Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

Vallon-de-Grâce was quiet at eight o'clock. Solemn. Shrouded in auras of mist and nightly scents. The firmament above was without light, gray and moonless. The entire parsonage reeked of pure myrrh and burning spices—but the good kind.

The smoking sage to ward off the unwanted wights. The absinthe to absolve wandering souls. And the incense to host proper an ambience in which the Holy Ones might dwell. In one of the sanctuaries on this Vicar's lot, Israfel and his friends had just materialized out of thin air, before a clergyman.

"Welcome to the Martyr's cathedral," that old voice said. The bearer of it stepped into the light. A greying man in a long black cassock was revealed. It was the Highfather.

"Your Holiness?" Rosamunde was the first to reach forward. Percival was just getting up from the smooth, church floors, helped by Bruna; his belly was on fire. And he had just emptied all of his rushed dinner onto the Florentine tiles of the sanctuary. Cora had manifested more floating lights into the round room and the luminous balls shone from various points high on the painted dome.

Apart from the sconces on the walls, the sanctum was well lit now.

There were no pews here. This was the private hold of only those who stood on the altar. Only clergymen and virgin boy-helpers could access this room, this place. This holy place.

Rafel could not feel much of his mana core within this sanctum. He didn't like it. He frowned at the 20ft sculpture of the cowled God—the Martyr—set in alabaster stone at the helm of the sanctum. An orchestra was wafting in beatifically from some adjoining hall through the greystones, but Rafel wondered what kind of choir sang this late at night.

In the cafeteria many yards away, students were retiring to their various Halls, walking in groups to dormitories. No one really payed much attention to the forlorn longtable which had once held a bunch of First Years, and one sophomore. Erika Burgess, the Student President thought it was one of the friends general antics and forgot the whole matter with a spliff handed to her by Raz Fairfield.

By the time she reached her dorm, Salem Hall, and butted out the cigar, no one was really thinking of Israfel as they swiped room keycards and went out of sight.

Meanwhile, on the church hill acres of Vallon-de-Grâce, the Apollyon stood glaring with his friends at the robed, greying Highfather. Rosamunde was still at the lead; she questioned the Vicar such: "It was you who summoned us here, Your Holiness. Why?"

"Don't call him that." Cora fired behind.

The silver-haired poltergeist had never been a believer of the Martyr, nor faith in any god that was too cowardly—in her mind—to show his face. But what little fancy she had for Eldorian religion went kapische when she and Rafel stumbled upon this very priest emptying his frayed balls into his altar boy's puckering arse. And the lad had being a minor.

Corazón would never forget the pants and heaves of exertion. The Highfather's clenching, cramped, clammy buttocks. That was it for her.

The Highfather seemed to catch the growing fire in her blue eyes and quickly spoke up. He cleared his throat. "I deeply apologize, to you all, but this was the only way I knew to get you here. There is an issue of the utmost importance, beyond our chaffed relations."

Cora scoffed. "Chaffed relations! He even talks funny."

"But I thought the Holy Church doesn't dabble in dark arts? You clearly had use of a Pentagon Rune or Talisman of the occult to get us here." Rosa said, her gray eyes begging it to not be true. She'd already had her fairy put into question as it was. The Highfather gave a humbled nod. "I did. I had to.

The Church has learned over centuries that there are shades of gray between the holy and evil."

Cora rolled her eyes and addressed her friend. "Come on, Rosa. Don't buy into this man's bullshit. Does he look like a holy person to you? He fucks fourteen year-old boys. You can believe in the Martyr, but certain not this...

person as their conduit."

This side of the Nine Realms, the Martyr was addressed as 'their' for pronouns. Not male. Not female. But both.

Rafel pounded forward, his boots clanging stone; he had not changed his [Land Navigation] class with Major Tanaka and still wore the [Rank B combat gear] of field practice. He kept his distance between he and the Highfather but pinned the old man with tormenting fiery eyes. Rafel bellowed into the sanctum. "You dare summon me without charge, you sanctimonious scum?!

Are you really seeking to meet your God that bad?"

"It was not a decision made lightly. Neither did I not consider the consequence," replied the Vicar of Vallon-de-Grâce, "The matter was out of my hands. But I also had to make it a place where your powers would be say, restricted." He gestured to the oval sanctum. "You didn't take too kindly on me upon our last interaction."

"And for a fucking good reason!"

The Highfather lowered his eyes on Israfel's cold ones. Rafel sighed and ran a hand through his red hair. "Well, we're here now. What is this issue of the utmost importance?" He recited the man's earlier words. The Highfather stepped to the side and said,

"It'll be better if I just show you."

Rafel gave a slight nod and ordered Percival wait behind—per his upset stomach, and Brunhilda to attend to him. The duo nodded and found a near wall bench to dip into. Rafel moved his eyes back to the Highfather and the robed priest led the rest of them through a side door he held open and down a winding staircase that descended several floors underground. It opened into a single, vast stone chamber.

There was only a single bed. And a woman on it. She was tied.

