Author of SF and Fantasy erotica

Path of Lyssa was written as part of a novel-writing challenge over the month of November. Please expect poor editing!

Final word count: 66,555

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6 – Lords

The covered cart rattled along the cracked road leading between the eastern mountains. Someday, when the Dark Lord was done building the new wing of his monstrous palace, there might be cut stone enough to smooth out the road for the Dark Adherents who used it, but that day would be far off, considering its current state. Overhead, the grey clouds seemed to have dropped down to encase the mighty stone titans in a roiling, dark layer, tugged downwards by the gravity of the Dark Legion. And today, as on most other days, the land resounded with the chaotic activity of Karaszen’s workforce.

On either side of the crumbling road lay squat, stone buildings half-buried in rubble. There must have been some fifty Dark Adherents present at this castle town, out in the meagre excuse for midday sun that managed to make its way through the low clouds. The valley rumbled with the disorganised yelling of the servants of the Dark Lord. Their festivities spilled out of the building designed as a tavern and into the wide road, forcing the trundling cart’s hooded driver to angle their advance back and forth around the clusters of idle Adherents. Some of the black-robed men and women made to investigate the contents of the cart with curious grins visible beneath their hoods, but other, smarter members of the community always pulled them back. They knew what supposedly lay within, and it was strictly off limits to the likes of them. The Dark Lord’s personal delivery. Who were they to sample the goods meant for him?

Karaszen was a mighty sorcerer and an ambitious ruler, but he had little interest in the day-to-day running of an empire of darkness. As such, a vast majority of his workforce had little to attend themselves to for most of their time. Manual labour and the building of the Black Palace? They had ghouls for that. Mailing deliveries and shipping messages? They had the newest recruits to do that. The logistics of Karaszen’s advance across the land and against the walls of the neighbouring nations? That was management’s job. And left entirely to themselves, the remaining cultists of the Dark Lord filled their hours as they knew best. They would drink when there was drink available from the tithing of the nearby settlements. When there wasn’t, they would argue, often about nothing at all. When arguments broke down, they would fight. The pecking order was decided by muscles second, since victory almost always went to those who had earned a vestige of dark magic from their highest echelons. A blast of aberrant energy was usually more than enough to decide the correct party in any given debate. And when a Dark Adherent was proven wrong, their sulking and whinging could be cured with a bout or two with an idle ghoul, posted along the borders of the ramshackle settlement. They didn’t fight back, making them perfect for relieving a bit of frustration.

The cart rolled on through all of this. The driver pulled her hood closer around her face and held tight to the reins of the twin horses. Whenever an intrusive pedestrian startled the animals, she would gently return them to peace. And before long, they were through. The deep ravine that divided the wider territory of the Dark Legion from the periphery of the Black Palace, and its long, black bridge, lay open to them.

And beyond, the Black Palace itself. A grand fortress of slate stone, made one with the sharp peaks of the mountains by its central tower, which gave the structure an appearance like a titanic spike of hewn rock. It stabbed up into the clouds with a bombastic disregard for the primacy of nature, the humility of humanity. It was a testament of one man’s dominance over his world. At the very top of the spire was a balcony with a dark window. Who knew what happened within that highest of chambers?

On the far side of the bridge, a bored-looking Adherent pushed himself up from his seat on the wall with a huff and approached the cart as it made to cross to the far side. He had a parchment list of expected deliveries, but he folded this into his baggy sleeve at once, content that he knew what the cart was carrying. He waved his hand for the driver to stop, and they did.

“For the new wing, yes?” he asked tiredly. “Gifts for his Highness?”

The driver nodded, saying nothing.

“Let me just take a quick gander, then, and I will let you-…”

The Dark Adherent poked his head beneath the thick hemp of the cart’s covering, and came face to face with Lyssa.

“Allow us passage,” she commanded. “Take us to a quiet entrance to the palace that you may access without complaint.”

The Adherent stood stock still for a long moment. Lyssa saw his eyes bulging as his brain struggled to come to terms with the complex compulsion laid upon it by her words. He wobbled on his feet for a moment. Then he let the cart’s covering fall.

“Follow me,” he told the driver. “Th-This way.”

The cart recommenced its advance, and Lyssa breathed a sigh of relief as she sat back in her place in the cart’s bed. That had been a heavy enchantment. She hadn’t been certain that it would take hold. But if there was a time for risky choices, it was now.

“Say, Lyssa,” asked Charisse in a raised whisper, sitting across from her with his knees up, hands and axe dangling between them. “If you told someone to ‘die,’ what would happen?”

She twisted her lip at him. “A thoroughly distasteful notion,” she said. “I would rather not attempt such a thing.”

“You do not know what would happen?”

Lyssa sighed. She thought on the Dark Adherent now leading them to a palace side entrance. He had needed to interpret her words and turn them into plausible action. So, if she told him to ‘die,’ he would have to interpret that as well. Maybe he would cast himself into the ravine they had just passed or draw a dagger from his belt and run it through his own throat.

But then she thought of Delain. ‘Grow,’ she had commanded, and he had grown for her. No conscious effort was involved with the generation of a nice, hard erection, or so she believed. Perhaps a man told to die would simply cease to live by the same subconscious impulse. Heart stopping, blood congealing, brain falling cold and quiet. Chilling. She shivered.

“I believe they would die,” she told Charisse.

His chuckle, shaded by the thick covering above their heads, was just as chilling. “Brilliant,” he said. “You are brilliant.”

She hugged her knees against her stomach and refused to look up anymore.

