it?” She’ba cooed in a sultry mocking tone. “You despise him! But what is hate if not another form of love?”
Their attempts to argue were cut short by the invading tendrils, poking around their squishy snatches and covering their bodies in translucent slime, giving their breasts and bellies a slick sheen.
She’ba continued. “Your bodies react accordingly. Shuddering. Craving his callous touch. It's almost as if you both loved getting ravished! Mmm, and how am I to deny such wishes of fornication? To dispose of such gorgeous flesh would be a waste~.”
She dug her sharp nail into her palm and allowed her essence to bleed into the ground before her, which rampantly grew into two lesser Darkyung, braying with life.
Esmeralda and Camellia balked at the reappearance of these monsters. And unlike the ones that toyed with them in the manor, these spawns were clearly male, arms and torso bulging with daunt muscles and meaty cocks throbbing between their legs. Flared tips oozing with slimy pre cum amidst each throb.
They both shook their heads, muttering whispers of mercy to the ebony goat of the woods, who only offered a single phrase,
“Dαι H’ԃαҽʂιɾႦ!”
The vampire couple screamed as the two ram-like abominations secured them in their ropey tentacles and pried their legs apart to shove their thick manhoods deep into their drenched pussies. In one smooth motion, their pink walls were split wide open. The Darkyung vigorously pounded Camellia and Esmeralda with excessive force, determined to break both their bodies and minds. Reduce them into brood mares to continue their goddess’ progeny, merciless each time they speared them with such force they shook; their tits bounced and clapped.
Lady She’ba watched their defilement with elated eyes before twirling around to leave and continue with the prerequisites for the ritual at hand.
At the same time, the fleet of Canterlonian Ships sailed against the rocky waves. Drawing closer to their destination, with several battalions of paladins and magus prepared to raid the once peaceful isles of Parras.
Queen Tatyana stood proud and tall at the bow of her vessel, wielding an umbrella to protect her regalia from the rain and wind. Her three chosen spell casters, Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, and a hand-bound Trixie Lulamoon, stood behind the towering monarch. Their faces were somber, staring towards the stormy, bleak horizon.
The Sovereign Witch arched an eyebrow when two figures emerged from the sea. The blood faerie beat her leathery membrane insectoid wings to dry off the seawater while the mutant kelpie heaved with foul breaths.
“You took your sweet time,” scowled Tatyana.
“Furgive me, Tatyana,” Alma said with a slight bow. “A’d promise tae come alone, but A’m not sure this wretched beast counts anymore?”
The Sovereign Witch observed the depraved water horse that was Douglas, sneering with disgust. “I see. And what has become of you two? I detect powerful magic within you now!”
“Call it a gift bestowed upon us from th’ ancients,” Alma half-heartedly explained, wheezing and ambivalent. “Or a curse, in his case.”
“Whatever the source, it seems to have restored you to your true forms,” quipped Tatyana. “Perfect timing, I must say. Now you can prove worthy in our cause against Clan Jakobson, Beatrix Belladonna, and all her foolhardy friends who dare stand in our way~!”
Alma huffed in offense. “Dae what ye will wit those lot. But Bellatrix Primadonna is mine.” She rested a hand over her heart and felt its pulse quicken when she considered the succubus. “Ah will deal wit mah escaped slave!”
When Tatyana nodded her head, the Baobhan Sith turned to the other Vice Lord. “Douglas. If ye can still understand meh, gather th’ rest ov yer kelpie an’ prepare fur th’ assault. Tatyana an’ Ah still need tae handle th’ final preparations.”
The monstrous beast whimpered in obedience and lept off to follow her command, returning to the murky depths below.
A tinge of regret pierced her heart, and she took slight pity on her cohort's miserable state. Lecherous, gruesome, and disgusting as he may be, even Douglas did not deserve such a terrible fate.
Were her lieutenants correct? Had she made a mistake in aligning herself with Lady She'ba?
Alma looked to the stormy skies, which had started to ease up and clear, allowing the eclipsing moon to shine through the starless night. The darkness continued to gradually cover it, with only a sliver of its radiant light shining.
The vampiric faerie shook her head. ‘It’s too late tae turn back now’, she surmised, committed to completing their goal at the ultimate cost.
‘Soon, Bellatrix! Ye will be mine again befur th’ end ov this night!’
Location Isle of Parras
Universe Tir Nad Spiorad BC
Time 3 minutes until Walpurgisnacht
Sea water washed over the shores of a beach, and a poignant gale swept the evening air. All was silent until a rift meticulously cut through the walls of reality by a heavenly teal saber, allowing its wield and his companions to breach back into the Isles of Parras.
Zeloph strode out, the angelic demihuman breathing in the fresh scents of the sea-salted air. “We’re here!”
His lover Atalanta, once known as the villainous Shadow Scythe, walked over to take his side, gazing around the landscape with melancholy. “Hard to believe we’re back where it all started. Where we became one! And now look at it..!”
“I know,” he said, pulling her close to nuzzle her head. He then pointed to the distant ships, growing closer and closer by the second. “But war is on the horizon, love. Here and elsewhere. Come. I need to close the breach before the multiverse is further wounded.”
With a nod, they helped the rest of their party step out from the cross-shaped tear until it closed.
Sir Dion the Dauntless looked towards where his village stood, alit with torches and the sounds of troops preparing for battle. A bittersweet feeling washed over him as his crimson eyes softened. “For th’ first time in what feels like fore’er... A’m home!”
The crystalline half-succubus twins, Amaranth and Amethyst, known commonly as Foal-Bearer and Wet Nurse, clung to their lover’s arm, their bare breasts pressed into his taut flesh in an attempt to cheer him up. But they frowned when they saw he was too lost in the moment.
Iclyn also felt nostalgic bitterness for the Isle of Parras, recalling her youth when she and Oona would play tag during their brief visits from here to the northern tundra, back when she was still called by her birth gender.
“A shame Lady Layla and the other demihumans had to stay behind,” lamented the succubus Bellatrix, cradling her pregnant tummy, which was now ballooning with both the demon lord her Onoma was summoning and the child she and Zeloph shared.
“I’ll say,” added Analyse, shivering a bit from how chilly it was. Not that she dressed appropriately for the weather, given her latex mini dress that clung to her plump breasts and larger-than-life hips. “I live for nights loike these, but this is a dreadful site! I bet Smiler would livin’ things up wif 'er annoyin' optimism!”
Atalanta stiffened at the mention of Abbess Julianne, still stricken from discovering the peppy nun had secretly been the primordial avatar of death from her fiance’s world and that she, too, would play a part in the multiverse’s destruction. When this was over and dealt with, she would seek out Grayscale Carnifex and what remained from the Order of Reapers for answers.
Beatrix Belladonna stepped forward to take in her lover’s homeland, her features pensive. Sands crunched under her heeled boots, her violet eyes on the moon, a foreboding red hue starting to spread over what remained of its pale face. Her mane and cape whirled about in the stormy winds and made her shiver in her leotard.
“The Cult of the Nemesis is here,” she murmured, arms rubbing her shoulders for warmth. “I can feel it!”
Iclyn patted the unicorn witch’s other shoulder. “Stay alert.”
Atalanta nodded, then called upon her pack of shadow hounds which swathed her cloak. “I’ll have them spread out. Hopefully, they’ll pick up on their scent.”
The canines separated and began sniffing the sands for any trace of the cult. Her icy eyes narrowed and proclaimed, “None shall escape my scythe’s edge..!”
“It's probably better to keep a low-key approach for now,” warned Bellatrix. We have no idea what they're capable of, who’s on their side, or how great their numbers are. We must assume they have every advantage covered.”
“Yeah, not fancyin' gettin' gangbanged this nickle and dime 'round,” admitted Ana with a sashay of her hips. “I could fin' of a few exceptions. Buuuuuuut I'd rather not mention them in polite company~!” She shared a titter with the twins.
“This isn’t a pleasure trip, Lassie,” lamented Dion. "We have tae get serious if we want tae survive this night.”
His wives pulled protectively to him, the pair of them fully nude, since their exposed bodies radiating a protective aura to serve as armor. Oh, what he’d give to spend some romantic time with them and Ebony Ivory on the beach. Making sweet love until dawn…!
Bella turned to Zell and asked, “Are you sure this is the best area to locate the cult? With the distance between us-”
“It’s a starting point,” the seraph thoughtfully replied. "It gives us a bit more time to plan ahead instead of rushing in guns blazing. We need to avoid confrontation, as you said.”
Beatrix walked beside them in silence, their footfalls imprinted in the sand. Her heart crestfallen to see how unstable the multiverse was here, too. While the squall had died down a little, it still looked like the skies could split apart any minute! She told herself it was due to Omen and his pact with Shub’Niggurath, but one look at her Prima Materia that held her cape at the neck, and she blamed herself, too.
Had she not wasted time second-guessing, arriving back here earlier even, she might have been strong enough to stop this. But now, with her ties to the Necronomicon gone, the Demiurge struggling to rejuvenate inside her, she was hardly fit to take down an entire armada of base-leveled spellcasters, let alone a whole cult devoted to an eldritch goddess!
Nonetheless, they traveled to find any form of allies before spotting a beached airship in the distance.
“Say,” one of the twins called out, a hand resting on a hip. “Isn’t that..?”
“The Nautilus,” the other crystal mare identified. “Wouldn’t that mean–?”
“Ashen Dunes! Oh, I hope he’s okay!” Bea reassured herself and rushed to the ship as dark waves crashed and splayed across the hull. She climbed a rope ladder with ease and hopped onto the deck, where she spotted a number of the crew, some of the faces familiar. “Huh? Seabreeze? Shimmer Shade?”
The former peeked up from a hole in the ship as water ran down the toned curves of her nude flesh. The latter sat and painted the landscape. “Bonté! Never expected the holes in reality would pull you two here!”
“They're not the only ones, old friend,” said Ashen Dunes, who approached from below with Rhenaes in tow. The unicorn merchant was adorned in scarves, while the crystal green pegasus wore her signature black ballerina tutu. “Welcome aboard, everyone!”
“It's good to see you again,” greeted the mare formerly possessed by a Vice Lord. “But where is everyone else?”
“There's...a lot to catch up on,” confessed Bea. “But not right now! We've come to help the war effort however we can! Just take us to Lord Hedan, Oona, and–”
The sound of war horns bugling caused her words to die in her mouth. Everyone grew tense as another series of horns echoed throughout the isle.
Dion turned his head upward and grimly stated. “It’s happenin'..!”
All eyes were drawn to the sky as the once-full moon was finally eclipsed. Darkness bled into solid crimson, casting an eerie, otherworldly shine over the entire island—from the beach to the village, the woodlands, and the water that surrounded them. All fell under a red hue as dark specks lifted into the air.
Instantly, everyone felt their bodies surge with the magical influence of Walpurgisnacht. Every magical and arcane ability strengthened beyond the norm, particularly in the case of those already mystically inclined. Beatrix shuddered as her dark magic flowed from her limbs and fingertips, platinum blonde mane and cape uplifted. She felt as if her former glory and power had been restored! Before she had destroyed the Necronomicon and sacrificed her immortality.
“This is amazing!” She marveled. Yet she couldn't feel fully elated. Not when her opponents benefited from the environment, too. Tatyana and her subjects were some of the most powerful spellcasters across the land. And she dared not fathom how nigh unstoppable Omen would be with the blood moon in play!
A stiff groan alerted her attention to Zeloph, who fell to one knee. “Zell!?”
Atalanta knelt down to tend to her beloved. “What’s wrong?”
His once radiant glow had diminished softly, and his ethereal wings had shrunk a size. “This twisted pressure! I-It’s overwhelming,” he said through heavy pants.
“Your Onoma is primarily sun-based magic,” presumed Iclyn, her brows furrowed. “But with the blood moon being the prominent celestial object, its light dampens your ability to conjure solaromancy. It looks like you’re not much use to us.”
“I can still fight,” insisted Zeloph, who shakingly rose back to his feet with the help of the reaper demi.
“In any case, we need to act quickly, my friends,” said Ashen. “The war has begun!” Turning to his crew, he waved an arm and ordered, “Everyone, take your places! We're set to dive!”
Bea cried, “W-wait! But what about-”
“Iclyn an’ Ah will handle it,” reassured Dion, who kissed each of his wives. “Stay here. Please.” The half-succubi whined but nodded, their trust in the burly ram as he and Iclyn hurried off.
“Leave the frontlines to us,” announced Atalanta as her shadow hounds fled into her shade. The demihumans and Bellatrix took to the air and flew towards the ships to support the soldiers on the move. “Hedan lacks arcane firepower, so it's up to us to provide shields and coverfire!”
“Ohoho~! This is gunna be fan,” chirped Ana, whose neon demonic flames bursted with energy, thanks to the blood moon’s influence. Even her crescent-shaped horns glowed with power. “I'll tear ‘em aw apart!”
“From one great battle to the next,” muttered Zeloph. “It's like we can never rest.”
“Take care of yourself, sister,” Bellatrix called back over her shoulder. “We’ll be back before you know it.”
Once everyone aboard went below deck, the Nautilus propelled itself off the beach and dived into the murky oceans. Ashen's strategy was to intercept the fleet of the ships and cut them off before they could make landfall. His ship shed parts of its metallic 'skin', to reveal its true fleshy form beneath, the eldritch beast healed with help from Rhenaes, who'd offered her body to the Glamorguis. Now, the creature resembled a massive squid, and from it unfurled a multitude of tentacles when it swept by th tides at rapid speeds.
It cut across the currents. Linked smaller coils from its womb-like interior, the beast neither male nor female, each tendril attached to Rhenaes, who it tenderly stripped and placed within its secretions when it interfaced with her. She formed a symbiotic bond with it and helped empower and pilot its will.
What first caused her fear turned to the sensation of safety and comfort. She felt warm and sensuous, mentally directing its movements, each tentacle an extension of her desires. One tendril struck out and capsized an enemy ship. She tried not to focus on how many of them would be drowned by her actions.
Shimmer Shade asked, “How far below the sea are we? Is this safe?” The unicorn caressed a rubbery wall.
“Unless the hull is completely blown open,” admitted Ashen Dune. The pressure of the depths would pulverize us instantly. But with the blood moon's enhancement, the Nautilus is at its peak!” Window-like parts of its flesh were transparent, allowing them to see outside, into a dreary ocean.
“Don't look now,” warned Seabreeze. “But we've got company on our rear!”
Beatrix peered out the window and made out dozens of glowing dotted lights, recognizing them as eyes of the kelp maned waters horses, scaly skinned and fins protruding from their limbs and backs. “Kelpies,” realized Beatrix. “And is that Douglas?!”
She could see familiar traces of the former Vice Lord in the bestial creature that swam with a school of his own kind to intercept them before they could down more ships. “Brace for impact!”
She shuddered once they struck the hull and shook it. Thankfully, it held. But repeated impacts at their tremendous speeds would cave the Nautilus in.
“This ship can seal its wounds,” said Ashen. “But we can’t afford to take hits! Lest we drain poor Rhenaes dry...!”
Tentacles wrapped out and crushed a few kelpies, but hundreds more swirled around the aquatic abomination like bloodthirsty sharks.
Shimmer Shade held onto a wall for support. “Merde! What should we do? Retreat!?”
“They're too fast,” observed Seabreeze. “If we raise the Nautilus, then we'd be vulnerable to cannonfire and the casters above!”
Ashen pounded his fist against the interior of the ship. “Damn it all! Really wish Penny was here. He’d know what to do..!” He wasn’t a war leader like his brother, White Shadow Penumbra, nor a now skilled combatant like his sister, Cerise Silhouette. Had he condemned them all to death? Taken a foolish risk, in hopes to repay Hedan's offer?
“I’ve got it,” Beatrix announced in a spark of inspiration. "Raise the ship, but don't breach the ocean surface. From there, I can cast a spell that will allow the twins and me to help out!”
The twins nodded, following the witch’s lead when she carefully layered a delicate, complicated spell over them, which would allow them to breathe and move freely under the deep waters.
“Quick thinking as always, Bea! Thank you.” Ashen did as instructed, allowing the Nautilus to ascend without resurfacing. Beatrix, Foal-Bearer, and Wet Nurse then swam from a hole that momentarily opened in the ship. The three of them cast their own enhanced spells, their projectiles painfully slow in the currents, but the wide expanse nonetheless cut curtains across the waters and sliced through the kelpie.
They were aided and protected by the Nautilus, who continued to crush their foes with its many coiled arms. Blood and bile misted the waters like chum. The dead kelpies went belly up and sank to the ocean floor in red clouds.
Beatrix narrowed her violet gaze when noticing the aquatic attackers had changed strategy, swimming around the ship's underbelly and attempting to drag it downward. Aware that at the very bottom, not even the glamorguis could survive the immense pressure, unbothered by how many of them were picked off amidst the confusion.
Douglas sank his teeth into the hull, trying to gnaw his way inside. Groans echoed across the interior, and Rhenaes screamed. Claws and teeth continually ripped into fat and tissue, his face soaked in scarlet when he bored inside.
The monstrous Vice Lord managed to stretch the torn flesh wide enough to force his head inside, wriggling his way deeper. Water roared and rushed in, despite the ship's attempted ascent.
“Nous sommes baisés,” lamented Shimmer Shade, a hand theatrically cast upward.
“Not yet,” assured Seabreeze, who tossed her a harpoon and took up one of her own. They kept their distance but attempted to aid the crewman, who stabbed at the kelpie to drive him back.
Yet Douglas ignored the small stabs and cuts across his rubbery skin, pulling more of his body inward while water continued to flood in. His multitude of unblinking eyes focused on the ship's true pilot further inside: Rheneas, one of the mares he'd once wanted to claim during her time being possessed by a fellow Vice Lord, Doppia, before he devolved into a near-mindless beast.
Recognizing what the water demon was after, Ashen Dune tried to bar his path, using one of the experimental weapons he'd purchased on a trip in his world. Waiting for such a chance to test it out.
The creature closed in, undeterred by the harpoons that struggled to penetrate his hide, despite how fiercely he was stabbed. Douglas bashed Seabreeze and Shimmer Shade aside with casual ease, his nostrils flared.
The blunderbuss was more like a hand cannon. Ashen fired it off, thrown back by the impact. It’s one momentous shot caused one of Douglas' eyes to pop. The sea beast bellowed in rage, then lashed back with a tendril at the slender unicorn and smashed him into the hull.
Thankfully, the Nautilus softened itself to try and dull the impact...but nonetheless, he whimpered and felt a number of his ribs crack under the blow.
Rhenaes tried to quickly detach from the glamorguis but felt the wet, briny coils of Douglas’s tentacles seize her limbs. The dancer screamed while she was yanked out of safety, her cries for help muffled by algae. With his prey captured, the kelpie withdrew from the Nautilus in rapid strokes, leaving it compromised without its hostess.
“Nooo! Rhenaes!!” Ashen trembled, the blunderbuss smashed. His heart screamed to go after his lover...but he couldn't put his entire crew at further risk! “Return to the surface! Hurry!!”