"What is the meaning of this?" Ravenna hurled at the Vicar as the friends gathered around the bed. It was the make of the kind in asylums. The springs squeaked loudly at the woman shivering in it. The clothes she wore was white, but looked mostly brown in dried blood and drying sweat. She smelled wanton. Profane.

Her eyes were closed. And when Rafel really peered at her face, his frowned deepened.

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me!" Aya said on his behalf. "That's the Countess of Avila, the blood witch that killed Cora's girlfriend. That's the fucking cunt! We should smother her where she lies. Lord Master?" Aya begged of him.

Rafel held up a hand, pacing her. "Patience, my pet. All in good time. The blood Countess shall get her final reckoning." He looked across the sweaty body of the chained female. She was stick-thin and had stains under her armpits. Her flesh was feverish and her forehead glistened in cold perspiration.

He pulled back matted strands of her bleach hair from her face. Rafel softly whispered her name.

"Hello, Constance."

His tone was slow death, his smile a quicker one. The Countess opened her eyes on the creaking old bed and would have fell out of it on shock but for the chains binding her. She jerked against them. But it only bled out her fragile wrists and spread her legs wider.

Constance Medici continued struggling under the sinister grin of Israfel, and her joints looked like one of them would pop any second. Ankle. Shoulder. Hip.

She craned, causing the spring to moan.

"What is wrong with her?" Ravenna touched her hot skin.

"She is possessed." The Highfather said simply. "I found her bloodied on my steps this morning with a hastily and poorly stitched surgeries all over her midriff. Should you pull up her gown, you will find evidence of this." Rafel shook his head. There was no need. He was the reason for her surgeries. He had given her those injuries in the first place.

He, and Cora, and Rosa.

They shared one look as the Highfather went on to explain more about the Countess's situation.

"She has been screaming all day, uttering the most heinous blasphemies, spewing vile things, cussing and kicking, commiting her body to grievous sins. Once she bit on her own nipple, I fetched the ropes you now see. Something dwells in her. 'Tis evil and wicked.

'tis the devil. I hear him in her cry. Our holiest demonagogues fail to cast him out. Do not be seduced by her play at innocence. The thing within her is wretched of spirit. It has near purged her soul to damnation.

But I believe she can be saved. She seeks it—which is why I summoned you. Pray, Apollyon, save this one. Her spirit is strong."

While the Highfather was yet speaking, Constance reared up in the air, taken up in a sudden wind that blasted her hair in all directions. She screamed out loudly and the Vicar shivered. Cora slammed both hands to her ears. The Countess hung in the air as her pale lips fell closed, as if electrocuted. Then suddenly, her neck cracked to face Rafel.

"HELLO, NEPHEW!" A man's voice called from her lips.

It was hard and mangled. Twisted and graty. The smile on her face wasn't Constance's own. Blue veins lined her sickly, gray skin.

The Highfather pointed and planted a firm hand to his breast, muttering, "I-I told you, it's the devil."

"Quiet!" Rafel bulleted.

Constance's lips began moving again; she talked in that same growling, male voice. She sounded out of breath, like a monster.

"Did you really think you could run away from us, NEPHEW?" She barked, laughing hysterically. "Your Aunt misses you dearly, but I... I know you'll be back. You can't stay away. Those mortals will bore you, eventually. I'd bet a hundred years or so, after you see them grow old and die.

OH! THEIR WITHERING FACES. THE DECAY! I CAN SEE IT! I CAN SMELL IT ALREADY. Tell me nephew, have you fucked the King's daughter yet?

She's kind of like your sister, ISN'T SHE? TELL ME, NEPHEW? HAVE YOU DRILLED THAT VIRGIN CUNT DEEP? HAHAHAHA!" The demonic voice gave a tumultuous laughter, cackling as Constance's head turned a round 360, but she didn't die. Only kept cackling crazily.

"Uncle Lucifer?" Rafel leaned in.

"YES, NEPHEW!" Constance barked in his face, grinning like an evil imp; her voice slurred than a drunken septuagenarian. It was cracked and drunken. Her cheeks, sunken. Where were those soft dimples he remembered of the Countess? Rafel pondered.

"TIS I, LUCIFER! TIS I, LORD MORNINGSTAR! TIS I, THE FALLEN SUN!" The horrible voice sang. "TIS I! TIS I!

TIS I!" Then as all the friends, and the Highfather stared stricken in place at Constance's ashen body still floating midair above the bed with iron chains rattling in an eerie wind—this far down underground no one knew where it came from—her head abruptly cracked to the side and colorless eyes pinned Rafel in earnest.

"COME HOME, PRODIGAL! THIS IS US BEING NICE. THE NEXT TIME WE ASK, MORTAL LIVES SHALL HANG IN THE BALANCE."

Then with another round of sickly laughter, the devil possessing the Countess of Avila jammed her face forward and sank her foul mouth to Rafel's astonished face. He gasped as her putrid lips melded his in a challenging kiss.