Before long, the cart was coming once more to a halt. Lyssa peeked out at their new destination and found them down at the end of a long, narrow road worked against the high outer wall of the Black Palace’s central structure. Across the cracked road from the tall, black walls was a drop into nothingness, and then the rocky cliffside that made up their previous elevation up by the bridge. As she had asked, the Dark Adherent had brought them to a small but heavy wooden door built into the side of the palace. A second Adherent was keeping watch here. He had his hood down, and he was smoking something from a long, black-wood pipe. He was frowning at the party as it approached his domain, but he nodded his head at the fellow dazedly leading their way.

“Ho, there,” he said in greeting. “What’s this? I know you care not for bridge duty, but there is no need to escort the shipments yourself, is there? You are digging for an excuse to see me, I think.”

The man chuckled as he approached the stationary cart. His eyes glimmered with mirth, watching his comrade for a reaction. But Lyssa’s black-robed escort said nothing. He walked forward on unsteady legs, and his friend peered into his hood with a curious scowl.

“You well?”

“I… They…” the enchanted Adherent stammered. “They need to… go inside. Quietly.”

“But why?” the guard shrugged. “Deliveries are through the south annex entrance.”

“Inside… Quietly…”

“What is this? What has gotten into you?”

The guard touched his free hand against his fellow’s shoulder, hissing with concern when the man wobbled against his touch. Then his eyes shot up towards Claire in the driver’s seat.

“What is this?” he demanded again.

And then, a thunk of metallic impact, and he staggered away. Charisse’s axe was buried in his temple. The man’s eyes crossed, trying to see the offending weapon. Then he fell twitching to the dirt.

Lyssa hopped out of the cart to join Charisse, who moved at once to retrieve his axe. Meanwhile, her eyes were on the back-and-forth drifting of her victim, who was frowning from the depths of his daze down at the body of the other Adherent.

“What… happened?” he asked her mournfully. “My… friend is…”

Lyssa laid her hand on his arm and whispered to him. “Go home and sleep.”

“S-Sleep,” he agreed. Then he staggered away up the road.

“We would be better off killing him,” Charisse told her as he tossed the body of the other guard into the ravine. A ring of keys was hooked around his wrist, and he threw these to Claire at once. “Who knows who he might tell of what he has seen?”

“He will sleep for long enough,” Lyssa replied with a stubborn frown.

“You know that for certain?” asked Charisse. “Would it not be better to be sure? And besides,” he added, his face falling into a bitter scowl, “why leave them alive at all? There will be no fit place for them in the world without their Dark Lord.”

“You don’t believe in redemption, Charisse?” asked Claire, lowering the black hood of her costume as she unlocked the side door for them.

“Not for these,” he replied. “Not for the Dark Legion.”

Claire said nothing. Neither did Lyssa. She had her eyes on the splattering of blood on the dirt. Dark deeds, meant to return the light. Evil, to create good. Was such a thing possible? Lyssa hoped so, tugging on the binding around her broken arm idly. Her lips formed the words ‘be good,’ and she wondered what hearing them would do to a person. What it would mean for her if she spoke them into a mirror.

The side door clicked as the lock disengaged, and Claire pushed it open. They bustled in at once, leaving the horses behind. Their beady eyes watched them descend into the Black Palace with animal placidity.

Within was a small barrack, by the looks of things. No additional Adherents were on duty, but there were wooden chairs for two, plus a couple of straw-filled cots. A rack of rusty iron blades by the door, the way further into Black Palace. A scattering of ragged playing cards across the ramshackle table. Charisse closed the door behind them.

“It is difficult to read movements here,” Claire said, one palm pressed against their way forward. Lyssa saw that her eyes were closed. “It appears as though our way is mostly clear. Just a handful of chambers before we reach what appears to be the throne room in the centre of the palace. But the further I reach, the less I feel. Something is numbing Oculus’ influence. That will make much of our advance into guesswork.”

“Something is blinding the eyes of god?” Charisse asked, strapping his shield onto his arm with a pensive frown. “That is ominous.”

Claire turned from her meditation. Her eyes rested on Lyssa, and Lyssa shrank away from the attention.

“I believe it is Karaszen himself,” said her friend. “He is the one that Oculus cannot regard, surely. If we brave the dark, we will find him.”

“Alright, very well.” Charisse rolled his shoulders in their sockets as he made ready. “What are we waiting for? Let us hunt the beast!”

Claire nodded. Still, her blue eyes bore into Lyssa. “After you,” she said.

And Lyssa did as she was told. The three of them hurried on into the palace, first Charisse, then Lyssa, then Claire. They made for the centre of the dark, and the end of their journey.

—

At the end of a tight, black-stone corridor, crouched in front of a nondescript wooden door, Charisse looked to his friend and awaited her evaluation. Claire had her eyes closed, and her brow was knit into unfamiliar tightness by the strength of her concentration. She didn’t usually need to work this hard to perceive the world around her, but they were close to the Dark Lord now. Pursing her lips, Claire rose a hand up in front of her face and showed it to Charisse. Four fingers.

Charisse shrugged his shoulders at her. ‘You sure?’

And Claire shook her head at once. ‘Not at all.’

He hardened his resolve. Hopefully, the element of surprise would be enough to grab victory today, no matter how many their opposition. Charisse looked over his shoulder for Lyssa, who had his back. She met his eyes and nodded her head, though he would have been happier if she’d looked a little more confident. If he and Claire struggled to subdue the enemy beyond this door, it would be up to her to enchant them into submission. But as was increasingly the case in these latter days of their quest, Lyssa seemed so ill-content with her own abilities. So hesitant to use them. More and more, she was holding herself back. When Charisse only grew deeper in respect and love for his raven-haired saviour. She’d cleansed him of his curse. How could he not love her for that? How could he not want her to use her gifts more? He smiled at her, hoping to share some of his overwhelming affection with her. And she did smile back, but her lips were shy and sad. Uncomfortable within her own skin. How could she not see how wonderful she was?