The Nautilus broke to the shore while kelpie followed their leader to attack the rest of Hedan's fleet instead, convinced they were sufficiently neutralized for the moment. Beatrix watched helplessly as the kelpies retreated after they'd picked off quite a few of their number with the Nautilus. Begrudgingly, she hopped onto a nearby ship where Tatyana's forces approached, the Manor Twins with her amid the splashes, to surface.
The wayward witch blasted several of the enemy crew before they could react, banishing her clothes with a hand wave as she called upon her Onoma, known as Erebus. More onlookers from another ship were momentarily bewildered by the sight of three naked, beautiful mares on arrival, whereupon the Demiurge dripped like black ooze over her denuded flesh to form her new costume, which then enhanced her potential and acted as a form of liquid armor. With that shroud, she deflected arrows in harmless pings each time they attempted to connect, much like the auras that radiated from the half-succubi to serve as their armor.
Their captain bellowed to his men, “Concentrate your fire!”
“We won't let you~!” Wet Nurse giggled when she darted behind one of the men, sidled her naked flesh against him, and rubbed on his back, which made the soldiers break rank. Some of them tried to manhandle the mares, while others went for the kill, but none could lay a hand on either of the pink twins.
They called on the power Bellatrix afforded them. Their pores secreted baby oil at will, making their flesh shimmery and slippery so that they couldn't maintain a hold on the pair. Sex magic enabled them to draw on the lust of their prey to empower themselves, their mistress known for her bondage kink, which they hoped to work into their act, once they were more seasoned!
“I'm afraid you boys are outmatched~!” Foal-Bearer, too, toyed with her prey. “Surrender,” she offered while she and her sister ran their palms down bare breasts. “And we'll have some fun~.”
Wet Nurse turned, bent, and shook her butt. “Wouldn't you poor, pent-up boys prefer to serve us~?” She looked over her shoulder and winked as the troops rushed about the water-soaked deck.
Foal-Bearer leaned forward and swayed her suspended breasts. When one managed to finally seize her, she locked lips with him in a passionate kiss; his life force drained until he moaned and climaxed, sunken into a peaceful slumber as she dropped him. “Last chance to live a happy life~!”
“Join us~.” Wet Nurse, too, kissed and drained another soldier, her tits squashed to him. She and her sister jerked off a couple of men entranced by them and were rewarded by their gasps and violent cumshots, which rained across their tits, which they then smeared and rubbed into their skin.
“Serve us~.” Foal-Bearer winked and met the lips of another soldier, her tongue wrestling with his own until his muscles slackened in submission, wracked by euphoria until her heated kiss finally knocked him out mid-climax.
“We'll treat you better than your queen~,” the twin sisters assured each other. They seductively shook their exposed assets, their devil tails with heart-shaped spade tips intertwined.
“Never,” declared the captain amidst a rain of spittle. “We won't dishonor our queen! Don't be tempted by these shameless harlots! Glory to Canterlot!” He raised his sword heavenward.
“Your funeral,” shouted Beatrix, who didn't waste time fooling around with small fry. Not when they supported vicious conquerors and invaders while reality itself unraveled at the seams!
Fire, ice, and lightning erupted from her glowing palms and horns. At her sides, Foal-Bearer and Wet Nurse cast hellfire and chunks of brimstone, spells they learned from their mistress, Bellatrix. Some steamed their victims, whose skin cooked and melted, their cut-off screams swallowed up in the chaos.
Charred bones rattled, fractured, and scattered. Molten pools cooked into wood and metal. Others were thrown overboard in splashes that rained across the deck and vanished into the murky seas. The destruction and storms around them thankfully drowned out their choked cries of raw terror.
But they showed no mercy. Not with what was at stake! The sisters sailed hand-in-hand and, with tails linked, kissed and wrestled more men into submission like they were mere toys.
Groped from behind by a randy stallion, Foal-Bearer's tit-flesh pinched and squeezed between a firm palm, another on her wide hip. She pressed her pert ass back into his crotch and whispered, “You make this all too easy. Mmm~.”
Her lips crushed into his, and his sleepy eyes closed when he slumped at her feet with a dull thud on the watery deck.
“What a shame we can't take our time~,” replied Wet Nurse, who applied more knockout kisses that left the entranced manhandlers in a post-coitus state. “Sure wish Master Dion could see us now! Our dear mistress Bella, too!”
The three of them went from ship to ship, sank them, determined to do whatever damage they could…but weren't able to stop a number that landed with a crash amidst sand clouds around the beach in the distance. The twins absorbed what they could from the men who weren't slain to empower themselves since, by the time the day ended, their reserves would be spent.
Bea, too, attempted to pace herself. She watched the half-succubi share a wounded man they straddled and kissed in a threeway meal while he fondled them and shook her head with a sad smile, hopeful that the Manor Twins wouldn't completely lose themselves to their baser demonic instincts by the time this war ended.
She soon found herself sandwiched between the nude sisters. In unison, the pair asked, “Can we take a little love from you, sweetheart~? Your essence would really help us strut our stuff!”
Beatrix could barely hide her vexation at the pastel pink pair. “Seriously?! Can’t you just..? Uuurgh, fine! But be quick! And don’t take too much!”
On instinct, her black 'costume' slid away from her breasts, buttocks, and snatch to allow them access, and she moaned when they started to grope, kiss, nip at, and finger her in wet schlicks, drawing on her life force all the while. Beatrix shared a limited amount, knowing she'd need to keep her reserves up for the ongoing battle. Nonetheless, they glowed with the hint of magic borrowed from her until her thick thighs quaked, awash in a small, wet orgasm that shook her to the core.
Their tongues both sank into her mouth, impossibly long as they curled around her own muscle and wrestled it into submission. Her tits and buttcheeks pinched between their clawed fingers, her lower holes prodded, teased, and spread on entry from their heart-shaped tail tips. Saliva trailed from her lips to their own once they reluctantly finally withdrew from a three-way kiss, the insatiable wenches high on her magic.
Bea's bosom heaved, and her face was fully flushed, eyes half-lidded. “Yeesh! I can see why my sister spent so much time with you! Now get out there and give 'em hell, you silly bitches!” She slapped them both on their plush bare asses at the same time to send them off with a clap as they tittered and flew off.
She hastily drew her costume back into place, and her features hardened. There was no more time to mess around. At least she could already see the half-succubi put her borrowed magic to work!
While further away in mid-air, Alma spotted a number of foes that came to support Hedan's soldiers below while they rushed to meet the cultists and their abominations. For a moment, she floated in place and watched idly at the bloodshed below while opposed forces tore across the beach and the woods.
Her scarlet pupils darted over to where Zeloph and Atalanta fought her night creatures. The former villains had once been marked by the Burning King to serve alongside the Vice Lords. Analyse was blinking in and out of sight through puffs of dazzling neon smoke, rending through every enemy in her path. But her eyes fixated on the one she was really after. Her ex-lover and nemesis, Bellatrix Primadonna…!
The lepidopteran vampiress scoped out the red-skinned succubus from afar, studying her moments amidst the battle. Bellatrix called on the secondary power of her Onoma, Gehenna, to summon a series of infernal chains from numerous portals. Garbs fell from a number of cultists when they were seized and lifted aloft by the hellish steel that hooked into their limbs, then drawn-and-quartered, their limbs ripped from their torsos in a bloody haze.
Then, Bella destroyed them utterly with hellion flame and brimstone, the eldritch in them cooked into smoldered slime.
To the Baobhan Sith, it was a beautiful, almost erotic sight. Before she met her opponent, she plucked a stray ram soldier left for dead in the bedlam, lifted his slack body up, and siphoned his vital fluids through her talons. Dying gurgles drowned his throat as he shriveled like a dried grape. The red vein-like markings glimmered over her alabaster skin. Highlighting her face, limbs, navel, and nearly-naked breasts.
A small pick-me-up before the feast she would savor. Her velvety wings unfurled, Alma flew at her escapee with blinding speed. Knocking her down right before she incinerated another cultist.
Bellatrix grunted, rising back up while staring up at the woman she coveted so much that it wounded her in every form. Her amber eyes briefly flashed blue when she murmured, “Alma.”
“Bellatrix,” the blood faerie hissed, wings and curtain-length auburn hair curling around her, flapping with the wind. Blood moon highlighting her new shape. A pained grin stretched her lips. “Ah knew ye’d come back tae me~!”
“I’ve come for you, yes,” admitted the she-devil. “But not in the way you desire. As you can see, we're both not the women we once were.”
Alma squinted when taking in her former slave, her vision blinded by the hot-flowing life radiating from the demoness’ belly. She sneered and relented her cold fury. “A’ll say! Ye’re fattenin’ up wit another’s child! Repulsive..!”
Bellatrix felt her cheeks flourish, her hand protectively holding her tummy. “This wasn’t my intention. This power, Gehenna, has turned my womb into a cauldron that calls forth seventy-two powerful demons at my command. But to aid in the demise of Mortis Saltaire, a sacrifice was made. And I chose Zeloph to supplant me with his rich seed, fully aware of the consequences!”
“Zeloph,” the Vice Lord glowered, looking back to the fiery winged angel slicing through her night creatures like a knife through butter. Hatred and envy corroded her face. “Figures ye’s whored yerself tae survive. An’ here Ah thought ye were above th’ common tricks ov a lowly sex demon. But ye’ve proven me wrong befur!”
“You’re mistaken,” Bellatrix yelled determinedly. “I am the future queen of hell! Destined to govern over all demons!”
Alma gave a bitter laugh. “Still goin’ on about that? Keep dreamin’, slut. Ye lost th’ right tae th’ throne when ye betrayed me. Ah would have gladly let ye rule alongside meh! Free ov chains! Free ov oppression! No one left tae oppose us,” her expression softened, almost mournful. “Have ye e’er dreamed how thin’s could ‘ave been between us..? ”
“I have,” replied Bella in a more vulnerable voice. “Many, many times, in fact... From the moment I first laid eyes on you, I saw the most beautiful creature to grace the earth.” Her hooked chains continued to whip out, tore asunder any cultists or monsters so foolish as to try and interfere. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Alma. It's not too late!”
The vampiric faerie bristled. “Ye dare say that wit that leech inside ye, feedin’ off yer life's blood? Pride in meself as a woman could ne’er allow sae much as a dewdrop ov man’s vile sludge tae taint me!”
“And yet, you’re stained with the stench of the Ebony Goat with a Thousand Young,” retorted Bella, glaring back fiercely. “So which of us is more depraved, I wonder?”
A feral screech rose from the Babhan Sith at the mere mention of her own shameful weakness from the deal she'd made. She soared down to lash out at the she-devil, who also took to the sky. There, butterfly-like wings fully unfurled from the corrupted faerie, which beat when she called on her hemomancy, empowered by the fresh blood she'd drank from the rams.
Blood surged to solidify into various sharp weapons to cut open Bella, who swooped and evaded each crimson edge. Her own hellfire and brimstone cast back alongside the multitude of hooked chains summoned by Gehenna. Yet it was clear that the Vice Lord was vastly superior in strength and speed, forcing her prey on the defensive with her furious assault.
Alma watched her descent. “Ye won’t escape me again! Nrrak!” When she'd swooped to follow into the woodland area of the island, she'd fallen into the demon's trap. Several chains launched around her to ensnare the lepidopteran vampiress. She hissed as the steel singed her pale flesh.
“Even in chains, ye won’t stop me,” she declared, dissolving into a kaleidoscope of carnivorous butterflies that fluttered out of the rattling steel, now coiling empty space. They scattered to locate where the devil woman was hiding.
Bella made herself as small as possible, hiding in a brush as the swarm of insects flew past her. She recalled when she'd made love to Seb before her arrival. Both because she needed sperm...and to keep a wild card to play. She drew on his seed, still slimed across the walls of her slippery womb, to summon a new demon lord.
The more powerful her mate, the more potent the devil she called would be. With Seb, she had no idea how helpful it would prove. Sheltered in the woods, she temporarily used the spell Bea often did to banish her black leather bikini, squatted naked, and hissed when she forced the entombed demon out.
Her lower lips spread wide, dripped and spattered her juices, Bella overwhelmed by orgasmic agony when her golden eyes rolled into her head. The creature's hands rose from her vaginal canal, pulled the slick pink walls open, and started to wiggle its way free, head-first. Slowly, a creature far too large for her frame dragged itself out, inch-by-inch, saturated in her sticky, runny love nectar. Due to her Onoma, Gehenna, her core was now like one of the labyrinths in the Necronomicon, a pocket dimension to house devils.
“Oh dear. What a ghastly entrance,” announced the kingly demon in a regal tone when its face was fully freed from her birth canal. As he continued to clamber out, Bella strained herself to the limit and squirted around him, wracked by indescribable pain and pleasure. Her eyes crossed from sheer bliss when she realized he was attached to a camel's hump. The camel's slick head also popped out.
She shrieked amidst a fresh wave of agony and ecstasy, certain that were it not for Gehenna, even her powerful frame would have been torn apart by this violent birth. Fallen to her back as she constantly dripped down her anus and squirted, she kneaded her breasts and pinched her nipples too, unconcerned with pride anymore, lost to the lust to help dull the unspeakable torment that assailed her shapeliness.
Her spaded tail impaled her anus. Pushed in and out in a blur, whatever it took to ease the more uncomfortable aspects of the delivery, curious whether Layla once endured similar torments.
The she-devil’s elastic cunt stretched to its absolute limit, and the demon and the camel he was attached to were determined to help pull themselves free, bathed in a deluge of her cascade of nectar. Finally, half of him had crawled free, the Goetia prince equally determined to help liberate himself from her puffy snatch. “Nnnh! Loosen up a little, won’t you?”
“Just hurry the fuck up,” she urged with another harsh whisper and strained harder, barely able to focus and summon any more chains. “Oh fuck~!”
Multiple climaxes ripped through her amidst the orgasmic birth, her clawed hooves curled, and her breasts and nipples pinched tight until the hellspawn eventually emerged with a wet pop; she stretched pussylips collapsed back around her gaped wide hole and sprayed him in more squirty blasts that soaked the demon attached to the camel. She heaved her sweaty tits, her cheeks afire. “What the hell?!”
“I am Paimon,” the royal demon introduced himself. “How may I be of service?”
She tried to collect herself and stumbled up. “Whatever gimmicky power-up you’ve got, do it now before–”
But it was too late, as a flurry of fluttering lepidopterans found their target and swarmed around her vulnerable body. She howled in anguish as thousands of needle-thin proboscis stabbed into her sensitive flesh, sipping her dwindling energy as she fell back.
When slapping them away proved futile, Bellatrix unleashed a small burst of hellfire to immolate the fiendish butterflies. The swarm reformed into the Vice Lord, now straddling atop the severely weakened succubus. Hand wrapped around her neck, talons threatening to poke into her jugulars.
“Nowhere left tae hide, Primadonna,” hissed Alma, raising her free hand, ready to carve out her heart, before aiming for her mildly rounded stomach instead.
Golden eyes dilating, Bella conjured another set of chains to restrain her arms. The Vice Lord snarled, struggling to pry her wrists free. “W-what?! How did ye–grrrngh!”
Despite the adrenaline pumping her veins from almost suffering a bloody miscarriage, the succubus noticed a slight change in her vision. Highlights of Alma’s movements before they happened appeared before her, which aided in her counter-action.
‘That is the extent of my prowess, I’m afraid,’ Paimon’s voice resonated in her mind while the miniature demon lord hid behind a tree. ‘Never was one for fighting! Sorry!’
‘Then what did I suffer all that pain and indignity for?!’ Bella snapped internally. She would've blamed it on some cruel prank from Seb but knew he had no control over this botched summon.
‘Wait a minute! Perhaps this is exactly what I need,’ she reconsidered, huffing her bosom and smiling thinly in realization at what he offered.
With Paimon’s enchantment, she could see the exact moment Alma would break free of her infernal shackles and strike again. When that did happen, Bellatrix sucked in a breath before exhaling a small spout of fire to discombobulate the blood faerie long enough to shove her off.
Alma shrieked, handles covering her seared face. “Raaaargh! Damn you!”
With her temporarily blinded, Bella conjured her crimson-hilted dagger and repeatedly zipped around the wildly lashing Vice Lord, piercing her from all directions in blurry swipes and slashes.
In spite of everything, the scarlet demoness intentionally avoided fatal blows, driven to immobilize the Baobhan Sith when the star-crossed lovers continued their deadly dance.
Using her own heightened magic, Beatrix Belladonna cleared every ship she leaped across. Canterlot soldiers were tossed about and scattered under her fury since the Manor Twins backed her up and aided Hedan's men. She worked to keep the beach clear each time an enemy ship attempted to land, using her Onoma to sail through the air and mercilessly raining down more elemental blasts that split the air.
“Good work,” she called to the twins with a smile after they returned to her side. Her eyes shot open when the two of them yelped in shared pain, blasted from the air by a stray prismatic beam.
The two nude coral-pink mares crashed into the beach, thankfully mostly unharmed due to the arcane aura they emitted. Nonetheless, Bea headed down to meet them while they choked up wet sands, and the two-half succubi rose to all fours. She asked, “Are you two okay? If anyone hurts you, I'll–!”
Another blast connected with Bea and knocked her from the air with a yelp. Her Onoma momentarily dissolved from the impact as it protected her. Black, cool ooze melted off her curves when her denuded form crashed onto the beach between the twins in a sand cloud. She spat up sand, too, while seething at the largest ship landing on the shore. A magical ramp fell forward, and the sound of clicking heels drew her violet eyes up the slender, towering frame of the Sovereign Witch.
“You!”
“Our paths cross again, Beatrix Belladonna,” Tatyana mockingly greeted, one hand on her hip as she sashayed onto the beach, her scepter and horn steaming with spell energy. Peeking behind her, Beatrix's expression hardened when she saw three unicorn mares, one of which was her mother.
“Let them go,” demanded Beatrix
A smug grin stretching her snout, turquoise eyes gleaming with malice, the monarch sorceress quipped, “Don’t worry. There will be time for a family reunion once I’m finished with you~.”
Snapping her fingers, Sunset and Starlight obediently rushed towards the violet unicorn, magic flowing from their palms and horns. Begrudgingly, Beatrix quickly dispatched them with Erebus, flinging her warping sphere to knock them down. And before either could get up, she conjured a self-taught spell she had picked up from watching her mentor, Oona.
Sleep bubbles formed to temporarily trap Sunset and Starlight, filling up with a cloudy mist before dispersing with a wet ‘pop’. Both unicorns fell back down, asleep.
Tatyana offered golf claps for her rival’s effort. “Impressive. You’ve stooped to stealing spells straight from your lover! You truly are the poster child of mediocrity.”
“You forget I kicked your sorry ass last time we fought!” Bea barked back.
“And you forget you only won thanks to your pregnant hussie’s interference,” the unicorn monarch reminded, failing to hide how sour she still was from that defeat. “But now, I have you rrrright where I want you. All alone, with no friends.”
Her wicked smile returned as she waved her hand, shoving Trixie onto the ground by her feet. “And the best part? I’m going to make your poor mother watch me disassemble every atom in her daughter’s body~!”
“Hnngh! Run, Beatrix,” the azure unicorn cried. “You’re above Tatyana. Just go! Save your lover!!”
The witchy mare hesitated to move. This wasn't her birth mother, yet she viewed every Trixie she met the same way. “B-But I can’t leave you like this!”
“I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ve suffered worse than–”
“Quiet, skank!” Tatyana snapped, blasting Trixie with a bright beam, causing her to tumble in the sand and mud.
“Mom!!” Beatrix cried in outrage, lunging forward with her rapier in hand. Steel clashed against elder oak; each swipe deflected with her unicorn-headed staff. When they pushed each other backward, they launched a flurry of magical projectiles that created smoke.
Using the smoky cover to her advantage, Tatyana hurled a stray orb of magic for Beatrix to intercept, only for it to explode with blinding light. With her foe stunned, the Sovereign Witch shined her horn and fired a straight beam to blast the mare off her feet.
“How disappointing,” tsked Tatyana. “Even under the blood moon’s glow, your magic fails to measure up against my own. Dare I say you’ve gotten weaker since we first fought? Such is to be expected from a pathetic slut~!”
Beatrix rose back on shaky knees and glowered, “Shut up! You're the one dumb enough to think you can take me by yourself!” Her clothes evaporated in a hand wave. Black cosmic power flared to life as the Demiurge washed over her nude curvature, her long mane also lengthened from the summons. She brandished her rapier and struck a theatrical pose when she proclaimed, “Bring it, you heartless bitch!”
Tatyana's smile widened, and she nodded. “Ohoho, I plan to! And this time, I'll prove without question that you're nowhere near a match for me!”
The potent spellcasters locked eyes and shot skyward, a mystic trail left behind them each time the pair crossed in a maelstrom of magic. Their blows shook the sky and land. Threatened to spread the fractures that already crippled reality, fissures forming above the storm clouds each time they struck.
For a moment, Beatrix worried that this, too, was part of Omen's plan to dissolve the multiverse! Yet what other choice was there but to defend themselves and battle on to the bitter end?
Enemies flooded from all directions over the islands. Dion's claymore separated the head of a monstrous beast from its body when he cut a swath through a blockade once the doomsday cult attempted an ambush.
Iclyn's cryomancy whirled around several cultists, freezing them solid long enough for the burly ram to bash them apart. And when furling icicle spears proved ineffective, the deighdyr saw little option but to conjure her own signature weapon in her hands. Frost and snow solidified into an icy pole with a slightly curved blade. Twirling it around, she thrust her glacial glaive through an attacking enemy, instantly freezing them from inside out until they dispersed into icy chunks.
“Damn,” complimented Dion. “Ye’ve been holdin’ back!”
“Only for situations like these,” huffed Iclyn. “Keep moving!”
They made their way into the besieged village, most of the would-be invasion force cut off by his people's efforts, but a few strays broke in. He hurried closer, butting heads and bashing his way toward the hillside, where a pitched skirmish took place.
Lord Hedan called on his druid magic and weapons to combat Grogar; the hills shook by the caprine chieftain and warlock. Weapons forged by his Onoma, Herphetus, flashed in his hands. Great axes, shields, war hammers, anything he could come up with to bludgeon, pierce, and slash through his great uncle’s ancient magic.
Grogar called forth his strongest monsters to wither down his great nephew: flying eyebats, enormous anthropoids, cyclopes, gorgons, and every chimeric abomination he could conceive. Yet the old four-horned ram remained steadfast, slaying them one after another.
By the time the penanggalan met its end, Hedan was covered in monster guts and sweat, panting profusely. His bones buckled, body screaming to stop, but he refused to bend.
“Your strength has waned, nephew,” the ancient ram observed with a haughty smirk. “You have fought valiantly up until now. You deserve a nice, long rest!”
“Enough, Grogar!” bellowed the chief of Clan Jakobson, waving his hand over the countless bodies of dead or unconscious caprines, orcs, and minotaurs who defended their clan until their last breaths. “Does th’ blood ov our people stainin’ th’ island mean nothin’ tae ye? Where does yer greed an’ tyranny end?!”
“Oh, I assure you, Hedan. It all ends tonight!”
Black and yellow magic cracked from the cyan ram’s palms, and his curved horns lit up with his malevolent aura as he pushed forth a powerful blast. Hedan summoned his door-size shield to intercept the dark beam, struggling to hold his groan.
But it was evident that his evil uncle was too powerful. Walpurgisnacht empowered his archaic prowess to further heights. His hooves started digging into the ground as he skidded backward from the sheer force. Hedan clenched his teeth, trying to hold out even though his forearm broke under the pressure, and he yelled in fury.
“Father!” roared the alabaster ram, who leaped in front of the projectile with Ares at full force. With his anti-magic armor protecting him, he lumbered through the black and yellow beam, slicing through with his great sword until meeting Grogar head-on.
“What?! When did you–gaaugh!!”
The ancient caprine was knocked aside by the broad edge of his great-grandnephew’s blade. Dion then rushed over as fast as he could in his heavy armor to check on his wounded father, favoring his broken arm.
He dispelled his helmet, concern all over his scarred face. “Dad, are ye alright?!”
Hedan’s wrinkled visage twisted in shock and relief at his unexpected appearance. “Son,” he wheezed. “Ye’re... ye’ve come back!”
“Ah told ye,” the younger ram insisted, tapping his head to his father while helping him up to his feet. “Ah just wish A’d come sooner..!”
Iclyn came to their aid, recoiling from how bent the elder ram’s arm looked. “You’re in no condition to keep fighting,” she advised. “Your body’s at its limit!”
“Until Oona is safe an’ sound, Ah ain’t bowin’ out,” grunted Hedan.
Dion shook his head. “Damnit, ol’ man! Still as stubborn as e’er! Learn tae let th’ yer kin handle things fur ye!”
“Yer heart is still green, boy,” countered the chieftain. “An’ A’m still angry wit ye!”
“Now is not the time for familial drama,” snapped Iclyn.
Their heads turned to Grogar, who crowed with laughter as he rose back up. “What is this, A family reunion? Ahah, if only dear sweet Oona could be a part of this. Or maybe she is..?”
“Where’s mah sister?!” demanded Dion, marching towards his great grand uncle, Onoma burning over his armor like a roaring fire.
“You’ll meet with her soon enough,” assured the father of monsters. “But you’re not going to like what you see~!”
“Th’ only thin’ Ah don’t like seein’ right now is yer f'ugly mug,” the red knight growled. “An’ just because ye really pissed me off, A’m gonna do more than just hurt ye, Grogar! A’m gonna kick yer arse!!”
As Dion ran horns first at the evil warlock, Grogar called on his ancient spells, hurling yellow bolts and black magic at the charging knight.
But unlike his father, the warrior caprine had been in continuous battles since he left home. He fought various monsters attacking innocent bystanders. The Burning King and the Vice Lords, Mortis and his minions, and the corrupt empire of Pundamilla under Viscera’s influence. All sorts of enemies on his journey to prove his worth, and he'd overcome them all with the support of his allies. Thus, he steeled his resolve and body with every victory secured.
When he reached the old ram, he forced him to jump away from a furious cleave. Startled by the weight and force that expunged from his claymore, Grogar held up a barrier to defend himself. Each blow cracked the magical shield until it finally shattered and brought him to his knees.
Stabbing his weapon into the ground, Dion made good on his promise to give his evil uncle hands. Unbridled rage fueled his punches, beating the old caprine within an inch of his life. The burly brawler held Grogar by his collar, face pulverized and blood seeping out his mouth and nostrils.
“A’ll ask ye one more time,” Dion said through uncontrolled breath, holding up a balled fist. “Where. Is. She?!”
Grogar gave a bloodied smile and weakly turned his vision briefly to the woods behind them. And then he answered, “Even if you get to her now, you’ll already be too late. This world, all worlds, they can’t be saved!”
“We’ll die tryin’!”
“No,” rebutted the father of monsters. “This cataclysm isn’t like a caterpillar spinning a cocoon so it can wake up a butterfly. It is a phoenix, boy. We all must die before we can truly be reborn~!”
Dion bashed his cranium to shut the old fool up before dropping his unconscious body to the ground.
Iclyn helped a limping Hedan and what remained of their warriors over the hill, her icy gaze falling on the concussed cyan ram. “We should finish him off!”
“Nah,” said Dion, panting roughly. “There’s no honor tae be had in slayin’ a helpless opponent. Let’s bind him up. Sae he can’t harm anyone else.”
“This is a mistake,” muttered Iclyn, who begrudgingly assisted in tethering Grogar to an iron post with chains. The troops kept their weapons trained on him at all times while others fell in behind the trio, who pressed onward toward the foreboding black woods.
Grass, twigs, and flowers were crushed underfoot on their mad dash into the woods. “Perhaps Ah misjudged ye,” admitted Hedan, hissing through the pain coursing through his limbs. “Green hearted, yes. But it’s a big heart pumpin’ th’ blood ov our ancestors through yer veins. Ye've gotten strong, son. Strong enough tae lead our people when mah time comes, perhaps.”
“Oi! No more talk ov that,” replied Dion. “Ah ain’t lettin’ any more ov our people die senselessly! We're proud warriors, an’ these cultist fucks dared tae invade our homeland! If more blood must be spilled, well, best it be theirs!”
“Hmph. Well said,” answered Hedan softly while Iclyn scoffed at the future chieftain’s machismo.
Further, the group ventured until one of the rams yelled when he was yanked behind a tree trunk, and crunches sounded. Gore oozed from behind the tree, and when Dion rushed to avenge him, he crossed the elephant-legged greater Darkyung, multiple slime-filled maws bellowing. A sickening crunch resounded while it chewed on the torn flesh of its prey. More like it swarmed from all directions, along with lesser caprine-shaped monstrosities.
“What in Pathos am Ah lookin’ at..?!” muttered Hedan, cherry red eyes widened.
“The children of Shub’Niggurath,” Iclyn coldly responded, whisking her glaive when one eldritch ram came too close. Unfortunately, numerous more poured in, a number of their warriors torn apart by the giant tree-shaped abominations, crushed by ropey branch-thick tentacles.
Realizing that fending off all of them would get them nowhere, Hedan once more brandished his war hammer and joined the fight—as best he could with one arm.
“Dion! Iclyn! Go an’ rescue Oona,” he ordered. “A’ll hold them off.”
Dion felt his heart sink, unable to shake off his hesitation. “But dad, yer in no shape tae–!”
“Ah am yer father an’ cheftain,” yelled the four horned ram. “An’ Ah have spoken!”
“Aye,” the warrior caprine answered, clutching his fists tightly as he forced himself to push past the wave of Darkyung. With his claymore and full suit of armor, he butchered them left and right. Iclyn skated alongside, freezing the legs of any ebony spawn that tried to prevent their passage.
Hedan used every weapon and spell in his arsenal to fend off the monsters, mustering what little strength he had to topple the giant eldritch abominations. He stood over a greater Darkyung, panting hoarsely, sweat and blood soaking his matted fur and wool. His weary gaze fell on his fleeing son, a proud smile beneath his beard.
“Be well, mah children.”
His glance hardened when a tendril-infused shadow overtook his own, and he swung around to smash whatever tried to sneak up on him, only to gasp with horror.
Sclunch!
A wet grotesque sound resonated throughout the woods, causing both Dion and Iclyn to whip their heads around. They were met with a grizzly sight.
Hedan gazed harrowingly at the half-lidded eyes of the dark satyress wearing his daughter’s face, one of her thorny vines impaled through his stout chest. He choked up blood, feebly grasping the tentacle caving through his torso.
“... A-aaugh... Ooh... Oona..?!”
Lady She’ba beamed in a sultry manner and huskily whispered, “Nαʅʂ, ɾιαƚԋα’α~!”
Her tendril ripped the elder ram’s heart from his chiseled chest, which still pumped and oozed blood until she crushed it in her palm above her and bathed in the bloody shower. She then discarded Hedan’s limp body away, which tumbled and lay lifeless in the dirt, his dull eyes leaking tears.
“No..!” Iclyn gasped, utterly mortified.
Dion’s mouth was agape, and a thousand different thoughts and feelings rushed through his mind. His shrunk pupils were lost on his father’s freshly made corpse. Then, he began to move towards the eldritch goddess, picking up pace before full-on sprinting.
“Aahh..! Auuaahh..!! AaaaaAAAAAAAAUUUUUGGH!!!”
Dion cried bloody murder, unfettered, as more of his men were crushed or eaten by the Darkyung. Too rattled by the loss of their chieftain to fight back.
He swung widely, cutting down anything that stood in his path from getting to the murderous harlot that killed his father. He made a great bound, making an overhead swing with his claymore. Bulky blade clashing down on Lady She’ba, who merely caught it barehanded.
“Foolish brother,” purred the ebony goat of the woods. “You should know better than to pick on your baby sister~!”
He bellowed in anguish when she effortlessly threw him back. When the enraged ram tried to strike again, she stamped her bident into the ground, and a fissure full of tentacles emerged to propel him skyward.
The vines bursting out her back secured each arm and leg of the armored caprine, threatening to pull him apart four ways. Dion wrestled to break free, bawling loudly while She’ba hovered to trace delicate fingers over her brother’s chest scars.
“Mmmnh~! So strong and determined,” she praised with an airy voice. “I like that in a suitor. Too bad won’t live long enough to put a couple more kids in me–”
The eldritch sorceress hissed when frost rapidly spread over her thorny vines, which broke instantly when Iclyn slashed through with her glacial glaive.
Dion collapsed to the ground; his Onoma diminished while the cyan doe took aim at the outer goddess of fertility, attempting to flash-freeze She’ba. But she deftly countered with a casual wave of psionic energy as new tendrils sprouted to replace the severed ones, which rotted off.
Moderate red eyes leered at the icy cervine. “Ahh, yes. I remember Omen mentioning an old flame, or in this case, a cold-hearted lover~!”
“I am not your lover,” retorted Iclyn sternly. “As you are not Oona!”
“But I could be. If you indulge me,” offered She’ba, strutting towards the deighdyr with wide swinging hips. “You wish to be with her again. I can feel it in your heart. How long have you waited to hold her in your arms once more?” She squeezed herself to emphasize, her tits bouncing upon release as she opened her arms to Iclyn.
“I-I’ve... I want Oona to be mine,” she stammered, the lustful atmosphere messing with her senses, growing stronger with each distance closed by Shub’Niggurath.
“Then don’t fight it, Iclyn,” urged the seductive satyress, her tentacles wriggling enticingly. “Come! Embrace me! I know what you want. What you need~!”
Her aurora green eyes fell to the third monstrous eye staring from above her ample cleavage. When she looked at her face, she noticed something peculiar that made her squint.
A tiny crack on her left cheek. An indication her current vessel was falling apart. Unable to fully contain the immeasurable power of the outer goddess.
Her strength resolved, and the snow fawn spat, “Never!”
Iclyn surged her glaive forward, stabbing through the black goat’s chest. While it pained her to attack her former lover, she had to remind herself that the body was already lost to Shub’Niggurath’s control.
Through the wound, an otherworldly light shined through the cracks while black gunky blood spilled forth. But She’ba gave no indication that she was in pain. All the perplexed deighdyr got was a disappointed look.
Worse, she couldn’t pry her weapon out of her opponent’s chest and realized too late that she had been suckered in. She’ba botanic appendages seized Iclyn, constricting around her squirming body.
“How unfortunate,” she sighed, taking the glaive plunged between her bosom and crushing it into mush once it was free. “I was hoping to bring us closer into the next life... Oh well.”
She'ba brushed a thorn across her free palm and sliced into it, then held it over Iclyn’s snout, which she forced open with smaller tendrils invading her nose and lips. “Guess you’ll have to suffer alone once again~.”
She squeezed her hand, droplets of her blood dribbling down Iclyn’s exposed tongue, forcing her to swallow it. The deighdyr writhed and howled before she was dumped onto the earth, her body contorted with the pain coursing from her stomach.
She’ba tried to regenerate from the wound but found that it could only seal so much while leaving a glimmering scar.
“No matter,” she muttered while walking back towards the campgrounds, followed by her many Darkyung. “This body has served its purpose.”
Dion regained consciousness, awoken by the cries of Iclyn. His pupils went pinpoint, taking in the devastation and dead Shub’Niggurath left behind in her wake. He scrambled to his father’s side, cradling him to his chest.
“Dad..?” He shook him violently to get any kind of reaction. Any sign of life.
Nothing.
“Dad... aw, oh gods, Dad, no! No!!”
Dion lifted his head to the fracturing skies above, thunder rolling from the brewing clouds. His mournful wails resonated throughout the island.
“Haaaaaughahhh! Nooooooooaaaaaaahh!!”
Beatrix and Tatyana sailed in the stormy skies above the treacherous seas, no quarter given to the other whenever they traded spellcraft. She'd taken on her challenge to pull attention away from anyone else, the wounded Manor Twins included. But she was also determined to finish the Sovereign Witch off once and for all. She tried to call on every last trick she could think of, pushing her spellcasting to the limits to keep pace with the Sovereign Witch.
Cannonfire erupted below, and a crystalline fleet of ships led by his generals, King Ambros and General Tirek, aiding the Nautilus against the enemy fleet and surging kelpie, lit arrows, and magic zipped below the duelists.
A struggle of beams forced their bout to another standstill; their spell power appeared evenly matched.
“You... huff! You’ll pay for hurting my mother,” promised Beatrix.
“Oh, don’t worry,” scoffed Tatyana, her pompous bright red mane wild and on ends. "She’ll be justly punished for defying me. It's a pity, really. She was one of the finest witches in my coven! She'll just have to settle for being a useful tool in my conquest alongside Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer!”
The unicorn mare glared daggers at her statuesque adversary, who gave a noble woman’s titter. “In fact, I think I’ll make her suffer daily just for sharing your face. You’re practically twins! Ohohohoho~!”
She was about to retort but then paused at that particular phrase. Upon observing the cackling monarch more closely, she noticed that the botanic accessories seemed a lot more attached to her legs and arms than the last time.
‘Hmm, twins, huh?’
That sparked an idea in Bea, who nimbly ducked from another dazzling blast of raw magic. Each projectile and elemental spell deflected and countered as she closed in with a thrust of her rapier. A knowing smile on her snout.
“Of course, you, of all people, would know what it’s like to have multiple lookalikes. Huh, Taty~?”
The Sovereign Witch’s cocky smile quickly fell while evading her thrusts and swipes. “What nonsense are you babbling about now?”
“Oh, I think you know,” Beatrix pressed on. “You’re like, what? Queen Tatyana IV? The last one was much prettier than you were~!”
The monarch unicorn’s eyes glowed hotly with rage, her left eye twitching and teeth tightly clenched. “Silence, wench!”
“Why? It’s the truth, you know. You’re not even the ‘real’ Tatyana!”