Claire slapped him on the shoulder, returning his attention to the here and now. His friend was scowling, which he dismissed with a shake of his head. Her concern was unnecessary. He braced himself against the door and mouthed his counting down.

Three… Two… One…

They surged inside together. The room beyond was a steamy, humid kitchen, all smooth stone and polished metal. A long workbench took up the centre of the space, coated in fresh produce and a half-carved slab of ham. Four burning ovens made up the far wall, and a wide basin for washing was against the near wall.

Charisse’s eyes identified the enemy at once. Right beside the door was a ghoul in brass armour, holding a hooked sword by its waist. Another, this time a female corpse with a short spear, took up guard duty beside a second door on the far side. And trapped in between, now casting fearful eyes at the intruders, were two elderly humans. At least, elderly was Charisse’s guess. He hoped that only a long life could produce those dark shadows beneath their eyes, that wispy, lifeless hair, those gnarled, bent backs. Both were shrinking away from Charisse, as if they were not also sharing the room with two literal monsters.

He got to work at once. Charisse spun about and pressed his shield up against the near ghoul, pinning it against the wall where it couldn’t raise its weapon. The creature nipped its teeth at him ferociously, but it couldn’t catch more than the ends of his hair. Claire appeared next, blackjack in hand. She stepped around Charisse with both hands on her weapon, then brought it up to her shoulder, widened her stance, and struck. The club splattered messily against the ghoul’s skull, causing it to bounce against the stone wall. Blackish fluid spurted from the crack in the back of its head and marred the wall with tar. Its eyes rolled. Its struggling weakened.

Charisse couldn’t see behind him at this point, but he spotted Lyssa’s entrance out of the edge of his vision. He saw her one good hand raised, her red eyes focussed, just like a hero from the old tales. She faced down the ghoul that Charisse and Claire had left in their blind spots.

“Eat.”

A wet crunch, and Lyssa breathed a ragged sigh of relief. When Charisse was sure that their ghoul was also defeated, he pulled back on his shield and let it drop to the floor. Then he turned. The spear-wielding ghoul had rammed its own weapon point-first into its throat. It had fallen still, slumped on the stone floor, with hands still wrapped around the spear’s haft.

Together, the three turned on the twin humans, who were no less afeared for being rescued. If anything, they both stared at Charisse, Lyssa and Claire as if they were the ones they should be afraid of. When he raised his hand to placate their anxiety, they shrank back with keening wails.

“Please, we mean you no harm.” Claire was smiling as she stepped forward. “We are here to defeat the Dark Lord. We can escort you to safety, if you wish. Your days of toil are done.”

The closer of the two slaves, a woman with lank, white hair in a loose knot, shook her head.

“N-N-No!”

“It is safe, I promise you,” Claire continued, unperturbed. “I cannot imagine what you have been through, but it is over now.”

“N-No! H-He will not… not kill you!”

Charisse’s tilted his head to one side. “The Dark Lord? We know. We are going to kill him first!”

“No, Charisse,” Claire said, turning about to face him with big, anxious blue eyes. “She means that Karaszen is not the sort to delivery a merciful death, if he can think of a reason to keep us alive.”

The slave woman nodded her head vigorously. Claire sighed as she returned her attention to her patient. She lay her hands on the woman’s bony shoulders gently to not alarm her.

“Could you close your eyes for me?” she asked with a soft, soothing voice. “I would like to take you through a prayer, if I may.”

“Good.” Charisse watched his friend work, the work she was very skilled at. The work he could never do in her stead. And he came to a decision. “Thank you, Claire.”

“It is no problem at all,” she smiled.

“You can attend to these two while Lyssa and I proceed.”

Immediately, he saw her attention shatter. The old woman shook in her grip as the prayer faltered on Claire’s lips.

“What?” Claire demanded. She turned violently over her shoulder to regard him. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t think you should face the Dark Lord with us,” he said firmly. “I think it best that you help these two evacuate the palace, plus any other prisoners that you find. Leave the battle to us.”

“No!”

“Claire,” he persisted, fighting the blue fire in her eyes. “Your augury is not functioning so close to the Dark Lord, and we have our straight shot to him thanks to you. So… Please, understand. There is no reason for you to continue, and I would rather you did not.”

“Charisse…” She gritted her teeth, letting the old woman go so she could advance on him. “I followed you all this way to kill the Dark Lord! I cannot turn back now! Why would you ask me to turn back?”

“Because I want you to stay safe, of course!” Charisse knew that this wasn’t going to be easy. He had always believed himself the more stubborn of the two of them, if only slightly. He hoped he was right. “This final battle will be fought with iron and magic! Your intelligence will not be necessary, so-…”

“I can fight!” Claire put a hand on the pommel of her blackjack. “You just bore witness to my fighting!”

“But only as a last resort, and we have no need of such extreme-…”

“This is her, isn’t it?”

Charisse swallowed the lump in his throat as Claire turned her burning eyes on Lyssa. The dark-haired woman couldn’t look back. She held tightly to her injured arm and kept her eyes fixed on the dark corners of the kitchen.

“You wish for her to join you instead of me,” Claire said, and her voice shuddered pitifully. “You wish for Lyssa to replace me at your side! You wish for Lyssa to be the one to heal this world, and not me!”

“Claire…”

“You believe that she can do anything that I can do! And you would rather her methods of healing over mine, because it means you have to sleep with her!”