“I am the queen,” she snapped, her composure failing by the second. “You, lying, shameless whore!!”
Beatrix twisted the knife once more. “A queen who declares herself as such is no true queen. Just as you’re nothing more than a loathsome copy of the mare Brutus Grimmwald once loved!”
“Keep that cur’s name out of your filthy, fucking, MOUTH!! He has nothing to do with this!”
“Pft! I’ll say. I ran into him in a distant dimension a while ago.”
That one got right under her skin. “What?!”
“Yep,” the witchy unicorn teasingly tittered. “No longer in Canterlot! He fled the scenes, knowing there was nothing left there but his miserable failures. Oh, and you, I guess.”
Beatrix beamed, watching her opponent's sanity crumble in her once proud features. While they circled the raging sea below, traded spells-after-spells that were deflected and countered, she pushed her button one last time. “But hey! At least the rest of Canterlot will finally get to see what a fake ass, dried up shrew of their queen is–”
“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!” Tatyana screamed, unleashing the full fury of her magical prowess in a wild barrage, only to strike the afterimage of the wayward witch cast. The magical nukes that the Sovereign Witch launched were instead unleashed, to her wide-eyed horror, on a few of her own ships. They were instantly vaporized in a dome-shaped series of explosions, a tidal wave thrown up, and fried kelpie rained and flopped on the beachside.
“No!! NOOOOO!!! You conniving little cunt–” She turned too late when Beatrix's rapier skewered her midsection from behind. “Uuhhngt..!”
Beatrix tried to maintain a poker face when she drove the blade up, feeling warm blood run down the blade onto her arm. “Sorry it had to be this way,” she said more softly. “But you didn't leave me with much choice!”
The violet mare rarely killed a foe directly or intentionally, and most of her casualties were clearly monsters of some kind. Not a beautiful queen and sorceress she would have admired, were she not a crazed dictator. Her heart ached, unable to hide a small twitch in her features at her actions.
Tatyana started to wilt like a flower, her face one of serenity, as she momentarily reflected on her last happy moment with her minotaur husband. The time she was a simple botanist, searching for a rare flower that they planned to one day expand into their garden—a far cry from the vile and vain sorceress she ultimately became.
“Brutus!” The last tears shed like dewdrops before she inevitably crumbled into dust.
Watching her remains scattered in the storm, Beatrix leaped over to where her mother lay. Instant relief was found through a pulse when her hand moved up to brush her mystical white mane.
But there was no time for Bea to consider her actions further as the entire realm quaked around her. Glitchy black distortion and cracks spread like fragmented glass across the blood-stained sky. Cosmic clouds were twisting around the whole isle, taking monstrous shapes. Goat-like brays and grotesque roars echoed around the battered battlefield.
It was then that she realized that the dark nimbostratus that had been ruining her every reality... was actually Shub’Niggurath herself!
The cloudy aberration manifested as close to its true form as the mind could comprehend, a massive vaguely caprine entity, wearing a titanic six-horned skull as a ‘face’. Millions of tendrils, horizontal eyes and toothy, slime-leaking maws visible with every flash of eldritch lightning.
Such an enormous presence was not meant to exist in this fragile mortal realm, where it usually took on an avatar like all elder deities. Its very existence pulled and strained the tearing fabrics of reality. The fissures split the skies open as spatial objects and corrupt matter dropped into the Lost World like meteorites.
Beatrix noted the eye of the storm above the forest clearing, aware that her Onoma's ability to fly would not allow her to reach her destination in time. So, instead, she called forth her trusty broomstick.
“Haven't used this in a while,” she murmured and straddled it. “Makes me wish Demi-Trix was still around.” Usually, her childish tulpa would have taken this shape to ferry her onward. But she'd sacrificed her existence to help revive the fallen Shadow Scythe.
One more casualty in a war with Omen. One more vendetta she owed the Nightmare Stag, on a long list that kept growing. As fast as she was capable, she soared onward. Pushing herself far beyond her limitations, her face contorted in determination while she felt the black liquid attire stripped away from her plush physique, drop by drop. Saw the enemy attempt to raid the ville below, held off by numerous soldiers backed up by Atalanta, Zeloph, and Analyse.
“Come on,” she seethed in a low whisper at the Demiurge. “I need more!”
By the time she reached the ritual site, she found herself nude as the cultists below, shiny curves swathed in cold perspiration when the last dark drop slid from her form. Gales whirled from the dismal skies above the dim woodlands.
She almost crashed when she landed, so tapped out after her duel and how hard she pushed herself to arrive. The witchy unicorn couldn't even cast a simple spell to reclothe herself. Yet her sole concern was Oona, whom she told herself she'd been neglectful of, tear-stricken by a desire to make amends. Another one she'd let down.
Winds howled over her bare curves when she stumbled to find her, and she wondered, could she possibly blend in?
After all, all the attendees were denuded and lost in a unified incantation of the gargantuan storm cloud monster thundering above them.
“Iä! Shub’Niggurath!
Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
Iä! Shub’Niggurath!
Draw down the moon and extinguish the sun!”
"Hang in there, Oona. I’m coming!"
The dominoes toppled, one by one. Paimon had dissipated over time. And with him, Bellatrix's advantage in reading ahead of Alma’s movements. Nonetheless, she’d manage to wear down the Baobhan Sith with a flurry of attacks but couldn't bring herself to deal the final blow. Instead, she settled on knocking her flat on her back, then straddled her with the crimson knife positioned tip-first over her heart.
“Is any of this worth it!?” She berated the snarling vampiress. “Look around you, Alma. Our worlds are deteriorating! Soon, there won’t be anything left for either of us to rule! This has to stop!!”
Alma’s gleaming scarlet eyes scanned the dwindling horizon, well aware that the she-devil spoke the truth but was too hurt and stubborn to care. “Sae what will ye dae about it, Bellatrix? Stab mah already broken heart?! Kill meh fur e’erythin’ A’ve put ye through?!” Before she could even respond, Alma grabbed at her hands, and readjusted her aim to press the tip closer to her heart. “Then go ahead! Dae it! Finish meh off!!”
Bellatrix, momentarily stunned by Alma’s request, watched as her eyes filled with delicate tears and did not bother holding back the sobs escaping her throat anymore. “At least now Ah know how little Ah matter tae ye..!”
The red-skinned succubus trembled at the opportunity, unable to hide her own tears. Had she thrown the match? Had she lost her will to live…? “I-I... Alma! No!!”
Bella threw her dagger away, shoulders heaving from how hard she cried. Her eyes shimmer a bright blue color, overwhelmed with violent emotions.
“You mean more to me than you could possibly imagine, Alma,” she confessed through her sniveling. “Even if we don’t agree, no one deserves what you and I suffered! And no matter how wicked you’ve become, I’ll always love you!”
She bent forward and softly pressed her lips to Alma's, more chains called with what she could manage and poised to enrapture the Baobhan Sith as the she-devil dismounted from her and rose.
Alma hesitated mere moments after the declaration of love, cupping her lover's face tenderly... before striking her hard with a blow to the chest. The succubus impacted by a fist made of hardened blood by her hemomancy. Strong enough to make her heart stop.
Bellatrix went aghast before succumbing to unconsciousness; the chains summoned by Gehenna dissipated. Alma caught the succubus mid-fall, cradled her bare body close, and kissed her.
“Ah love ye too much as well,” she relented. “That's th’ only reason ye’ll survive!”
Unfurling her lepidopteran leather wings, she hugged her prize tightly to her chest and flew off.
Atalanta's head snapped when she spotted the vampiress soaring by. “Oh no! Bella!!”
Zell blasted an acolyte with a fiery cross of pale flames before whirling around to see Alma fly over the trees. “Has she been–?”
“No. She’s not so weak as to die that easily. Not even to a Vice Lord! I'll finish off the Baobhan Sith!”
Zeloph took her hand and shook his head. “We can’t go anywhere, my love.”
He pointed the Crucible at the clusters of Darkyung, who invaded the ville and attacked its people. “We're the only ones left that can save them..!”
“B-But Bella! What if she–”
“Mark my words; we’ll get her back,” Zell promised, hands firmly holding her shoulders. "But for now, we must defend these people while we still can!”
With a bitter nod and a chaste kiss between the couple, the pale reaper sent her shadowy pack of hunting dogs ahead, able to cover the distance faster than either of them. Wherever Bellatrix was, they’d soon know where to go looking for her.
“This isn't how I intended to spend what I hoped would be our honeymoon,” declared Atalanta, who appeared to dance with him when she beheaded a foe, twirled, and fell into Zeloph's arms, leaned back into his hold, her trust in him unbreakable. “But I can’t deny the thrill of spilled blood~!”
Zell smiled and, in turn, danced back with her. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, my sweet angel of death. I know you'd brave hell for me.” He swept her sharp white bang away from her face.
“A thousand lifetimes of hell,” she answered with a thin smile before they were forced to separate, and they cleave apart more foes in tandem, encircled by the sickles she summoned that whirled.
However, the couple paused their mid-dance of death as more portions of reality started to collapse...and windows to other realities started to bleed in. They bore witness to other potential possibilities, forever cut off. A universe where Triad survived and battled alongside Eclipsed Heart, Kitsune of the Nine-Tails, and Wispy Willow, who was aided by Kyube, Chisana, and a reluctant Penny Dreadful, with the promise Kilroy could be restored.
In another dimension, Midnight Blitzer fell completely to his hyper-stallion state, enslaved by the Manor Twins and the Eldritch beast they served. Shadow Scythe herself, Beatrix Belladonna, Cerise Silhouette, Moxxi, and the already captured Bellatrix Primadonna...all slaves to the mansion.
More would-be scenarios played before their eyes. And just as quickly as they came, they were snuffed out. They vanished into a swirling pitch-black vortex, growing rapidly in size and distortion.
Recognizing how close the multiverse was to the end, the demi lovers hurried to clear the village of every night creature and abomination.
All while praying something could be done to delay the inevitable.
Landing where the castle glamorguis stood sentinel, Alma tucked her captive close to her bosom, wrapping her leathery plumage over the knocked-out Bellatrix. Her concerns for the demoness rapidly bristled into outrage at the sight that awaited her. Not only were her lieutenants away from her castle when they were ordered not to forsake it during her absence, but the pair of vampire huntresses had been beset, pummeled, and defiled by the ebony caprines and their tendrils.
Only after the thirteenth round did the horned abominations cease their debaucherous endeavors, dropping both Camellia and Esmeralda to the muck like used condoms. Bellies full of copious ram sludge leaked out their puffy cunts, stretched anuses and mouths, thoroughly used and abused.
Camellia’s heavy tits were layered in saliva and bite marks, her nipples having been chewed raw, while Esmeralda suffered lacerations all over her pert ass, coughing out gooey residue. Yet, they pushed up on wobbly limbs to kneel before the rowdy spawn of Shub’Niggurath and continued to polish the juices staining their throbbing knobs, much to Alma’s shock and disgust.
“What th’ fresh hell are ye two doin’?!” demanded the livid Vice Lord.
Her subordinates barely registered her voice, too focused on worshiping the braying Darkyung, sucking and licking off the cum and leftovers on their vein-ridden dicks, lest they suffer more horribly lewd punishment at the hands (and tendrils) of the all-mother.
Alma was beyond appalled. Her fellow vampires, one a proud lesbian and man-hater in their own right, reduced to cock sleeves for black goat’s progeny. Tears cascaded down their faces from the humiliation and helplessness. Afraid of losing their free will and becoming mindless beasts like Douglas had.
“She’ba! This is not what we agreed upon,” Alma shouted, glaring hotly at the storm cloud that brewed thousands of goat-shaped faces, eyes, and legs. “Why are mah followers bein’ degraded?! Ah demand an explanation!!”
The Cult of the Nemesis, still chanting the name of their patron, stepped aside to allow their eldritch goddess through. The lepidopteran vampiress spotted the cracks in She’ba’s mortal shell, the eerie greenish light within matching the bolts crackling over the skies.
“You’ll have to forgive my children for their rough-housing~,” Lady She’ba playfully poured on with false sincerity as the Darkyung became more forceful with the vampire couple once more. One content in pulverizing Esmeralda’s face with frantic thrusts, while the other opted to abuse Canellia’s milky tits with its tentacles while swabbing her throat. “I require their needs to be sated!”
“Then offer yer own damn servants tae sate their depravity,” hissed Alma. “Keep mah legion out ov it!”
“Mmmn, see, that’s the thing,” the ebony satyress said, clicking her tongue. “You became a part of this when these sneaky, treacherous beauties stuck their noses where they didn’t belong. Couldn’t have them spoil my surprise~!”
The Baobhan Sith deepened her glare. “What surprise..?!”
The eldritch sorceress furrowed her brows, an annoyed look on her snout. “Kcuf el’ethiahm ra, really? Does no one cherish the value of a good surprise these days?! Bahh! Fine, I might as well show you!”
While the ebony goat with a thousand young muttered her disdain, she directed her worshippers to bring out the ornate coffin tucked inside the nearby tent. The sarcophagus’ appearance caused the vampire bat mares to balk, panicked screams muffled by the goat cocks stuffing down their gullets.
Alma’s fearless visage faltered when the lid creaked open and revealed the ancient cadaver within. She recognized the mummified man as her subordinates’ old master. Her unease grew when She’ba held up the Bewitching Bell tethered to her collar, understanding what was about to happen.
“W-What? No! Ye can’t dae that,” pleaded Alma, lowering Bellatrix’s unaware body to the ground. “Not wit mah power!”
The land shook violently, causing many to tumble as She'ba's wooly white mane uncurled to lift into the air. The dimension disrupted into static as the stormy abomination brayed wildly above while her vessel glared hotly at Alma.
“...Oh,” she began dryly, as her voice gradually became more ominous and wrathful. “You mean the power you forfeited to me as part of our agreement? So you could flutter freely like the blood-sucking butterfly you’ve longed to be? Hmm. Perhaps you’re a little ‘confused’ about your situation. So let me help educate you...”
A hot, searing pain spiked inside the auburn-haired beauty’s brain, crying out in agony while clutching her head from the psionic force crushing her skull.
“Your old power belongs to me,” she declared. “This universe belongs to me. You and your followers belong to me! And quite frankly, I am growing sick and tired of my goodwill being refused and disrespected by such ungrateful, shriveling SLUTS!!”
Alma collapsed, writhing and contorting her body as the psychic attack on her mind worsened. “Naahuaaaagh!!”
“I αɱ SԋυႦ'Nιɠɠυɾαƚԋ,” the eldritch entity roared through its vessel’s vocal cords, putrid purple slime oozing out every orifice in her fleshy vessel as more cracks and fractions formed. “Mσƚԋҽɾ Gσԃԃҽʂʂ σϝ Yαԃԃιƚԋ! EႦσɳყ Gσαƚ σϝ ƚԋҽ Wσσԃʂ ɯιƚԋ α Tԋσυʂαɳԃ Yσυɳɠ! Aʅʅ ʅιϝҽ Ⴆҽιɳɠʂ αɳԃ ҽɳԃʂ ɯιƚԋ ɱҽ! Aɳԃ I ɯιʅʅ ԃσ ɳσƚԋιɳɠ ʅҽʂʂ ƚԋαɳ ɯԋαƚ I ɯιʂԋ!!”
With her authority re-established and intentions clear, She’ba faced the suit-wearing corpse and rang the archaic artifact. The bell manifested Alma's vampiric curse into a constantly swirling crimson aura, with the Baobhan Sith immobilized by the psychic headache ringing between her ears. She watched horrified as the ebony satyress flung the sphere into the coffin, dissolving into liquid strains that seeped into the vampire lord’s bone-clinging flesh.
After a few moments passed, a loud heartbeat sounded, and Dhullex’s neck made a sickening crunch as he began to stir. Color returned to his decrypted complexion. As his years of decay reversed, his matted gray hair replenished into a full head of spiky, sleek purple. The sunken hollow sockets were refilled with rose-colored eyes.
His rejuvenated body sprung out of the casket, moving on pure instinct like a predatory animal. Hands with claw-like nails seized a cultist, ripped her hooded cloak away to fully expose the otherwise unclad mare, and sank his fangs into her neck. She released a dying scream, back arched and tensed in his grip while he slurped and fed.
Her coat paled, her sharp cries of pain almost sounding euphoric when Dhullex made a meal of her. Her nipples stiffened, and she dripped, lost in the throes of her little death before he completely drained her dry and dropped the raisin-skinned victim like garbage.
Cold breath visible as he steadied his hungry pants, lavender eyes staring up to the blood-stained moon. As awareness of his surroundings came into focus, the reborn vampire lord turned to his former brides, who whimpered at the sight of him while the Darkyung caked their exhausted faces in thick ropes of goat splooge.
A humorless chuckle was the first coherent sound he made, for his throat was dry and scratchy from centuries of inactivity. “Stupid cows. The fear gripping your hearts is still as firm as the night you robbed me of my domain and birthright. All these years of freedom, and look where it brought you—back to me.”
With a scoff, he swished the cape that completed his attire and turned to Lady She'ba, who struggled to maintain her dwindling vessel. “You claim to be Shub’Niggurath, yes? I’ve read countless stories that depict your likeness in a multitude of ways. But to think I’d be in the presence of the All-Mother herself. And resurrected by her, no less! To what do I owe this honor?”
She’ba recomposed her cracking visage and tittered when he knelt down and took her knuckle to his thin lips. “You have nice manners for a depraved monster pretending to be a man~.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Calling the kettle black, are we?”
“Not at all! I mean it as a compliment,” she teased. “Still, I trust I have your eternal devotion, Lord Faustus?”
Eying the sultry satyress with lecherous delight, Dhullex chuckled and pressed a fist to his chest before bowing slightly. “I am at your beckoning call, o’ bountiful lord of the woods.”
“D-don't trust her, Dhullex,” Camellia tried to warn, “She wants to–mmulphgck!!” Her words were cut off when the Darkyung shoved its ropey tentacle down her esophagus, bleating dismissively as it throatraped her.
“Wants to what? Destroy the universe? Put a final end to this eternal cycle of death and rebirth? I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner!”
Esmeralda sputtered her mouthful of spunk. “Wh-what?!”
“Pft. Of course, you simple-minded twats wouldn’t understand,” spat Dhullex as his eyes took in the shattered skies that unraveled, the blood moon’s ominous glow filling him with elated power and purpose. He took a deep inhale, then exhaled with a content sigh. “I’ve been in this miserably wretched world long enough to know when new life can no longer flourish. Why invest in livestock when the cattle have nothing left to sustain themselves and prosper? If I were to resume my reign of blood now, I would have a better chance of poisoning myself than anything fulfilling. My return to prominence, short lived, and my name once more forgotten to time...”
He bawled up his fist, which made a grotesque stretching sound. “No. Until the universe breathes its last breath, I will endure to savor this life so that I may pass onto the new era stronger than before. And my legacy intact.”
“Well said, old man!”
Their heads turned to the source of that nasal voice as another cloaked figure was escorted to the fold by more acolytes. A haggard-looking avian creature with a beak-shaped mouth stretched into a sickening grin. Chartreuse eyes gleamed with malicious intent. Yet, despite her confident stature, she looked worse for wear. Her gray flesh was smudged with burnt marks, revealing augmented cybernetic work within. The quills on her back and dusty wings bent awkwardly or snapped off. Her dark plume robes were tattered and full of tears, hardly covering her nude alien body. Dhullex grimaced at the sight of both thin female breasts and a flaccid cock that hung between her bird-shaped legs. “These worlds are doomed to die anyway. Might as well move on to the next life and establish the new status quo~!”
Alma stiffened at the sight of her; scarlet eyes dilated as they recognized the familiar resemblance to another old Vice Lord. “Varys! Ye look worse than before..!”
The biomechanical harpy chortled in response, eying her predecessor’s former faction mate. “Everything about me is worse! But at least I own it, honey,” she retorted proudly, touching up her dingy white hair. “Unlike you, who still ignorantly denies how fragile your heart truly is. You’ve even committed to the look tenfold! And for what? Her?” She gestured to the unconscious succubus wrapped protectively in her wings. “She’s infected with a child that’s not even yours~!”
The antenna above her brow tingled with fury, the Baobhan Sith glaring back spitefully.
“Oh, and Varys? He’s been dead for a while. The name’s Viscera,” she corrected with an eye roll, having done this vexing introduction who knows how many times before. “Now, weren't there two more of us originally?”
As if on cue, Douglas galloped onto the clearing, one of his eyes ruined by the explosive blast from the blunderbuss at near point blank, with the unconscious and nude form of Rheneas slumped across his back.
Viscera giddily tittered with amusement. “And you called me ugly? Personally, I like him better this way! Ahh! And you even brought Doppia’s better half! If the Burning King were here, I’d almost say this would be a thrilling reunion~!”
“Why are ye e’en here?” Alma spat. “Last we met, ye ditched us tae continue wit yer crude experiments involin’ th’ demihumans!”
“That I did,” confirmed the avian monstress. “And since then, I’ve been on a ‘holy mission’ to purge the obsolescence of humankind and replace it with my superior genetics! Varys had the right idea but wasted the potential on faulty robotics. I had hoped my colleagues would join my endeavor. But, needless to say, we didn’t see eye to eye. And things only got worse for me when Zeloph achieved Exaltation.”
The bitter memory of her crushing defeat still festered like an infected wound. The idea of being reduced to the blubbering mess begging for her life made her tremble with rage.
“I would have likely perished had Lady She’ba not ferried me here,” Viscera acknowledged, looking at the black goat of the woods. "And for that, you have my thanks and cooperation.”
“And in return, anything you’re black heart desires,” retorted the eldritch goddess.
“Pha! The only thing I want is to see Zeloph and his budding family wither on the vine,” the vile beldam stated with a cruel tittered. “Along with the other demihumans and comrades who aligned with him!”
She’ba tittered. “Don’t worry. You’ll have your chance. But the Cult of the Nemesis has big plans for you and Dhullex...”
Her moderate red eyes then looked past them when she added, “... As well as you~.”
Everyone followed her gaze as more cultists made their way into the woods. At the head of them was Trixie Lulamoon, although Alma didn’t recognize her as the one hailing from Canterlot. The two mares flanking her sides weren’t Sunset Shimmer nor Starlight Glimmer, further adding to the confusion.
Each of them strode in naked under the robe, fresh from another lustful ritual. The azure unicorn used her magic to carry the charred body of a pegasus stallion before dropping it before the satyress’ hooves. Despite looking very much dead, the gathered were astonished to find him breathing. His lidless eyes rapidly moved around, angry, agonized moans leaving his burnt snout.
Alma inquired, “Who is that?”
“More like who was that,” joked Dhullex, to which Viscera snickered.
“This is Fiery Kickstart,” answered She'ba, who knelt down before him. “Supreme Commander of the Crystal Empire from Equestria Multiverse B. Self-proclaimed savior of his people, but in actuality, a ruthless dictator who slaughtered anyone who opposed his authority. Normally, I wouldn’t have considered him a key player in my scheme. However, things have changed...”
Fiery trembled in pain when She’ba lifted his head, his bloodshot pupils shrinking at the sight of the otherworldly entity in mortal form. She then gestured her head to Trixie, who stepped forward. “Isn’t that right, Vox?”
Alma, Esmeralda, and Camellia nearly threw up when the mare opened her mouth wide to reveal a fat-pallid parasite sticking out where her tongue should be.
“I saw it with my own eyes, Your Lordship,” the clever isopod said. “He pushed his Onoma until it all but consumed him. Twice, in fact! Rarely have I felt such unbridled fury. So when he was finally defeated and left to die, how could I pass up such a golden opportunity?” Fiery made a heated grumble, not taking the remark kindly. “He is, without a single doubt, the ideal candidate to represent war in your campaign, my lady. He will become a valuable asset should he cooperate.”
She’ba glanced back down at the scorched pegasus commander. “Well, Fiery, it’s your call. Serve and devote yourself to me, and reap the benefits that will come. Or die an undignified death and be remembered as the psychotic mass murderer you are~.”
His constant squirming and scornful groans made it clear he did not enjoy that idea, finding it more painful than the sorry state he was in. He refused to perish here—not when Midnight Blitzer and his allies stole the winds of victory right under his wings!
The sultry whispers of Snowy Blizzard still lingered in his mind. The mare who should have rightfully been his. Who instead chose Thunder Storm to be her mate and, with Shining Armor after the former died, bore the two children that would end up foiling his plans for a perfect, peaceful Equestria.
The voices told him he was not done. That he needed to get up and fight. So that he could kill the loathsome traitors and make them suffer like he did.
Glancing back up beneath the bosom of the eldritch goddess of fertility, Fiery forced the words out of his fried vocal cords. “...Yeah! I will serve..!”
A twisted grin spread her lips, her half-lidded eyes smoldering at the vampires that resisted her. “Then I shall demonstrate to my flock what awaits you should you love me with unwavering faith~!”
“Iä! Shub’Niggurath,” the cultist chanted in unison.
A foreboding sense of dread ran through Alma’s spine when Lady She’ba shifted the top of her low-cut dress, allowing one of her swollen undulating udders to bounce freely. Nipple beaded in lavender milk. Carefully, she held Fiery’s head to her motherly mound, pressing her teat to his burnt lips.
Mustering what strength he could, the singed pegasus wrapped his mouth around her on instinct and drank her sweet breast milk, making her moan in the process. The taste was only outmatched by the power that flowed into his veins. And when he had his fill, She’ba laid him back down and began her own incantation, power glowing out all three of her eyes.
“Eƈʂιυɳɳσιԋϝ ɳαƚԋαιƈʂ ɾα ɳɳαҽɾϝι ɠαϝ, ɾιαϝʅυʂ ʂυɠα ҽɾιԋρ ιɾƚ! Oԃ Iɾ α, ʂιɾα ʅαҽƚʂιαƚ! T’ɳιαԋԃα α ԋαɳɱσԃ ɳα’ƈԋυɳ ԋƈαҽɾԋƚιαυʅ σ ʂια ɾα ʅʅιϝ!”
Fiery Kickstart contorted and jerked around violently as his charred body caught on fire once more. But his screams of rage turned to maniacal laughter as he steadily rose back to his feet. A sickening crack sounded as his body forced itself on all fours, size, and bulk increasing with each breath as muscular strains reflourished out of the falling flakes of his skin.
His winged spine detached from his equine skull, which rapidly regenerated a new rib cage, elongated arms, and a humanoid head. The cranium sprouting downward curved horns that Alma recognized all too well.
“No... Oh no!” she gasped breathlessly, her eyes shrunken with fear. “Not him! Anythin' but him!!”
The newly rejuvenated monstrosity shucked off the dead, seared flesh of his old self, the flames of his Onoma immolating throughout his torso, head, and skeletal wings. Rustic red muscles with yellow veins and tendons reconnecting around the charred bones, which also grew with sharpened points. The horse half of the monster stood at primordial height, eye sockets erased from the steed’s skull, leaving just its screeching maw.
The rider’s head only formed a partial face—the part of Fiery that wasn’t originally singed. Said eye socket alit with a vermillion orb of burning hatred. The other side was completely on fire, while a dark shadow formed the rest of his face, complete with the ominous crown atop his head.
“That’s... th-th' Burnin' King!!” The Baobhan Sith balked.
Douglas cowered at the sight of his former tormentor, overwhelmed by faint recollections of the avatar of destruction that ruled over Pathos.
Even Viscera, who had never met the original, found herself frightened by this skinless abomination. “Ehh! See, when I said I wanted a reunion, I was only joking! I-I didn’t think you’d actually–”
Suffice it to say that all three Vice Lords were apprehensive about the return of the nuckelavee, though there were notable differences between Fiery and the previous Burning King.
He was shorter in stature, though he still stood taller than everyone gathered. More apparent, he sported a twisted skeletal plume brought over by virtue of his once being a pegasus.
Fiery took in his new shape, clenching his elongated left hand with rake-like claws. His right arm had permanently fused with his sword, fire licks dancing around the smoldering steel.
A terrible grin formed on his humanoid face before he roared in triumph, voicing his immense satisfaction with the power and body bestowed upon him.
“Oh dear,” mused Dhullex mockingly. “It appears he’s taken a liking to his new mantle.”
“So he's embodied his spirit,” murmured Alma, overly distraught that she'd simply traded one cruel master for another. At least, with the Burning King, she'd always had an idea of what the conqueror wanted. But she remained in the dark about what this ‘new world’ Shub’Niggurath and her followers sought.
The black goat of the woods swayed towards her latest acolyte and asked, “How do you feel?”
“I feel alive,” he murmured, still marveling over his oddly centaur-shaped body. “Stronger... greater than before!”
“Now you are the unstoppable force of devastation you were always meant to be,” cooed She’ba. "The living embodiment of war. The demon of the wastes. And don’t fret,” she giggled. "You still have the endowments all men are so attached to~.”
Indeed, the Burning King figured out with a mere flex of his groin muscles that he had not one, but two girthy organs. One erecting where his rider’s torso met his steed’s back. And the other dropping between his equine rear legs.
The all-mother continued, “More importantly, you can rebuild your empire. Take revenge on everyone who has wronged you! Midnight! Cerise! Moonlight! Lightning! Equinox! Deinos! Your ex-wives, Panna and Chezka! Anyone else you hold responsible for your fate who hasn't already faced their end!”
“Yeesss...” said the man once known as Fiery Kickstart, lowering his front legs and holding his claw to his chest. “And in return, my glory will be done in your honor. All of existence will yield to your name. Iä! Shub’Niggurath!”
The cultist reprised his chant as their goddess turned to address them all. The Burning King took to the left side behind the goat woman while Faustus and Viscera stood on her right.
Camellia and Esmeralda were tossed next to Alma by the Darkyung, who closed them in with Douglas. All three met the seductive glare of the outer goddess as she spoke.
“You cower before me, wondering what my endgame is. And the answer is quite simple…singularity!”
“S-singularity..?” The blood faerie questioned.
“What need is there for such a convoluted multiverse? Why would anyone desire an existence where their lives are worse? Or, if you're an egotist, one thriving with a life better than your own?”
She gestured to the Baobhan Sith. “Think about it, Alma. While you’re partaking in this war, being pushed around by different slave owners, another you is out there. Full court of faeries under her command, devilish lover by her side. Not very fair, is it?”
Before the pale auburn-haired beauty could respond, She’ba continued. “It was an unspoken truth that for every choice chosen, a new timeline forms. There will always be alternative worlds and dimensions full of alternative versions of ourselves. Except, that’s not true at all.”
Murmurs of perplexity resonated from the cultists, and even among the more powerful followers before She’ba got to the point. “I’m sure by now, you’re all familiar with Beatrix Belladonna?”
The cult voiced their disdain for their previously sought-after messiah through booing.
“Well, she’s an anomaly among anomalies if you look carefully. Don’t you find it strange how no one’s encountered more variations of her?”
More murmurs, this time of acknowledgment.
“That’s because there are none,” elaborated the all-mother. “Somehow, she’s magically willed it where there is only one Beatrix Belladonna in all of existence. That’s why, no matter where she goes, her actions ripple and affect every known universe. And if she was able to do it, why can’t I~?”
“This is why, my devoted sheep, we have invoked the End of Days. To annihilate every conceivable universe until only one remains. One under my rule, where those loyal to my cause will share in my splendor.” She motioned her hand to the three villains beside hers. “After the birth of our new world, each of you will carve out your own regions to rule in my stead. Thus, I declare thee... Horsemen of the Apocalypse!”
The cultists chanted in celebration while Fiery, Dhullex, and Viscera shared a delighted cackle.
Facing her newly formed trio, She'ba anointed them each with her eldritch bident.
“War…,” she labeled the Burning King.
“Famine…,” she labeled the Bloodlord
“...and Pestilence, respectively,” she labeled the Defiler, who then arched an eyebrow.
Viscera said, “Hold on. Last I checked, there were four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Who, and where, is the representative of Death?”
She’ba flashed a smile and said, “That is none of your concern for the time being. But rest assured, she plays a pivotal role in the End of Days.”
“She!?” This only raised further suspicion, but the vulture-faced hag didn’t press further.
The ebony satyress turned away, hiding her frown when looking towards a particular direction in the blackened skies, clouded by her true form’s immense shape. In a low voice, she muttered,
“I only wish she wouldn’t involve him..!”
Location Carcosa
Universe ??? BC
Time 44 minutes until The End
Within a distant galaxy, drifting in a desolate universe, shone a horrifyingly beautiful planet. A veil of pale yellow clouds cloaked the atmosphere, but hints of its surface peaked through. The dark abstract landscapes give the planet a somewhat monstrous shape.
Orbiting around the enormous celestial body were twin suns and numerous moons, the traveling dwarf stars never crossing one another.
On the planet itself, the skies were alit with a perpetual yellow hue, glimmering with black stars. Most of the planet was unexplored, the ethereal miasma that cloaked the continents and seas too thick to traverse through. Leaving Carcosa a nigh uninhabitable planet.
The only section that did foster life was protected by the enigmatic deity who governed the planet. In the ethereal kingdom that shared its name with the eldritch planetoid.
Tall, abstract buildings and structures made up the city’s architecture, angelic abominations, and vaguely humanoid statue figures roaming the streets. Standing prominently above all else was the spiraling castle, with high towers threatening to scrape the skies.
The only other place worth noting was the misty lake located off the far east of the city of Carcosa. The Lake of Hali, where the twin suns emerged and vanished over the horizons. And where the King in Yellow currently stood silently in observance.
His latest attempts to salvage what little power he could reclaim ended in utter failure. At the hands of his progeny, no less. The archangel, Michael, was the most loyal and valiant follower of his faith until he unplayed the truth about his facade as Metatron. And the offspring of Lucifer herself, Zeloph. The half-breed degenerates a constant thorn in his side.
And now, he took the Luster Pledge in service to the Crucible, the ancient artifact passed down to chosen heroes and heroines as a means to always confront the forces of evil. And none was more evil than the eldritch god of decadence, deception, and ennui, who for centuries, had masqueraded as a benign god to shepherd and control mankind.
But few no longer knew of his existence, and those that did knew better than to even speak his name. Thus, the ironic detention of the King of Yellow, trapped in his own kingdom like a gilded bird.
Or so he thought.
The second he detected a new presence in Carcosa, he left his ivory tower and discovered her of all people here. Looking outward on the Lake of Hali, singing the anthem of his eternal city.
“Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns shrink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen in Carcosa~♪”
The King in Yellow steadily approached, the cephalopodic tentacles that made up the bottom of his regalia pulling him closer to the operatic songstress.
“Strange is the night where black stars arise,
And strange moons circle through the night skies,
And yet, stranger still is Dim Carcosa~♪”
She was no longer wearing her habit, her long, puffy hair, once pink with curled ends, waving along with the tidal winds.
“Song that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the king,
Must die unheard in Dead Carcosa~♪”
She turned to look up at him, his royal robe flapping along the gale. The death angel gazed into his pallid mask with bright red eyes, her smile bright as she sang the final verse for him.
“Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed,
Shall dry and fade in Lost Carcosa~♪”
The King In Yellow stood silent before slowly clapping his hands together, applauding the death singer, who curtsied.
“๏ђ, ђ๏ฬ เ ђคשє ɭ๏ภﻮє๔ Շ๏ ђєคг ՇђคՇ ร๏ภﻮ คﻮคเภ,” he lamented. “คภ๔ ץєՇ, เՇ Շ๏г๓єภՇร ๓є Շ๏ ђєคг เՇ รยภﻮ ร๏ ๒єคยՇเŦยɭɭץ ๒ץ ๏ภє รยςђ คร ץ๏ย.”
Julianne tittered in response before teasing him. “Still bitter after your latest folly, are we, Hastur?”
His tendrils were erected with flamboyant spikes as they writhed furiously, the eye holes of his mask alit with genuine anger. To have his name so casually mentioned without a flare of respect irked him to no end. Yet he knew better than to strike her. For she was death incarnate.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” concurred Julianne.
“๔๏єร ץ๏ยг שเรเՇ ђєгє รєгשє ค קยгק๏รє ๏ยՇรเ๔є ๏Ŧ เภรยɭՇเภﻮ ๓є ฬเՇђ ץ๏ยг קгєรєภςє?” asked the King in Yellow. “เՇ’ร ๒ค๔ єภ๏ยﻮђ ץ๏ย รקเՇє ๓є ๒ץ คקקєคгเภﻮ ɭเкє Շђ๏รє ฬгєՇςђє๔ คՇг๏ςเՇเєร ฬђ๏ ฬคɭк คภ๔ ɭเשє Ŧгєєɭץ ๏ŦŦ ๏Ŧ ๓ץ ๒ɭ๏๏๔!”
“To be perfectly honest, I’ve grown quite fond of this form,” admitted Julianne. “It was the only approachable shape that inspired something outside of sorrow or fear upon my arrival. I felt welcomed. But that time has since passed, as has time left in this multiverse.”
“ร๏ เՇ ฬ๏ยɭ๔ รєє๓,” Hastur grumbled, looking back to one of the many setting moons on Carcosa. “เŦ ץ๏ย’гє ђєгє Շ๏ кเɭɭ ๓є, ๔๏ ๓є ค кเภ๔ภєรร คภ๔ ๓คкє เՇ ợยเςк. ๓ץ קคเภ เร ς๏ภรՇคภՇ คภ๔ รђคгק Շђє ɭ๏ภﻮєг เ гє๓คเภ เภ Շђเร קгเร๏ภ ๏Ŧ ๓ץ ๏ฬภ ๔єรเﻮภ.”
Julianne reached out to offer her hand. He hesitantly took it, ready to feel the nothingness finally dissolve him, but only felt another hand atop his own. Stroking his knuckles.
Her smile brightened. “You will die one day, Hastur. But not today.”