“Claire! That is not true at all!” He hated to lie to her, even in this small way. “Lyssa has history with the Dark Lord! She and I both have a reason to face him down, but you do not! Just this… flattering but foolish loyalty to me!”

“I live in this world, too!” she wept. “I wish for the tyrant who covers the land in shadow to die, just as much as you!”

“Please do not argue…” he sighed. “I will not progress with you, Claire. Go and live, please. I beg of you.”

Claire ran a sleeve across her face with a wet sniff. When she lowered her arm again, she was glaring daggers at Lyssa.

“She is a liability, not a friend,” she stated. “Lyssa has as much reason to join Karaszen as she does to kill him. If any of us should be leaving, it should be her.”

Charisse looked to Lyssa, expecting an argument at this disrespectful statement. But Lyssa looked back at him with an uncertain smile.

“I will try to help you,” she said softly. “I will try with everything I have.”

“Can’t we all go together, Charisse?” said Claire. “I can maintain an attention on Lyssa and fight my own defence. And you can-…”

“No.” Charisse shook his head. “I… I can’t let you go on. I don’t want you to die.”

“I will not die. You may trust me on that. Do you not trust me… Charisse?”

His hands were shaking. Charisse breathed air into his lungs with effort.

“I suppose I don’t.”

Claire laughed bitterly, first at him, and then at Lyssa. She shook her head in disbelief. Her red locks swayed down to their tips. Then, she turned away.

“Then truly it is best I take my leave,” she said. “I shall escort these prisoners free of the Black Palace. Please generate enough commotion to mask our escape.”

“Claire, I’m sorry.”

“Silence, please, that I may work.”

She stubbornly put her hands back on the slave’s shoulders and closed her eyes. Charisse may well have not existed. It hurt. But it was the right decision. This way, she got a chance at living. One that Charisse knew he did not have. Bracing his own body, he walked away, resting his arm on Lyssa’s shoulder as he passed her by.

“Come,” he told her. “Let us get this sorry thing done.”

He led her away. Lyssa looked back over her shoulder at Claire once, then bowed her head.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she said softly. “I sincerely hope that you are right to do so.”

“As am I,” he sighed, as they walked together into the dark.

—

The throne room was tall enough that Lyssa expected it to have its own weather, its own version of the dark clouds from the world outside swirling about its cathedral rafters. Long and narrow, the crowning chamber of the Black Palace was lined on both sides with rows of slate pillars that joined the slabs of the floor to the roof. The brasswork chandeliers attached to the sloped ceiling were lit with blue flames that Lyssa recalled from Ermengarde’s enchanted campfire, but these pillars left the wings in shadow. Shadows that she and Charisse were now taking full advantage of. Beyond their cover, up towards the far end of the throne room, stood the throne itself. A ziggurat of stone steps leading up to an audacious black seat, a twisted chair carved with the images of fire. A deep, dark, malignant fire.

There were no ghouls in the throne room. But at the bottom of the steps stood a handful of figures in now familiar black robes. And there was one other, hidden behind the quiet discussion. Lyssa’s peeking eyes demanded that she relocate to better witness this final, seated man. But she refused the call. Instead, she pulled back behind their pillar to where Charisse was crouching in readiness.

“There is no way to expect what is about to occur,” he whispered, brow low enough to coat his eyes in shadow. “We must act quickly and decisively. As much as I would love to face the fiend in honourable single combat, we must not grant Karaszen a chance to counter our attack.”

“Then we are in agreement,” she replied softly. “I shall do my best to debilitate him with my enchantment…”

“…And I shall end his life with my iron,” he nodded. “Thank you, Lyssa.”

“Charisse.” She took a hold of his tunic with her fingers and leaned against him a little closer. “Thank you. For trusting me.”

“It is an easy thing to do,” he smiled.

“I think not. And it may yet prove folly. Charisse, was it truly wise to leave Claire behind? She… was to keep me from turning against you.”

“I trust you, Lyssa,” he said needlessly. Then, as she watched, his fair smile fell. “And I trust Claire too, of course. But she… I do not wish to see her placed in peril. I do not value my own life as much as I perhaps should. But Claire is kind and wise and she does all manner of great things with her gifts. She deserves to keep on living. Whereas I fully intent to expend myself against the Dark Lord. If I die bringing him difficulty, then I shall die gladly.”

“And me?” she asked with a little smile. “You are willing to sacrifice me, also?”

Charisse placed his forehead against hers. His skin was warm, and she liked the feel of it.

“You also need to see the Dark Lord for yourself,” he said. “Even at great risk. I understand that, Lyssa. To deny you this chance would be to deny you a part of who you are.”

So, he did understand her. Lyssa reached out and placed her uninjured hand around his gauntleted fist. He was firm where he gripped the haft of his axe. And as she thought on him, Lyssa caught a whiff of iron in the air around him. Iron, blood. She looked up into his eyes.

“There is good in you, Charisse,” she told him. “I am sorry that none have said such to you before. But there is good within your spirit. I have seen it. And if you wish to reconsider our attack, to return to Claire and think our planning through more carefully, perhaps return on a later day, then-…”

“Please.” His hiss was just a touch too sharp. It caused Lyssa’s heart to jump with its volume. But beyond, the conversation of the Dark Adherents continued. “Please, Lyssa,” Charisse said. “Do not let me reconsider. I must do this, while I yet have the strength.”

She stared into his sad, dark eyes and tried to smile. Perhaps he was right. For better or worse, this was the way it was going to have to be. Here. Now. And even if it cost the both of them their lives. She pushed up on her crouched feet and kissed Charisse on the lips. His body stiffened, but he was meeting her lips with his at once. When she pulled away, he tried to follow. The two of them laughed.