The King in Yellow pulled his hand away, a frustrated noise ruminating behind his pale mask. “Շђєภ ฬђץ คгє ץ๏ย ђєгє?” he demanded. “ฬђคՇ เร เՇ ՇђคՇ ץ๏ย ฬคภՇ?!”
Julianne kept her calm and collected smile. A far better mask than the one the unspeakable one wore. Then, in his ancient tongue, the seraphic singer answered,
“Iot ceva reicogen roup ici sius ej~.”
Back on the Isle of Parras, the newly indoctrinated cult members finished hanging the treacherous vampires by their wrists on a tree branch. Alma, Camellia and Esmeralda whipped by the Darkyung’s ropey tentacle should they try to wriggle free.
Douglas similarly had his hooves locked in iron shackles while the cultists blasted him onto his side with their horn wands. The monstrous kelpie whimpering in pain.
Vox watched over the unconscious Bellatrix and Rhenaes, who were lying next to each other at the tree’s base.
Lady She’ba proceeded with her speech, waving a hand to highlight the three vampiric beauties. “This is the fate all disobedient heretics shall share,” she declared. “At best, they’ll simply hang here until they’ve learned respect and ask for forgiveness. At worst, well... I’ll leave that up to your imagination~!”
Alma continued to glare at both the ebony goat of the woods and the horseman that snickered at them. “Sae this is how it all ends,” she laments bitterly. “At th' hands ov th' most callus, malevolent monster e'er conceived. If ye’d permit us tae drink, A’d raise mah glass tae ye, She’ba. Th' night is truly yers.”
She’ba pursed her lips, rising in her thorny vines to confront the blood faerie face to face. “If you had met with any other outer god, all of you would have vanished on the spot,” she sternly pointed out. They would have brushed through your dimensions and annihilated your worlds without a second thought—mere ants being crushed by the feet of giants who don’t even know you’re here!”
“So what, you expect us to believe life in your ant farm will be better?” Spat Esmeralda.
“I expect you to try and comprehend,” the dark satyress hissed. “Compared to beings like Tsathoggua or Nyarlathotep, I am a saint! One of the very, very few elders cursed with the knowledge of your existence. I am the proliferation of all living things. It is my nature to mother and care for you! Through me, you are safe! And all that I ask in return is that you lavish me with unadulterated love.”
The nimbostratus abomination rumbled with bestial cries as its mortal vessel turned her face away, black tears leaking out her irises. “For too long, I was unable to speak with anyone outside my pantheon. Floating aimlessly in a forgotten realm full of thoughtless abominations. I was utterly alone, with only my children to offer me little comfort. Until...”
Amid the chaos, the rain had died down, only to be replaced with snow. Everyone shivered as the temperature gradually dropped, and their ears were drawn to the sound of footsteps squishing into the wet ground. The cultists bowed their heads while the horsemen and prisoners stared at the new arrival with bewilderment. And She’ba’s frown became a loving smile.
“...I finally made a friend~!”
Omen emerged from the darkness of the woods, cradling the beloved Oona Ewe in his arms. The pregnant sheep woman whimpered in her sleep, struggling from birthing pangs.
The seer of black dreams briefly glanced at the vampire captives, all of them appalled by his reappearance after escaping their clutches long ago. He then proceeded towards a stone-carved altar, pagan symbols etched around a ritualistic ghost circle. The Nightmare Stag placed the dream faun on the slab and tore off her filthy maternity gown with his claws, her pudgy swollen body on display. Inverted nipples outward and hard from the freezing cold. He gently stroked her cheek before turning to address his followers.
“Every night, we lay our heads down to dream. And more often than not, we dream about the horrible travesties we’ve had to endure. In our dreams, we believe ourselves as heroes—that we can save the day, change everything that was wrong, and obtain the retribution we so rightfully deserve! And then... we wake up.”
The cultists murmured their discontent as the towering stag paced back and forth. “We wake up, look at ourselves in the mirror, and see nothing has changed. That we aren’t the heroes we long to be. That we can’t fix everything. So instead, we bottle up our rage and try to move on with our little lives. Pretending that nothing is wrong when that is far from the truth! Everything about our reality is wrong! But now, I can fix that. Because now, I have the power to make real change!”
Omen motioned to the slumbering pregnant ewe, sprawled out on the stone altar, placing a hand on her swollen belly.
“Within moments, the Child of Lightendark will be born. And the last light of this dwindling multiverse shall be extinguished. Thousands, billions of worlds in shambles because of some noisy, rotten little witch called Beatrix Belladonna, who thinks that only her wishes are worth granting!”
The audience once more booed, earning a sick smile and a chuckle from the cult leader.
“But after tonight, she, and everything that she stands for, goes away. Because after tonight, when our all-mother becomes whole, and the world is remade anew... no one is going to even know the nameof ‘Beatrix Belladonna.’ That is my payback! My ends justified by my means! My banquet to you, my Cult of the Nemesis, for following me on this journey. I will not pretend to know what lies beyond the veil, but I swear to you that by taking my hand, we will walk to the promised land together! A land no longer shaded in either black or white. A land where no one will die starving for a better tomorrow. Because tonight... we will be set free! Tonight, our story will finally be told! And though the light may fade, we will never wither away!”
The Cult of the Nemesis cheered in jubilation while Alma and her collective wallowed in dismay. Forced to accept the reality that this black-hearted deer had everyone eating out of his hand. And all opposition against the fiendish cervine and his acolytes would be dead before the new dawn.
Omen’s ears flickered at a groaning sound behind him and turned to find a delirious Oona awakening. Her honey-brown eyes fluttered open before widening with terror as she found herself nude and prostrated atop the cold stone, surrounded by acolytes, abominations, and enemies old and new.
“Wh-what’s goin' on?! Why am Ah here?! O-Omen..?!”
“Shhhh,” the gray cervine gingerly whispered, his finger touching her snout. "I know you are terrified and confused, Oona. But you have nothing to worry about. This will only hurt for a moment. Then we will have your reunion!”
“What are ye talkin' about?! What reun–” Her voice died when her eye fell upon the crumbling visage of her double, her mortal form in shambles, barely hanging together by the tendrils seeping through the cracks. She’ba gave a welcoming smile to Oona, who could only scream.
“We meet at last,” the eldritch goddess greeted, her true voice overlayed with her vessel. “The final piece of my totality. You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this promised night to come~!”
Oona gazed tearfully at the nightmare stag, lip quivering as she struggled to hold back her contempt. “... Why? Why, Omen? How could ye betray us?! Betray me?!”
“Ohh, Oona,” he answered tenderly, his maroon eyes soft and full of sadness despite his smile. "Believe me. Nothing pains me more than to see you suffer like this. Such a soft-hearted soul does not deserve the turmoil Beatrix has inflicted on you. But you must be brave, my love. This is the only way we can fix what she has broken!”
“N-no! Ye’re wrong! Beatrix would ne'er dae this tae me! This is all ye're doing! Ye lied tae me!!”
His breathing tensed he shook his head. “Open your eyes, Oona. Your heroine is nowhere in sight! If she truly loved you, she would have come for you days before this! You don’t understand it yet, but you will! I... I'm trying to help you! Save you from the horrible fate that binds you to her! Please, Oona. I am not your enemy!”
The sadness she shed for him grew colder, turning into tears of hatred. “Ye’re right... ye’re somethin' worse! Ye are deplorable! Heinous! A predator who confuses himself as th' prey that he hunts! Ye’re a wretched, evil beast! Ye can spin all th' lies ye weave, an' dae what ye will wit me. But know that Ah will forever despise ye!! In this life, an' the next!!”
Omen couldn’t keep himself from trembling, his composure slipping from the scorn the azure sheep spat at him, claws digging deeply into the stone, leaving markings. Oona quivered when he raised his hand, bracing herself for the dark stag to snap and lay harm to her... but all he did was brush his head, straighten up his posture, and exhale his frustrations.
“That's... such a shame,” he said with a wounded tone. “Out of Aislin’s incarnations, you were the most like her...”
Before she could pry further knowledge, a sharp pain shot through her spine. Her head flew back, screaming into the forest as her pregnancy with Abadonna approached its end.
“She’s starting to push,” he observed before calling forth Vox and some other higher ranks to prepare the ritual while helping with the birthing process. The evil buck leered down at the dream shamaness, and he said, “I wanted to make your last moments comfortable, Oona. But I no longer see the point in keeping this civil. You may no longer love me, but you will fear me!”
A sinister smile stretched his features when he added, “Just as Cerise feared me, and Fidelma... and Minerva... and Demi-Trix... and all the others who stood before me. Heheh... don’t fret. Some of them still live on... sustaining me~!”
The soft caprine’s heart sank further at the revelation that her teacher and an old friend had been murdered and eaten. Plus, the countless innocent the Nightmare Stag sank his teeth into.
Worse, he’d only 'spared' the tulpa and erased her memory of when she discovered him because he feared her disappearance could raise too many questions, too soon. Yet by the time Demi-Trix sacrificed herself and offered her revelations to the reborn Atalanta, it had proven far too late. Omen had already set the final touches of his plot in motion.
Oona sobbed harder when her doppelganger stood before her head, hands rubbing and touching her forehead. She’ba gave a nod of her head, and the Cult of the Nemesis commenced with their seance.
Alma decided she'd heard enough. She couldn't let this ritual reach its zenith, the consequences unthinkable even to her! Concentrating on the closest cultist guarding them, the Baobhan Sith tried to split herself into her lepidopteran swarm. And though the iron scorching her wrists weakened her fae magic, she managed to achieve the spell’s effects long enough to slip through.
When the acolyte tried to interfere, he found his chest burst open like the meaty petals of a flower in full bloom. Blood flowed out wrapped around Alma’s hand, turning it into a sharpened blade to free Camelia and Esmeralda.
“Thank you, mistress,” murmured Camellia, who took a second to recover and crudely reform her shattered mask before her black mane snaked out and crushed more of the spawn to bloody pulp, her fists enveloped in blackish-purple flames she cast.
Esmeralda rolled and winced a sore frame, reclaimed one of her taken weapons, and her silver pistol opened fire when she fanned the hammer. Silver bullets ripped into acolytes and monstrosities. She'd emptied the chamber quickly, flipped to avoid a spell hurled from a severed unicorn wall fired at her, took up her silver sword, and started to cut down their foes. “Let's send these bastards back to hell!”
Around her, Esmeralda continued to flip, twirl, and dance with thrusts and slashes of her sword, a sadistic gleam in her eyes when she slaughtered as many of the Darkyung as she could to pay them back for what they'd done. She was supported by Camellia, who'd taken skyward to protect her flank from the onslaught, her hair wielded like a weapon when she rained purplish-black flames on the cultist mobs below.
The triad of vampiric beauties nodded in unison and commenced with their onslaught, butchering every cultist in sight. Douglas rallied with a neigh, snapping off the chains that bound him to topple and kick away the opposition.
While her legion distracted his underlings, Alma flashed towards Omen himself, who stood defensively in front of the ritual. But her aim wasn’t to confront the fiend head-on. Rather to slip past and take out Oona while there was still time. While she bore the dream faun no ill will, was she slain, there was a faint chance She'ba couldn't complete her ritual of obtaining a complete corporeal form, and she could foil their plans.
Oona closed her eyes, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She was aware of what Alma intended to do and completely surrendered. It was better to die here with Abby and save the multiverse than become the permanent vessel of Shub’Niggurath.
‘Forgive me, Beatrix..!’
But the moment the blood faerie got too close, reality distorted with red-white noise, and Alma found herself right back to where she once stood.
“Huh? What th'?!”
Her scarlet eyes bore into the gray cervine, who held up his scepter, embedded with Mandela’s Hourglass. Cracks in the artifact from overuse.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll tie yourself back in that tree, Vice Lord,” warned Omen, his antlers glowing with eerie waves of black static.
“Ah won’t rest until A’ve drained e’ery ounce ov vile blood out ov ye, cannibal!” The Baobhan Sith hissed, once more rushing.
Omen smiled, undeterred by her threat, and held his hands behind his back. Just before she could reach him again, Dhullex flashed in to intercept her, a familiar kilij sword clashing with her magical bloody steel.
“Mah sanguine blade!” She realized with disdain.
“In the hands of a real vampire,” taunted the blood lord, her face contorting into the shape of a snarling bat-faced beast—much like the one she had been cursed to turn into.
The two zipped around the woods at blinding speeds, Alma reshaping her magic into better weapons in feeble attempts to pierce her adversary. But Faustus proved faster and smarter, pushing back with his own blood bending, which he freely extracted from nearby cultists. This immediately healed the wounds inflicted by Alma.
Dhullex landed an upward swipe, cutting her open and knocking her down into the frosty wet muck. Alma seethed, resealing the gash carved from her abdomen, through the valley of her breasts, all the way up to her shoulder.
“Ooh? A master of hemomancy,” quipped Dhullex, wiping the blood off his blade before slurping it off his fingers. “I’d be impressed... had I not already perfected the art centuries before. I’m afraid this is checkmate, my dear.”
Alma pushed herself back up, long auburn hair coiled, wings buzzing, ready to strike down the haughty bastard when Viscera called for her attention.
“It's quite hard to play chess when your queen is off the board,” the vile beldam chortled, lifting Bellatrix in her folded arm, venom talon poised to prick her neck. Behind her corpse flower-tipped tail, Esmeralda and Camellia were writhing on the ground, paralyzed by a toxic steam they ingested.
“No..!”
“I would prefer my possessions unharmed, thank you,” informed Dhullex.
Viscera waves his concerns off. “Oh, relax! The effects will wear off long after we’ve completed our triumph~!”
A large thump pulled Alma’s attention to the defeated Douglas, whinnying with pain from the scorched claw marks and slashes burnt into his body. The Burning King’s front legs stomped on his neck as he muttered, “Pathetic! That was just a fraction of my fury..!”
With no other alternative that wouldn’t end in misery, Alma yielded, dispelling her Onoma as blood splattered the ground. She hissed when Dhullex seized her by the throat, thrashing violently as she felt his touch somehow drain her life force. Gradually, her breaths and heart slowed until she lost consciousness as well.
His lavender eyes took in her voluptuous flesh, leaning in to smell her aromatic scent, a victorious smirk curling his upper lip. “You will make an excellent bride in my harem,” he whispered before craning his head to Camellia and Esmeralda. “Just as those two delectable beauties have.”
“On your own time, Lord Faustus,” said Omen. “We cannot afford any more delays or interruptions. The ritual must be completed before Abadonna is delivered. Keep the prisoners at bay.”
“Of course.” The horsemen nodded, gathering the weakened bodies of the three vampires, the kelpie, Rhenaes, and Bellatrix, and staying on guard should any of them attempt to move.
Omen then turned to his followers and ordered, “The rest of you! Ready the sacrifices and paint her in blood. Shub’Niggurath will be at her most vulnerable during the process. Everything must go according to plan!”
The Cult of the Nemesis scattered into action, and those captured in the raid were carried to the altar. Some were civilians, others soldiers, hobbled and broken. Meanwhile, Vox and the high priests kept their unbroken trance and mantra.
“Iä! Shub’Niggurath!
Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
Iä! Shub’Niggurath!
Draw down the blood moon and extinguish the sun!
Ia! Ia! Shub’Niggurath!
Give birth to the new world when all pieces are one!”
As the ritual steadily grew in power and magic, the ancient symbols lifting off the stones to spiral in a distorted dance, She’ba’s eyes glowed as she placed her forehead onto the frightened Oona, whose eyes then shared the same radiance.
Bits of pieces tore off the dark satyress’ mortal flesh until nothing remained, the storm entity above bellowing with thunderous roars as it formed a cyclone around the seance table, its eldritch matter and energy funneling into the pregnant ewe.
With the Cult and the Horsemen occupied to ensure the ritual’s succession, Omen looked outward from the woods, aware that one obstacle still stood in his way. So he waited, a patient smile across his snout.
“It won’t be long now until the guest of honor arrives.”
Beatrix knew there was no time to flee and summon help, as the ritual was underway, given the magnitude of the rumbles and quakes tearing through existence. But when she stood naked and alone in the woods, she wondered what she could even do anymore.
Her powers tapped out, and her stamina ran dry. With the Necronomicon's destruction, maybe the violet witch could've finally learned a teleportation spell since her portal abilities were lost. Not that she'd had much time to learn such a complicated spell.
Beatrix shivered in the bitterly cold air, mining her memories for ideas, however slim. That’s when hit on a small, nigh nonsensical chance.
The Demiurge, which She’ba had forcibly ripped right out of her womb. Though traces of it still clung to her vaginal and uterine walls, struggling to regenerate.
‘You still have untold power left, don’t you?’ she thought to herself. ‘It was wrong of her to try and tear us apart, even though I was planning to do the same before you consumed me. But if you give me what’s left of your power and help me save Oona, I’ll let you stay! Help you grow stronger than before. What do you say..?’
For a while, nothing happened. The mare’s shoulders slumped, her expression crestfallen, tears on her cheeks. Then, she felt the cool dark liquids flow like menstrual blood from her birth canal, wrap back around her like a second skin, and restore her weapon and spatial cloak. With the aid of Walpurgisnacht, she surged with indescribable might, almost infinite, far beyond what she'd ever achieved.
Beatrix wasted not a precious second and soared into the ritual site; consequences of the price she paid be damned. Those she loved were threatened, the multiverse dying before her eyes. And she wouldn't be stopped!
“Ahh...” Omen mused as he held up his hand, spotting a violet dot that hastily grew in the distance. “...Right on que~!”
Blind fury and anguish fueled her determination to succeed, a storm of magic hurled around that knocked the Acolytes and Darkyung tossed off their feet when she collided with the seer of black dreams.
The stray bolts of magic zapped many of the cultists not in the ghost circle, reduced to smoldered wrecks or black marks across the earth that smoked.
Beatrix glared deathly at the one responsible for this catastrophe, her unicorn horn inches away from penetrating his skull. Her rapier trembled in his grip, droplets of his blood leaking out his palm.
Omen eyed the vengeful witch and snarkily said, “Took you long enough.”
“Fuck! You!!” Bea cursed through clenched teeth.
“Mmm~! Sounds like fun. But I’ll have to pass, you depraved whore,” the naht’dyr retorted, throwing off the bewitching beauty with a mere push. She gracefully landed a few feet away from him. “I have much more in store for you!”
She briefly scanned the scene, startled to discover enemies old and new holding her sister and friends captive. But her attention was on the swirling vortex whirling into her beloved, connecting to the stormy presence of the outer goddess, Shub’Niggurath.
“Shall we dispose of this thick-headed harlot?” Questioned Dhullex, unsheathing his newly acquired sanguine blade.
“Yes, just say the word! I have a bone to pick with her,” sneered Viscera, an orichalcum sword erecting out her wrist.
Fiery Kickstart growled hotly and raised his own saber.
But Omen held up his hand and said, “No.”
As they stood down, he cracked the joints in his neck and took up a battle stance, maroon eyes locked on target. “Most of you had your opportunity, and failed. Right now, my appetite has never been more whetted! This is my time, and only I will be the death of Beatrix Belladonna!”