“Not the time,” she said with a smile. “Perhaps later. Once we are done with this.”

“Then let us be done right now,” Charisse agreed, grinning with familiar brash confidence. He stood to his feet. “Let us end this!”

He rushed out into the throne room, and Lyssa ran with him.

At once, the six Dark Adherents clustered at the base of the throne turned to face them. Lyssa saw pale skin beneath their hoods, along with sickly black veins and black eyes. Humans, transformed by the evil magic of the Dark Legion. For an instant, they were all of them frozen with surprise. And that instant was their undoing.

“Lie on the ground!” she cried out. “Be silent!”

She saw the Adherents shiver as her words rushed over them. She could feel them trying to fight her control. Her enchantment struggled to find purchase in their already saturated bodies. But then, twitching and groaning, they did as she commanded. Each of them lay themselves flat on the stone and made no noise at all.

The final member of the group, who had not moved, was revealed.

“Melyssa…!”

And she was undone. Lyssa… Melyssa stared into the eyes of the Dark Lord Karaszen, the same eyes she had seen in her dreams these past weeks of travel. Gorgeous yellow eyes that utterly defied her memory loss and broke through the fog of her ignorance. Sleek, black hair like a crow’s plumage, and a dark pearl in the centre of his pale brow, richer and more splendid than any king’s crown. And a smile. Not quite the same smile she saw in her memory. An even more beautiful one. Eyes widening, lips curving. Surprise. Delight. She loved him in that moment, and that love took control of her.

The Dark Lord was wearing a fine robe of black silk, clasped about his neck with a loose chain of silver. Beneath, tight breeches that showed off the slender lines of his calves, as well as the unmistakable heaviness around his crotch. Indeed, the robe parted at his waistline to ensure that eyes could be drawn to the weight of his manhood. The soft shoes on his feet, also black, seemed like an afterthought. As though he would much rather be walking about barefoot.

“Karaszen!!” Charisse was not impressed. His bellow shook the stone and caused Lyssa to recall where she was. Her friend was striding towards the sorcerer with his axe ready, shield forward, his face a thundercloud. “Taste my steel and perish!!”

Karaszen slowly stood from where he had been sitting nonchalantly on the bottommost step of his ziggurat. He didn’t even give Charisse a glance.

“How well you look, my dear Melyssa!” he sighed, placing his hands together at his waist. “How that body suits you! I had not thought to ever see you again. Your defiance does you a great, great service.”

“Karaszen!!” Charisse tried again as he broke into a run.

“And here was I, on the brink of outsourcing my nights with other company,” the Dark Lord said with a laugh. “Or perhaps you knew that. Melyssa, was it jealousy that spurred you to-…?”

“Dark Lord!!”

Finally, he took notice. Karaszen rolled his eyes, then raised one hand up to his shoulder. He pressed thumb and forefinger together as if to click his fingers, then swiped his wrist at the charging Charisse. Lyssa caught a flare of black energy at his fingertips.

An explosion rocked the throne room, causing the chandeliers to shake on their chains. And Charisse raised his wooden shield just fast enough to block the force of an arcane detonation, a sickly burst of black fire that erupted right in front of him. Lyssa heard his breathless gasp as he was winded by the force. Then he was sent flying. He fell into a roll beside her, still wreathed in black flame. As he rose unsteadily to his feet again, he was forced to drop his shield. It was crumbling under the spell’s dark energy. It fell to pieces on the stone.

“Pray tell, who is this, then?” asked Karaszen with narrowed eyes. “Sustenance for the road, Melyssa? A woman of your unearthly beauty could do far better than a rustic, would-be hero, I would wager.”

Charisse snarled. He gripped his axe in both hands and rushed back into the fray. And Lyssa’s fear for him caused air to leap from her lungs. She forced that air into the shape of words, levelled at her former master. The one who, even now, was coiled tight around her heart.

“S-Silence!!” she cried with wavering voice. “Cast no spells! Do not move! Die!!” gasped Lyssa as the panic overtook her. “Die!! Please, die!!”

The magic left her in a great wave. It flew across the prone forms of the Dark Adherents and rushed against Karaszen. But the Dark Lord merely frowned at her, as if she had left a door open and allowed a stray mongrel to wander in. Her words had no effect. Then, he closed his eyes, smiling with smug realisation.

“The memory charm!” he said with a hearty nod. “How could I forget? Such bitter irony! Melyssa, your powers will take no hold on me. They were the first gifts you shared with me once I had tamed you. And thanks to your generosity… Come here.”

Her feet began to move at once. Lyssa stumbled forward against her own will, making for the Dark Lord. How? How had he done this?! He was using her own abilities to control her! Was such a thing even possible?

“Lyssa!” Charisse halted his renewed charge to push towards her, reaching for her arm. “Lyssa, fight him!”

“If the boy wishes to fight, then I might still provide.” Karaszen huffed out an impatient sigh. “Here, hero. Take a gander at this specimen, as some perfunctory thanks for returning my Melyssa to me.”

Karaszen clapped his hands. And from behind the throne’s great dais resounded a shuddering, metallic clanking. The heavy sound of booted footsteps. And as Lyssa continued to stagger forwards, a brass-covered ghoul lurched into view. But this was no human corpse given unnatural life, clearly. The creature was at least ten feet tall, its brass armour plating every inch of its body. A ragged cloak of red hung from its wide shoulders, and its face was framed with a fanciful helm topped with a wilting red feather. The eyes were blank and sunken, and the nose was a hollow void. But the giant hefted the great obsidian sword from its side with all the strength of a living man, and it advanced on Charisse with a vital, malicious step.