“Pft. Haven’t heard that one before,” scoffed the astral witch, walking in the opposite direction of her ultimate enemy, on guard. “I would demand what caused you to go off the deep end, Aiden. But quite frankly? I don’t give a shit anymore about why you’re doing this. All that matters is that I kill you. Here and now!”
The Nightmare Stag chuckled. “No hesitation to admit that, huh? Good. Your colors are on full display, ready to paint my canvas. My victory will taste all the sweeter knowing I’ve done what everyone else has failed to do.”
Beatrix shouted, “Oh yeah? And what’s that..?”
“Haven’t you figured it out? I’m an anomaly, just like you. I don’t belong... anywhere. But when the End of Days passes, after this multiverse is shredded down to its final atom, and a new world awakens... There will be a place for me. A place much like this. With all your friends, family, and loved ones, all living together in one simultaneous continuity. Everything will be as it was before! Well, except for one minor difference...”
Dark power flared from Omen, a flurry of black snow and red static overwhelming his presence as his demeanor shifted from well-mannered prey to ferocious predator. His eyes widened, glowing pupils shrunken. A vicious snarl on his snout, teeth, and mouth drenched in salivation as he told her with dripping enthusiasm,
“...ꌦꄲ꒤ ꅐꄲꋊ’꓄ ꃳꏂ ꓄ꁝꏂꋪꏂ!”
Having enough of his petty dribble, Beatrix charged in with her magically infused rapier, which he evaded with ease. Omen kept his distance, flinging out projectiles to lengthen the space between them, skidding around in circles while his followers and accomplices watched.
She sliced through each glitchy sphere, only for a shard of blackened ice to be hurled her way. And while the unicorn avoided the initial spear, she didn’t account for it suddenly exploding and lodging smaller ice shards into her back. “Gaaghah!!”
“Ooh~! This is gonna be good,” Viscera crowed, ribbing the Burning King next to her, who gave a small chuckle in agreement.
Beatrix hissed when she dislodged the chilly shrapnel, the sharp cold sensation stinging her warm wound. Violet eyes narrowed as she unleashed her signature storm of element spells.
But the fiendish cervine’s attunement with the cold allowed him to temporarily command the ice element, causing it to expand and disrupt the spell into a small explosion before it landed.
“All that excessive training and you’re still relying on old, cheap tactics,” he tsked. “I was hoping for something a lot more clever.”
“You want clever,” The witchy unicorn barked, “I’ll give you clever!!”
She manifested her warping orb of darkness, its trajectory blinking between spaces. Omen briefly tried keeping track of it before closing his eyes. His antlers glimmered with whispering static before his lids reopened, and he flung a projectile towards the ritual, predicting that her true target was disrupting the seance.
Beatrix shouted in disbelief. “What?!”
“I said clever,” he continued to taunt while conjuring another spell. “Not desperate.”
She gasped and looked to the ground, realizing a pitch-black splotch was forming to place her in a tar bubble—a dark variation of Oona’s sleep spell.
The violet unicorn leaped to safety before the trap could trigger, only to step into another bubbling black splotch. She kept dancing around the danger brewing on every place and ground, forced to jump up. Leaving her open for another projectile, the cannibal cervine launched.
Upon impact, she felt her anxieties and fears briefly overwhelm her mind, the voices of her friends whispering in her head how better off they were without her.
Beatrix managed to shake it off but now realized getting hit by any of Omen’s attacks was a bad idea. As she retook her stance, her foe summoned a larger orb of his malevolent aura, at the cost of a much slower travel speed.
The wayward witch scoffed. “If you think that slow-ass thing is hitting me, you're more stupid than–”
Time glitched forward to where the massive projectile was right in her face, and she had no means of evading damage. Knocked back onto her butt, the effects of Omen’s Onoma, Melinoe, worsened. Her perception of reality even distorted as the landscapes and weather fizzled into a different scene.
Beatrix seethed at the cackling stag, particularly the hourglass attachment fixed into his staff. The sands of time are halfway from filling the opposite end. If she could stall out just long enough!
She sucked in a heavy breath as Omen unleashed another slow-traveling orb of madness. This time, she took the initiative and ran away as the glitchy projectile chased after her.
But the nightmare stag didn’t relent, hurling out three black icicle spears, speeding up their trajectory with time manipulation. The horsemen cackled with amusement, observing as their long-standing foe struggled to evade the exploding ice shards while the larger madness ball grew closer and closer. Then, he rewound the unicorn to certain points just to try and dodge again.
It wasn’t enough for Beatrix to keep evading and try to counterattack. She needed to deliver some major offense as well! But how was she supposed to fight someone with insight from the future? Unless…
Thinking on her toes and hoping her hunch was correct, she unleashed another warping orb, vanishing and reappearing rapidly around Omen, who shook his head.
“Have you learned nothing?” The dark grey buck asked as he once more channeled his prophetical prowess. “Those parlor tricks won’t work on..!?” His eyes snapped open to see Beatrix making a beeline for him, causing him to stumble backward, right into her magical projectile, which burst upon impact. “Aakk!”
The force sent him forward into Beatrix’s downward swipe, sending him to the ground on one knee. And, with enough time, to whirl around and fire another warping ball to intercept the greater madness orb tailing her, canceling each other out.
Landing with finesse, she puffed in and out, bosom shaking with each breath as she sneered down at her most hated foe. Omen hissed while wiping his sliced cheek, crimson leaking out and staining his hand. But both were more interested in Mandela’s Hourglass, which finished filling up one side with sand.
“Time’s up, Darkbloom,” declared the witch, needle-like blade pointing at his head. “You might be able to predict the future, but it looks like you can’t read more than one possible outcome! I am done falling victim to your manipulations!”
Her statement only earned a snicker from the sinister stag, licking the blood off his fingers before he asked, “Are you certain?”
As she continued to control her breath, Beatrix found her lungs burning from how dreadfully cold the air was. So focused on beating her opponent, she failed to grasp how tired she was until it hit her. Wheezing, she crumbled to her knees, shivering for warmth as the blizzard helped worsen her fatigue.
The violet mare’s eyes went wide with realization. All of this was just to tire her out. Make her drowsy and more susceptible to his sleep magic.
“N’aww, what’s wrong, Beatrix?” Omen condescended as he steadily approached her. “Feeling cold and tired? Why not wrap yourself up in a nice, warm blanket and take a long rest~?”
“S-sh-sh-shut up,” shivered Beatrix, raising a shaky hand to cast another spell... only for it to sputter and diminish shortly after leaving her palm.
Her fingers had blackened from a supernatural form of frostbite, which was slowly sapping her ability to use magic. Not helped that the unicorn was struggling to fight the sleep gripping at her mind, her vision grew blurry.
“Hush now, quiet now,” half-heartedly sang Omen, a crude rendition of the famous lullaby. “It’s time to lay your sleepy head. Hush now, quiet now. It’s time to go to bed~♪”
Beatrix’s tearful eyes rolled into the back of her skull; her lids finally fluttered down. A brief moment of surrender. When she forced her eyes open, she saw the world before her changed. The already towering trees now stretched and morphed into jagged shapes. The only form of light emitted from her person. And in place of the cultists and Horsemen we’re child-like servants wearing pale masks with antlers, singing the lullaby with mocking cadence.
Omen’s laughter reverberated around the disoriented Beatrix, who stood up in a defensive stance and whipped around to locate where her aggressor was hiding.
Sure enough, when she checked behind, a pair of jaws snapped out of the darkness. She yowled, falling back down with the lanky, moose-sized cervine monster toppled atop. The boney maw locked on her rapier, guarding her from his bite.
Grunting, she kicked him off with her heeled boot, the fiendish deer bugling with a violent shriek. His blank skull trained on her, saliva spilling out his mouth.
“Nnnrrgh.. t-this isn’t real,” she told herself aloud. “I-I’ll just wake myself up and–” A hard backhand knocked her off her feet, back arched in pain from colliding with a tree. The witchy mare spat out blood while scrambling to get back up, pain shooting up her spine.
“꓄ꁝꏂꋪꏂ ꒐ꇙ ꋊꄲ ꏂꇙꉔꋬꉣꏂ,” said the nightmare stag, hunched on all fours in a primal posture. “꓄ꁝ꒐ꇙ ꒐ꇙ ꅐꁝꏂꋪꏂ ꌦꄲ꒤'꒦ꏂ ꋬ꒒ꅐꋬꌦꇙ ꃳꏂ꒒ꄲꋊꍌꏂ꒯. ꋊꄲꅐꁝꏂꋪꏂ... ꅐ꒐꓄ꁝ ꂵꏂ!”
When she managed to stand on her feet again, Omen ran forward to take another swing at her, exaggerated claws tearing away at her Onoma each time he slashed at her. This form proved far faster and more aggressive, giving the violet mare zero room for any offense of her own.
Using a tree for leverage around the cervine-headed cryptid, Beatrix tried an aerial maneuver. Instead, she met a surging wall of thorns and antlers that burst out of the ground to stab through her bruised and battered, naked body.
Omen tossed and flung the witch around before holding her upside down by her ankle, dangling her close to his parted jaws. A dexterous tongue slithered out to lavish and lick her blood and sweat-caked body, slathering her face, breasts, and belly in hot drool. She felt it drip down between her thighs, over her mound, slit, and buttocks.
“ꋬꋬꋬꁝꁝ, ꓄ꏂꋊ꒯ꏂꋪ꒐ꁴꏂ꒯ ꂵꏂꋬ꓄,” growled the naht’dyr, savoring his prey’s salty tang with long licks. “ꇙꏂꋬꇙꄲꋊꏂ꒯ ꃳꏂꋬ꒤꓄꒐ꊰ꒤꒒꒒ꌦ ꅐ꒐꓄ꁝ ꇙꏂ꒒ꊰ ꒒ꄲꋬ꓄ꁝ꒐ꋊꍌ ꋬꋊ꒯ ꓄ꋪꋬ꒤ꂵꋬ. ꒐’ꂵ ꋬ꒒ꂵꄲꇙ꓄ ꓄ꏂꂵꉣ꓄ꏂ꒯ ꓄ꄲ ꇙꅐꋬ꒒꒒ꄲꅐ ꌦꄲ꒤ ꅐꁝꄲ꒒ꏂ..!”
Beatrix squirmed with little strength when his tongue traced her body, staring deep into the perpetual darkness within his maw. And then she could hear the screams of thousands still trapped inside the Nightmare Stag. Pleading for help. For someone to save them.
“... ꃳ꒤꓄ ꒐ ꓄ꁝ꒐ꋊꀘ ꒐’꒒꒒ ꁝꋬ꒦ꏂ ꋬ ꇙꂵꋬ꒒꒒ ꇙꋬꂵꉣ꒒ꏂ ꄲꊰ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꊰꏂꋬꇙ꓄ ꓄ꁝꋬ꓄'ꇙ ꓄ꄲ ꉔꄲꂵꏂ,” the rail-thin cervine said before tossing his would-be meal into the snowy muck. Her sword landed several feet away.
Panic overtook Beatrix’s once determined expression, stumbling to reach for her weapon, only for the eyeless cervine to drag her away right as her fingers touched the hilt. Twisted on her back, the frightened mare pathetically tried to kick him off, met with bemused chuckles as he crawled atop her.
“ꊰꏂꏂ꒒ ꓄ꁝꋬ꓄ ꓄꒐ꉔꀘ꒒ꏂ ꒤ꋊ꒯ꏂꋪꋊꏂꋬ꓄ꁝ ꌦꄲ꒤ꋪ ꃳꋪꏂꋬꇙ꓄ꃳꄲꋊꏂ?” He asked her before hovering his snout closer to her ear to whisper, “꓄ꁝꋬ꓄’ꇙ ꊰꏂꋬꋪ~.”
“No..! Nnnmhn-noo!!”
“ꍌ꒐꒦ꏂ ꒐ꋊ. ꒒ꏂ꓄ ꍌꄲ. ꒐꓄ ꒐ꇙ ꋬ꒒꒒ ꌦꄲ꒤ ꁝꋬ꒦ꏂ ꒒ꏂꊰ꓄!”
The monstrous cervine breathed out crimson mist all over Beatrix’s face, forcing her to inhale the lethal nightmare gas. Her already nerve-wracked mind went into overdrive, insecure thoughts and negative emotions manifesting into horrible hallucinations involving everyone she’d loved and fought alongside.
Dion forced to behead his father. Cerise made a slave in the changeling hive and impregnated. Midnight crippled and dying from old age, thanks to the hyper-stallion gene. Bellatrix trapped in Pathos, giving birth and mothering countless hellspawn. Zeloph cradles Atalanta’s lifeless corpse while declaring fiery vengeance on the world. Arcanum Folklore and Bloody Merry were overwhelmed, eaten, and raped by eldritch zombies. And a multitude of torturous ends involving her mother.
There was an endless stream of scenarios for Omen to call upon. Yet he restrained himself from fears based on truths and, when possible, what the witchy mare had suffered firsthand to drive the point home.
This was all her fault. Beatrix was ultimately the one responsible for his triumph. All her adventures, her interference, her selfish tampering with reality culminated in the end of everything. Of everyone.
“Ahaaagh! Omen! Pl-please,” she bawled. “Make it stop!!”
“ꋊꄲ, ꃳꏂꋬ꓄ꋪ꒐ꉧ,” her enemy told her, his voice dripping with spite and venom. “꓄ꁝ꒐ꇙ ꅐꄲꋊ'꓄ ꇙ꓄ꄲꉣ ꇙꄲ ꒒ꄲꋊꍌ ꋬꇙ ꌦꄲ꒤ ꉔꄲꋊ꓄꒐ꋊ꒤ꏂ ꓄ꄲ ꏂꉧ꒐ꇙ꓄!”
The nightmare stag sat her up, exaggerated claws gripping her arms tightly as he continued to boast. “꒐ ꋬꂵ ꏂ꒦ꏂꋪꌦꅐꁝꏂꋪꏂ ꌦꄲ꒤ ꋬꋪꏂ, ꋬꋊ꒯ ꏂ꒦ꏂꋪꌦ꓄ꁝ꒐ꋊꍌ ꓄ꁝꋬ꓄ ꌦꄲ꒤ ꋬꋪꏂꋊ’꓄. ꓄ꁝꏂ ꉔ꒤꒒ꂵ꒐ꋊꋬ꓄꒐ꄲꋊ ꄲꊰ ꋬ꒒꒒ ꌦꄲ꒤ꋪ ꇙ꒐ꋊꇙ, ꊰꏂꏂ꒯꒐ꋊꍌ ꄲꊰꊰ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꁝꋬ꓄ꋪꏂ꒯ ꌦꄲ꒤ ꃳꋪꏂꏂ꒯. ꒐ꋊ ꌦꄲ꒤ꋪ ꅐꄲꋪ꒒꒯ ꄲꊰ ꃳ꒒ꋬꉔꀘ ꋬꋊ꒯ ꅐꁝ꒐꓄ꏂ, ꒐ ꋬꂵ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꉔꄲ꒒ꄲꋪ ꋪꏂ꒯!”
Beatrix tried to tune out his malicious boasting, but his words echoed and reverberated inside her strained mind like wiggling worms burrowing their way into her brain.
“꒐ ꋬꂵ ꄲꄲꋊꋬ’ꇙ ꓄ꏂꋬꋪꇙ ꊰꋪꄲꂵ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꒒ꄲ꒦ꏂ ꌦꄲ꒤ ꉔꄲ꒤꒒꒯ꋊ’꓄ ꋪꏂꉣꋬꌦ,” Omen continued, twisting the knife further. “꓄ꁝꏂ ꒒ꄲꇙ꓄ ꁝꄲꉣꏂꇙ ꋬꋊ꒯ ꊰꄲꋪꍌꄲ꓄꓄ꏂꋊ ꒯ꋪꏂꋬꂵꇙ ꄲꊰ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꉣꏂꄲꉣ꒒ꏂ ꌦꄲ꒤’꒦ꏂ ꋪ꒤꒐ꋊꏂ꒯. ꒐ ꋬꂵ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꇙꏂꋪ꒦ꋬꋊ꓄, ꁝꄲ꒒꒯꒐ꋊꍌ ꌦꄲ꒤ꋪ ꊰꏂꋬꋪ ꒐ꋊ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꉣꋬ꒒ꂵ ꄲꊰ ꂵꌦ ꁝꋬꋊ꒯. ꌦꄲ꒤ꋪ ꊰꏂꋬꋪ ꒐ꇙ ꂵꌦ ꉣꄲꅐꏂꋪ, ꋬꋊ꒯ ꂵꌦ ꉣꄲꅐꏂꋪ ꒐ꇙ ꉔꄲꋊ꓄ꋪꄲ꒒. ꋬꋊ꒯ ꒐ ꋊꄲꅐ ꉔꄲꋊ꓄ꋪꄲ꒒ ꋬ꒒꒒ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꏂ꒦꒐꒒ ꒒꒤ꋪꀘ꒐ꋊꍌ ꒐ꋊ ꓄ꁝꏂ ꒯ꋬꋪꀘꋊꏂꇙꇙ ꄲꊰ ꌦꄲ꒤ꋪ ꂵ꒐ꋊ꒯. ꒐ ꅐ꒐꒒꒒ ꋊꏂ꒦ꏂꋪ ꋪꏂꇙ꓄... ꋬꋊ꒯ ꋊꏂ꒐꓄ꁝꏂꋪ. ꅐ꒐꒒꒒! ꌦꄲ꒤!!”
Omen reeled his head back, jaws opening wide before lunging forward, taking a big chomp out of her shoulder. The intense pain caused Beatrix to wake up with a blood-curdling cry, her mental awareness split between nightmare and decaying reality. Both forms of Omen flickered seamlessly together as he deepened his bite and tore off a sizable chunk of her flesh.
Everyone watched as the agonized mare cradled her gashed shoulder, crimson pooling out to stain the snow-covered ground. The cannibal cervine concluded his victory by sliding the wet strip of unicorn meat down his throat, chewing and swallowing noisily before ending with an almost orgasmic sigh of satisfaction. Blood dripped off his teeth and chin, staining the wolf fur collar of his coat.
Kneeling behind poor Beatrix, Omen hoisted her into a seated position, gripping her by the chin to force her to watch the dark ritual reach its apex. The last of Shub’Niggurath’s essence siphoned into Oona, the head of a baby crowning.
Beatrix tried to alleviate her tear-ridden gaze from the horror show, yet the seer of black dreams tightened his grasp on her face.
“Don’t look away,” Omen glowered sadistically. “You witness the birth of our child... and the end of your world!”
Oona shakingly looked down between her legs, hand reaching out as she called out for her lover, “B-Be-Beatrix!”
The mare in question babbled incoherently, reduced to utter despair. No secret card up her sleeve to pull from. No form of help to turn the tide. She was entirely surrounded by enemies who were all-powerful, omnipotent, and omniscient. The truth of Omen and She’ba’s boisterous premonitions finally crushed her like the weight of the world crumbling before her very eyes.