“An Athelos Deathlord,” Karaszen explained with a proud smile. “The old gods decreed that death would not have him, in payment for his sins. Left to wander the ruins below our feet for all eternity. Now, the first of my ghoul workforce. The pattern by which I created all the others. Kill him,” he commanded the hulking ghoul with Lyssa’s own enchantment. “But do enjoy yourself,” he added with a dark smirk.

The Deathlord braced its great weapon and plodded forwards. Lyssa watched with horror as the titanic warrior strode heedlessly over the lying bodies of some of the Dark Adherents. Bones crunched and skulls splattered under the weight of the goliath’s greaves. But they died silently, as instructed.

“Shit…” Charisse’s eyes darted back and forth between the Deathlord and his friend. He held tightly to her arm, even as she pulled against him. “Shit!” he cried out as the Deathlord swung its blade down at his head, and he was forced to leap clear of her.

And Lyssa walked on. She stepped between the remaining Adherents and approached the Dark Lord. At her back, the crashing of metal on stone.

Karaszen reached for her as she neared him. His hand with its long, slender fingers brushed at her cheek. And his smile was divine as she came to a halt before him, staring up into his eyes.

“So beautiful,” he sighed. “No matter the shape of your body, dear Melyssa, you are beautiful. And no matter the grievousness of your injuries! Black and blue have aways been my colours, after all. These marks are a testament to your loyalty. And that is the gift of Hell, I see. Transcendence above the material. The old gods declared that Hell was below. But the educated among us see that it is in fact above. And so are you, Melyssa! So far above the mortal plane!”

His words entranced her. Lyssa found a smile creeping at the corners of her lips. Her fractured memory returned to her the sense of a moment like this in her past. Of being with Karaszen, of being mesmerised by him. Of allowing his words to take control of her heart. It was so very comfortable being in his care, after all. He was strong, he knew what to do. So much better than she did.

And when he looked down at her again with a shining, wolf-like grin of hunger, she remembered the spike of fear in her gut, too.

“Now, turn around,” declared the Dark Lord. “Let me see what his human girl you pretend to be feels like on my cock.”

Breathing raggedly, heart pattering madly, she did as she was told. Not through any enchantment or magic. But simply because she wished to please him. Because Karaszen knew best. And if he wanted to bend her over and stick his glorious rod inside her, then that was well. She remembered that she would thoroughly enjoy having him inside her.

Turning about let her see the battle taking place in the throne room. Charisse was fast, as he always had been, leaping back and forth as the Athelos Deathlord took great, clumsy swings at him. The giant, too, was obeying Karaszen’s voice. It was enjoying itself. Toying with its prey, allowing him to remain one half a step away from death at all times. When it lunged out of a feint and caught Charisse square in the face with one brass-gauntleted fist, sending him sprawling with blood at his lips, Lyssa almost fancied she heard the great husk chuckling under its absent breath.

But she couldn’t focus on her friend’s plight, as Karaszen was lifting the skirt of her navy dress up and over her hips. She was feeling the warmth of his hands on her bare skin. She was hearing the creak of leather as he disrobed. Karaszen manoeuvred her into a forward lean, one hand on her hip and the other gripping the wrist of her good hand tightly.

“How much do you remember my touch, my dear Melyssa?” he asked her. “Perhaps I ought to jog your recollection.”

She felt his cock pushing against her slit. Lyssa moaned frightfully. He had not prepared her. She was not ready. Only, as he slid his way inside her, she realised that she was. Her vagina was slick and wet in readiness for him. She took him fully, as if he was meant to have been there before. As if she had been made for him. Karaszen’s first great thrust made her vision go white.

And he felt magnificent! Lyssa let out a garbled yelp of pleasure as his cock, long and hard and smooth, dominated every inch of her pussy. He felt so good inside! And Lyssa’s mind whirled with the pleasure of his touch. She had never felt this way before. Not with Tomas, nor Arram, nor any of the bandits of Ducal Rout, nor Delain, nor Rian, nor Charisse… Sex with those men and women had been a sense of satisfaction akin to, she believed, slaking one’s thirst after a long season of dry. But Karaszen’s sex was pleasure, pure and simple. She felt good with him inside her. She felt an ecstasy that made her world spin.

“Oooh, yes!” Karaszen agreed with a chuckle. “You may be human now, Melyssa, but you feel just as splendid. This wonderful, hellish pussy! It appears I have missed it!”

He retracted, dragging himself along her insides. Then he thrust anew, and Lyssa squealed with delight. How could she not? Was this how all of her partners had felt when she had taken them? It was no wonder that they had smiled for her so on completion! Karaszen, his stance tall and strong at her back, began to fuck her firmly. His soft grunting was like music celebrating their reunion. And Lyssa did the best she could to help him with his pleasure. She slapped her rear back against him in time with his thrusting. And she gasped and wailed as she was skewered deeply, over and over, time and time and time again. Until she felt like she was going mad with joy. Unless she had been mad this whole time, and his cock was only now allowing her to realise it. Mad for him. Mad for his great, peerless penis!

Karaszen increased his pace inside her, and Lyssa was dimly aware of pain in her muscles from being held upright. From being manhandled so strongly. She let that discomfort pass her by. She revelled instead in the pleasure of him. She let it overcome her.

And suddenly, without realising that she was even close, she came. Lyssa cried out a great bellow of climax as the pleasure roared within her. She felt aflame with a sticky, sweet fire all over her skin. She would have lost consciousness were it not for Karaszen’s strong grip on her body. Instead, she let her head hang. Saliva from her lips dripped onto the dark stone of the throne room. And more fluid escaped her pussy and dribbled down her legs, soaking her shoes and pooling in the fabric.

So, that was what an orgasm felt like. How horribly addictive. How… transcendent. Just as he had said. A transcendent pleasure. How could she have gone so long without it?

And then, another new sensation. One that shook her whole body. A tugging, sucking feeling. A sense of something leaving her. And suddenly, Karaszen let her go. She stumbled to the ground, lying weakly on her three good limbs. She immediately pressed her hand to her stomach.

Gone. It was all gone. Her void was void once more.

“Oh, saints preserve me!” Karaszen was laughing at her back. She could hear his feet padding on the stone as he paced back and forth at the foot of the throne. “Melyssa! You have been busy! I can taste… village boys and older men and… some truly rough and rugged types. I had not realised that you enjoyed lying with such dangerous men! I should remember that. Perhaps, since you liked that so much, some of the ghouls could be encouraged to-… Is this Delain of the Ten Cities?”

Karaszen roared with laughter. “Oh, what a way to fall! Some hero! Drained by a pretty face! Oh, what poetry! Marvellous work, Melyssa! Such marvellous work!”

Tears sprung to life in the corners of her eyes. Lyssa realised that she was weeping. With grief. With hunger.

“And I can taste some of our own magic in here, too,” Karaszen remarked. “Who supplied that, then? Some victim of my tour? How kind of you to take the pain from them. I am sure they enjoyed your ministrations greatly.”

She coughed out a weak sob. She felt like she was falling into shadow. The dark rose up around Lyssa, and it was comfortable. It was not here, after all. She could rest in madness for a little while. But when she heard Charisse cry out in pain from another attack by the Deathlord, she closed her mouth with a click of her teeth. And then forced the shadow back.

Sweet words. Kind smiles. But without the magic of the aberrant to empower her, Lyssa was left utterly human. And as a human, she could see Karaszen clearly. No soft suitor, no soulmate. A thief. Nothing but a thief!

Shaking the malaise clear from her head, she spared a glance for Charisse. The warrior was bloodied at his temple, but he was maintaining his dance with the Deathlord. When the goliath took a step towards him, Lyssa saw that it was limping. He would not die easily, her dear friend. Around the throne room, almost lost in shadow, a great mass of Dark Adherents had gathered to watch the spectacle. They were cheering, jeering, laughing. And Lyssa knew that she could yet make all the difference. If she only had a little of her strength. If she only had a shred of might within her. She could do something.

She turned about on her rear towards Karaszen. The Dark Lord had at some point mounted his great throne atop its stone ziggurat, though he had left his breeches behind. His cock was a powerful rod sticking up between his legs as he reclined on his seat and watched the fight play out. He stroked at himself idly as he witnessed Charisse’s battle. But his yellow eyes caught on hers at once.

Lyssa gritted her teeth and snarled. “Give… them back!”

Karaszen’s eyes widened. His smile faltered as surprise shot across his expression. But a moment later, and he was recovered.

“You would like the essence of your lovers returned?” he teased, extending a hand towards her and crooking a finger. “Then come to me and take it back!”

So Lyssa began to crawl.

—

Charisse staggered backward as his iron axe clashed with the swooping obsidian of the Deathlord’s blade. Such might! The huge warrior met his attack like for like, but it was Charisse who was sent flailing away. This was training with his father all over again. This was insurmountable. When Charisse tried to recover his stance, he slipped in a pool of his own blood. He leapt away from the downward swing of his enemy’s blade and let it crash into the stone and splatter his shed blood outward in a spray of red. He swallowed down his exhaustion with effort.

And taking that moment was a mistake, for it allowed him to turn his head and take in the fallen shape of Lyssa. As he did, his heart shattered, and a mewling wail escaped his lips. Lyssa was on her knees in front of the Dark Lord at the top of his stone monument, and she was sucking his dick! She was taking him vigorously and noisily! And the tyrant was laughing as she did it! He stroked her hair like a favoured pet and cooed for her to continue! Insolence! Such horrid, wicked insolence!

Claire had been right. She had turned her back on him. And now, Charisse was going to die having been unable to lift a finger to save Lyssa from her past.

Well, at least he could die fighting. He could die screaming. Letting out a bestial bellow from his lips, he rushed at the advancing brass shape of the Deathlord and ducked neatly beneath its next swing. He slammed into its armoured stomach with his shoulder and shoved. It was like trying to move a building. Despite being a corpse, the Deathlord was immovable under his meagre might.

But that was fine. Charisse’s proximity granted him a moment unhindered, and he spent that moment by taking his axe in both hands and chopping downwards. The blade sank between the plates of the fiend’s kneeguard and sliced flesh. Charisse tugged the weapon free as sweat pooled in his eyelashes, then swung down again. He’d already injured this leg before. Just a couple more attacks, and maybe he could-…!

The Deathlord lunged upwards with its other leg and caught him right in his stomach. Charisse saw stars as he was winded by the blow. He fought to remain rigid. But though he pushed against the pain with everything he had, he was slow. The Deathlord kicked him square in the shoulder with a powerful thrust of its boot, and he was sent sprawling.

Charisse rolled, then bumped up against resistance. A resistance that began kicking and jeering at him. Emaciated hands grabbed him by the arms and pulled him roughly to his feet.

“Keep at it, little man!” yelled the voice of a Dark Adherent right beside his ear. “I have ten gold coins on your victory! Get in there and fucking fight!”

He was shoved forward towards the Deathlord, who was still coming relentlessly towards him. Charisse could hear the footsteps of the Adherents getting away from him at his back. But they wouldn’t give him space to run. He stared up at the sightless eyes of the ghoul, and he braced himself for death.