She had lost.
Oona gave one finally mournful cry to the heavens shattering above as a powerful light bursted out to consume her. The last bright light anyone on the Isle of Parras would see as the stars dimmed to complete darkness. The only other source of illumination coming from the blood stained moon.
Everything was deathly silent until the first newborn cries of a baby emanated from within the pillar of eldritch energy. When the curvy, chubby silhouette of the dream shamaness emerged, the towering light faded.
Beatrix trembled with impotent outrage and sorrow as She’ba opened all three of her eyes in her new form, an unfitting smile on her lover’s face. Her eyes lowered down to the bloodied dark blue caprine-equine hybrid cradled into her bosom, bawling after taking its first breaths of life.
“At long last,” she whispered lovingly, marveling over Abadonna and affectionately stroking her chin. “Something more than my own flesh and blood...~!”
Vox motioned for the remaining cultists to bow down, as did the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Omen was the only one who stood up tall, walking towards the all-mother with an impatient expression, looking at the blood moon, which was starting to lose its luster.
“Lady She’ba,” called the naht’dyr, extending his hand out. “I have delivered you the Child of Lightendark as promised. Now... give me the power to make our dream a reality!”
The eldritch goddess narrowed her red gaze at her consort. “Temper your impatience, Darkbloom. You will get that which was made in accordance. But I will not be rushed. Understand that this–”
“I will not be denied a minute more,” Omen urged, glaring back just as fiercely. “I have been starving for too long. It is time for you to give me what you promised! It. Is. ꓄꒐ꂵꏂ!”
Beatrix furrowed her brows when she spotted a rare look of hurt on She’ba’s face. Pouting that her perfect moment had been ruined, she nonetheless rang the Bewitching Bell to absorb the potential Onoma laying dormant within Abadonna. A brilliant, blinding aura, full of cosmic swirls, stardust, and a melodic hum, hovered beautifully above the baby lamb, whose crying had softened. Then, rather hesitantly, She’ba pushed the ancient energy towards Omen, who snatched it with his claws.
“N-no..! You can’t,” cried Beatrix, who struggled to post her numbed body back up. “Th-that’s not yours!!”
The nightmare stag gazed back at her, an absolutely unhinged smile stretching over his snout. “A word of advice for the future, Beatrix,” he said through excited pants. “The next time you see me... ꋪ꒤ꋊ!”
Maroon eyes gleamed malevolently as he overflowed the illuminated magic with his own aura. Its radiance dimmed under the roaring shadow and blood red wisps. Then, clutching it, he opened wide and shoved his entire fist inside his mouth to swallow it whole.
For a moment, nothing happened. A hollow gale howled around the dire scene.
Suddenly, Omen clutched his stomach with pained groans. Black bolts of energy crackled around his hunched body, his aura bursting out cracks that fractured the cervine’s slender physique. Then, reeling backward with a sickening bone crack, the seer of black dreams let out a primal scream as his overwhelming power seeped out of his eyes and mouth. His pupils shrank to the point of breaking apart, leaving his eyeballs stark blank.
Beatrix shuddered with horror as his anguished cries transformed into manic laughter, invisible psionic waves rippling across the fragile cosmos. The magnitude was so immense that Omen steadily lifted heavenward to the blood moon with pieces of the island.
When at the pinnacle of his ascension, the naht’dyr’s physical form imploded, unleashing a hurricane of dark devastation that rapidly spiraled and covered the entire physical plain. The blood moon visible within the eye of the storm.
Everyone below held onto anything stable before it dematerialized into nothingness. A series of dimensional tears formed before the trio of villains.
'ꁅꂦ ꄞꂦꌅꋖꍩ, ꂵꐞ ꍩꂦꌅꌚꈼꂵꈼꋊ,' Omen’s voice resonated loudly from the bleak squall. 'ꀯ꒒ꁲꂑꂵ ꐞꂦꐇꌅ ꋖꈼꌅꌅꂑꋖꂦꌅꂑꈼꌚ. ꀗꂑ꒒꒒ ꁲ꒒꒒ ꅏꍩꂦ ꌚꋖꁲꋊꂠ ꂑꋊ ꐞꂦꐇꌅ ꅏꁲꐞ!'
Fiery Kickstart and Viscera looked to one another, sharing an eager nod before leaping through the glitchy red portals. The vampire lord motioned for the cultists to shove Alma, Camellia, Esmeralda, and Bellatrix through his rift before departing from the dwindling lost world himself.
“Sister!!” shouted Beatrix, finally mustering the strength to limp after them, ignoring the raw pain coursing out her wounded shoulder, only for a thorny vine to fling her into a tree.
More botanic appendages sprouted to tether the weakened unicorn mare against the bark as She’ba levitated towards her, baby Abadonna nursing off the caprine’s milky breasts.
“Enough,” the outer goddess shouted gleefully over the chaotic thunder and rumbling, grabbing her by her cheeks. “It's over, sweeting~”
Location Isle of Parras
Universe Tir Nad Spiorad
Time 5 minutes until The End
Combatants on all sides came to a standstill and stared at the destructive clouds and rapturing skies. Most of them couldn't understand what had happened but sensed the end times had dawned. Tatyana's forces were unaware of the part they played in causing the cosmic calamity. Mere pawns, much like their dead queen. Horns prompted a ceasefire between the weary sides.
From the once more beached ship, Seabreeze flicked her ears while the distant sounds of battle continued to die down and quietly asked, “Huh? Is it over? The skies have only gotten worse!!”
“We've lost,” murmured Shimmer Shade, who trembled whenever her third eye darted about. “Oh, quelle horrible journée! To think, all we've ever accomplished will come down to this!”
Ashen clutched at his ribs, where he and his crew that survived stood atop the Nautilus. “I'm afraid that will be the case for all of us, my friends. Whatever the invaders had in mind, it appears they were mere pawns in the master scheme!” Groans came from below that started from the torn-up ship's belly.
“Maybe I can take Rhenaes' place,” offered Seabreeze, who brushed her bare wet flesh. “Help pilot the Nautilus?”
“I'm not sure that'll matter soon,” murmured Ashen, his head slumped. "Look!”
He pointed at the furious oceans and the island, where a black mass started to swallow up swaths of the landscape. The Manor Twins landed on the ship and held onto each other with a shiver. Everyone, take shelter here! Hurry!”
“I'll direct them here,” offered Shimmer Shade, whose third eye opened on her forehead to activate her telepathic abilities and form a link with their minds. “Here! Follow my thoughts!” She projected across the beach and beyond the charred, sandy shores, the esper's radius almost able to reach civilization.
Thankfully, a number of those who tried to escape made their way there. Zeloph and Atalanta sailed over, some of her hounds in tow. Last came Analyse, winded from all the strength she'd been driven to spend in frenzied combat.
The fiery angel stared aghast at the size of the webbing fissures, the blood moon’s eerie glow somehow brighter than before when all dictation said the eclipse should have ended. “Oh no..!”
“We’re too late,” his beloved lamented, equally distraught that this world–no, every world, would share the fate of her timeline. “To me, my shadow hounds!”
The demis saw no sign of Beatrix, Bellatrix, or Oona. Nor Dion and Iclyn. With no more time to go searching, they were forced to abandon their companions and press onward, away from certain annihilation behind them.
Yet before any of them could make it, the curtain of a void consumed several of the arrivals, who faded into the ether.
“Shite,” Ana yelped. “Maybe me Onoma can 'old it off!” But despite her prowess when she attempted to summon Nyx, she found herself devoured by the all-consuming collapse that swallowed up whatever strayed into its wide path.
“Damn it all,” cried Atalanta. “Were I still able to call on my old Onoma, Thanatos...!” Unable to blend into and transport herself and others across the shade, she reached for her lover and...
“No! It can't end like this!” Zeloph reached back right as they vanished, too. Around the isles, abstract windows into more dimensions were momentarily visible...and were swiftly blotted out.
The half-succubi sisters shrieked in despair, unable to find their lover in time when they, too, were absorbed in seconds by the spread, rendering another pair of anonymous casualties.
And then a defeated Ashen crumpled to his knees. He wasn't a general like his brother Penumbra and wasn't fit to lead others into combat! All the unicorn merchant wanted to do was expand his family's power and have some fun on the way! His family, his crew, his lover, reminders of what he couldn't save!
Worse, his eyes widened at a window into another world visible nearby, where his brother, White Shadow Penumbra, had been possessed by that land's Sombra, and his half-sister Cerise Silhouette carried an unborn child while trapped within the hive of Queen Chrysalis. Another portent of doom?
His crew, Seabreeze and Shimmer Shade included, were sucked into the pitch-black curtain before his half-opened eyes. Then he, too, found himself devoured whole by the radius of the multidimensional collapse.
Location the Umbral Palace
Universe Alsahra’almakia
Time 4 minutes, 28 seconds until The End
What started as a night of jubilation after a long-fought victory against both the corrupt Crystal Empire and Changeling Resurgence gradually became a night of deep concern. Many of the citizens of Cerise’s world (along with the refugees from Midnight’s world) muttered to themselves with growing dread when the full moon inexplicably turned red.
King Sombra and Queen Inky Rose rose from their thrones, equally disturbed by this ominous omen.
Queen Marathyssa did her best to calm the subjects in her hive while Deinos studied the unnatural phenomenon with a focused glare.
Lightning Dust flew high in the sky, ready to bring the storm with her should anything corrupt-looking come through.
The Amazionians stood guard at the oasis's outer edges, equally prepared for any form of confrontation.
Gliding through the dusty winds, Autumn Equinox paused her journey towards a nearby bazaar to take in the eerie red glow, her one eye narrowing with perplexion.
And within the highest room in the Pyramid, Princess Cerise Silhouette, Prince Midnight Blitzer, and Moonlight River left the comfort of their shared bed to gaze worryingly at the blood moon.
“Why? Why do these things keep happening?!” whimpered the future queen, hand squeezing her husband.
“It never ends,” the bat mare muttered bitterly, arms guarding her chest.
“Whatever it is, we’ll face it all the same,” encouraged the blue pegasus knight, an arm around his childhood friend’s hip, pulling both his lovers closer in a protective embrace. His large wingspan folded around them.
Yet, in spite of his optimistic outlook, Midnight sensed something terribly wrong must have happened. Something in vain as to the imminent destruction of his homeworld.
Not far from the civilized oasis, a red and black vortex formed over a dune, and the Burning King walked across the cool sand. His hate-filled glare rested on the establishment distanced, clenching his rake-size claw.
“Blitzer…! So this is where you and your whores are hiding,” scoffed the nuckelavee, lifting his sword arm high as it lit with vermillion flames. He then solemnly vowed, “I will scatter your ashes in the scorching sands for what you did to me...!”
Fiery looked further down and spotted the torchlights of a small gathering of tents full of people looking to trade off the black market or get their fix of evening pleasures. A rictus smile formed on his gaunt face.
Location Hammerfall
Universe Equestria Multiverse B
Time 3 minutes, 32 seconds until The End
What remained of the ancient land of the minotaurs drifted through the remnants of what was once Midnight’s home world. A magical layer protects it from further crumbling apart, thanks to a ritual provided by Grayscale Carnifex and the Order of Reapers.
But Moon Hammer’s face grimaced as a single light shone through the vast darkness surrounding his people and village. He tightly clutched his wife, Strawberry Moon, who cradled both his sobbing children. The rest of the minotaur and holstaurs paused their work on rebuilding their civilization to gaze up at the glowing light of the red moon.
Brutus Grimmwald knelt before a pocket of soil and removed his wedding ring to Tatyana, whom he suspected had long since perished. With a trembling hand, the magus placed it inside and gave his grievance a proper burial while awaiting for his greatest failure to catch up to him.
Location Umbermore
Universe Equestria Multiverse C
Time 2 minutes, 49 seconds until The End
The rainy, fog stained streets of the grimy clockwork city still retained its dull hue of gray, only for a brief flash of red lightning to corrode the skies. Citizens looked up in bewilderment when the entire melancholy storm clouds twisted into an unnatural squall of violent red.
All except for Arcanum Folklore, who used his portal-hopping magic to flee Midnight’s world while he could. There was no point in him sticking around after the second loss of his comrade and lover, Bloody Merry.
The bags under his eyes were heavy, his scruffy appearance worse than ever. A cigarette between the corner of his snout, trail go vapor wisping from the lit butt. Sunken eyes stared hard at his coffee mug, which had gotten cold from neglect.
The erren warlock didn’t even pay attention to the terror and confusion outside the cafe window, having long since concluded that there was no hope.
On top of a hill stood an abandoned castle, once the residence of a vile vampiric lord who had plagued the town with his ravenous hunger and dark arts.
Said vampire lord stepped out from a distorting vortex, taking in a long whiff of the familiar humidity of his home world, and exhaled with a pleasant sigh.
“Home sweet home,” Dhullex surmised with a smile, lavender eyes on his old estate. “I feel as though we could do with a little renovation~.”
Location the Mtukufu Tribe
Universe Equestria Multiverse S
Time 2 minutes, 18 seconds until The End
The blood moon’s malevolent glow wasn’t lost on the Zebrican people in the savannah. Everyone emerged from their huts, listening to the wildlife in and outside the jungle, screeching in outrage.
Nyeusi Nyeupe, better known by her common-sounding name Ebony Ivory, wobbled out of her chambers to observe the calamity brewing in the skies. She was heavy with a child, her belly ballooned and stretching her brown maternity gown. Her braided mane whipped around against strong winds.
Her heart sank. The tribe was still grieving the loss of their beloved chieftain and namesake, Mtukufu Mshenzi (Noble Savage). After his death, she took up the mantle, becoming both the youngest and first mare of her tribe to achieve such honor.
But despite her best efforts to reinvigorate her people and strengthen their borders after a grueling war against the cyber-enhanced Pundamilia Empire, depression and despair had wrought the zebras to their core. The distorted fissures fracturing the horizon, leaking out cosmos chaos and destruction, only worsened their mental states.
Clasping her hands together and holding them above her head, Ebony uttered a cry in her native tongue.
“Ninawaomba mababu zangu kwa ishara kwamba tutafanikiwa kutoka kwa janga linalokuja! Tafadhali, tuongoze!”
Location Sacratera
Universe ???
Time 1 minute, 48 seconds until The End
The fallen earth of the demihuman universe also fell under the effects of Omen’s corruption, despite its bizarre properties. The extraterrestrial flora and fauna trembled and rattled about as if the entire planet was frightened by the impending doom.
Viscera observed as more dilapidated buildings of a city lost to time toppled over each other, bits of debris and machinery lifting towards the forsaken heavens.
The avian monstress snorted. “Back here again, am I? I was hoping my territory would have been more lively. Oh well. Nothing a bit of experimentation won’t fix. If all timelines are to become one, I'd likely get the chance to invade other regions~.”
Her poisonous quills quivered with anticipation as she strode off to locate a suitable spot to begin her fortress.
Most interestingly, Viscera recognized this part of Sacratera as the old grounds of Zeloph’s childhood. Eying the familiar worn house surrounded by wilted sunflowers. She hummed in thought and investigated the premise.
There, she found the resting place of Shadow Scythe in the living room. The villainous beldam was astonished to find not a body nor rotten corpse atop the dining table but strange turquoise colored orbs whirling in conjuring of each other. Their shape pixelated, as if strains of computer code were lost outside a machine.
“Hmmm, now what do we have here?” Viscera wondered, perplexed by the digital spheres. Her head turned to see a web-ridden outdated computer and keyboard lying atop a different table, and an idea formed in her crafty mind.
Unbeknownst to her, Viscera wasn’t the only non-native thing standing on this oddball of forsaken humanity. A woman with red hair, cloaked in rustic brown, had discovered the nephilim’s presence.
But before she could confront her about what she was doing inside her son’s old home, her head lifted to the cracking skies above. A tear in space was splitting apart, and her violet eyes widened with dread.
“No! it can’t be!”
Within the dimensional tear was a gargantuan planetoid, masked in a yellow veil of clouds, steadily approaching Sacratera.
Location Ethernity City
Universe Equestria Cyberverse A
Time 1 minute, 10 seconds until The End
The tremors of the collapsing cyber world continued to strike terror. Car alarms went off, and neon lights were on the fritz. A tornado siren wailed while a voice on the intercom told the panicking people to remain indoors. Civilians fought and pushed each other in a mosh pit of panic, trying desperately to escape being swallowed by the earthquakes.
It was an utter disaster, and all President Mezzo Soprano could do was stare blankly in horror as the city she vowed to protect fell into ruin.
From the safety of the hovering UFO, she, her sons, B.A.B.E., S.L.U.T., the yokais, and demihumans watched the devastation from above. Eclipsed Heart teared up and sobbed into the arms of her boyfriend, Bass. Alto and Tenor held each other while Obyra Slithervane bawled, distraught over the deaths of her boyfriend and the Komodo Gang, comforted by her bandmates, Carrion Hellfire and Riptide Ruth.
Wispy Willow and Kitsune, now known as Xing Xing and Sakura, hugged Kyube, who gently nuzzled into the former assassins.
Arron slammed his fist repeatedly into a wall while seated against it in a fetal position, not afraid to shed bitter tears of his own. Seb was sitting off the edge of his seat, his hat and bandana tossed aside while gripping onto an old photo. The last picture he had of his ex-wife and child smeared in his own sadness.
Layla patted his shoulder, though she failed to hide her own melancholy for the situation, sorrow-filled eyes lost in the blood moon beckoning in the rapturous skies, darkness seeping like slimy tendrils, ready to tear apart this reality.
Location Isle of Parras
Universe Tir Nad Spiorad
Time 59 seconds until The End
Beatrix weakly wiggled as branches and vines began to fuse her into the tree, which gradually grew in size to accommodate the witchy unicorn. Only her torso, head, and hips remained visible while her limbs sank into the bark.
She’ba hushed her while bouncing her beautiful baby in her arms. “It’s time for you to cease this senseless squabble, Beatrix,” she whispered huskily, soothing stroking her cheek. “Let go of this reality. It can no longer hurt you. Just close your eyes... hold your breath... make a wish... then count to three!”
The all-mother then lulled Beatrix with a dark lullaby while sharing a psychic vision of the death of the multiverse. Every world she’s ever visited, from the Paradise planet, lost world, Cerise’s desert homeland, clockwork planet, the cyberverse, Sacratera.
All that she knew and loved was reduced to dust and debris, which fed into the spiraling darkness that consumed the last thriving spaces of life until only nothingness remained. All her friends and allies were trapped with the awareness that they were doomed to embrace sweet oblivion.
At the end of Shub’Niggurath’s song, a single tear ran down Beatrix’s face as she surrendered to sleep, allowing the tree to assimilate her wholly. The wayward witch had always dreamed her journeys would end with a bang, not with a whimper. Her last image is of the elder goddess who stole her lover’s face, using it to smile at her. Abadonna settled in her mother’s arms, opening her eyes to glance at Beatrix before her world finally faded to black.
Author's Note
The end is never.