His father had died like this, he realised with a manic smile on his bloody lips. The curse of the Dark Lord had eaten away at his humanity until he was raving and sweating, lashing out at all of his former friends. Father had died fighting. He had fought the curse until the very moment of his death. There was a heroism in choosing not to succumb. And there had been good days among the days of fighting, Charisse remembered. Days of sunshine, and the rare smile of the lucid man who had raised him.

Charisse would fight now. For his father’s memory. And for the world that could be, a world of sunshine. And if he had to become dark as night for that to happen, the way his father had, then so be it. He reached deep inside of himself until he found the smeared smudges of his spirit that he hated. His quick temper and bloodlust. He found his hateful memory of the way Lyssa had looked at him when he had declared that all Dark Adherents deserved to die. The way Claire had wept when he had asked her to leave. Not all of those were products of his cursed blood, but they still resonated with it. Grief, guilt, anger, shame. Lust. The way he looked at Lyssa. The way he desired her. The way that he desired her still, even as she gave herself up to his hated enemy. Charisse let the darkness flow. And a familiar strength came over him. A strength capable of-…

The obsidian blade swung down at his head. It sliced cleanly through his hair as he slipped to one side. The shaking of the stone beneath his feet made his stomach churn. But instead of fleeing, Charisse gripped his weapon, raised it up, and with a cry that burst his own eardrums, brought it down as hard as he could on the ghoul’s sword. There was a tremendous crack.

The Deathlord took its first steps away from him. It lifted up the broken blade of the sword and stared down at it without comprehension. Charisse couldn’t fathom that its rheumy eyes knew what had happened at all. But then, the ghastly face grinned. From the ancient, dusty days of yore, the age even before the Era of Magic, the Athelos Deathlord conceded to Charisse a smile.

“Come, then!” he shouted up at it. “Have at me!”

—

Lyssa sucked for all that she was worth. Gone the care and consideration of compassionate lovemaking, the kind of treatment she had given to Arram and Delain all those nights ago. This was a desperate, messy deed, a need to have her partner spill his load inside her throat. Lyssa’s jaw ached from her rapid ministration, her tongue was sore from the fierce way she was licking at him. The back of her throat from his fiendish length.

Yes, Karaszen was mighty. His cock was a tremendous, inhuman rod between her lips. Not the legend’s grace of Delain, but something threatening. Something that made Lyssa imagine the penetration of her very soul. So deeply inside her it could reach. What manner of dark arts must have gone into shaping such a tool, she wondered madly.

His hand was in her hair, pushing her to greater speeds. And for all she fought to take the essence he had stolen back from him, Karaszen was laughing. He did not care that she could take from him with a climax, they same way that he could. He looked down on her, and he disregarded her.

“Your new mouth is so dainty,” he remarked as she worked. “I can feel… Oof, that’s good… feel all of its boundaries around me. You could have swallowed me up entirely in your former shape!”

She felt the shifting of his body as he leaned over her and whispered against her ear.

“Right now, if feels as though I might push at the very rim of you,” he said with an audible sneer. “Would you like that, Melyssa? I can make you wider for me!”

This vile beast! This monster! How bitterly she loved him!

But he had given away something in his crowing. Melyssa-… No, Lyssa removed her hand from around his shaft where she had been holding him inside her. And instead, she bent her head and gobbled him down with just her mouth. She choked, convulsing as her throat complained about the organic pole being crammed down it. But she pushed her body to comply. She began to bob her head again as her saliva slipped free of her lips and ran down the length of him.

“A-Ahh, excellent!” cheered Karaszen. “Oh, my excellent girl! My dear Melyssa! How hard you work to bring me pleasure!”

He tightened his fist in her hair, and she continued to suck. She could feel his resolve shaking as she debased and wounded herself for him. As she let herself be used by him. This was what he wanted, after all. This was why he had summoned her all those years ago.

…That was a new memory. A pity she did not have the time to consider it. Lyssa fucked Karaszen with her mouth. She drew the pleasure out of him, even as she felt her lips and tongue weakening. She willed him to come, even as her breathing became sharp and ragged. As she worked, she wondered at the way she couldn’t bring herself to bite down on him. Such would not accomplish anything, since he would surely just have her killed with his magic, and she would have achieved nothing. A last resort, perhaps. If she felt herself tumbling over the edge, she would. And the thought of that last, sharp act of defiance granted her new strength to suck him harder, draw him deeper.

“Enough.”

She stopped. The enchantment over her mind forced her to allow him out of her mouth, where he sprung up to his full length again with a little spray of her own saliva. Karaszen was glaring down at her, his topaz eyes aflame. The dark pearl in his forehead shone with the blue light of the throne room.

“You are good, I shall grant you that,” he said. “Your mouth was ever my weakness in our younger days. But alas, my poor Melyssa. You shall not drink your fill of me. You do not have the resolve.”

He stroked her chin and smiled a wide, dark smile. She allowed it, since she could do nothing to fight it. “I see that the memory charm has rid you of more than just your identity,” he continued. “You are newly bereft of the lessons I taught you. You do not recall the long nights in which I punished you for disobedience. Let us begin again now. Come up here.”

She did so. Not because of magic, but because she wanted to. She placed her hand on the back of the throne and mounted him, straddling him with her hips. His cock was a terrifying spire rubbing against her pubis.

Karaszen ran his hand from her collarbone down to her chest. Suddenly, she felt heat. Looking down, Lyssa saw that her clothing was catching fire. Black flames consumed the fabric and rendered it to ash. Even the wrappings around her broken arm melted away. Karaszen’s eyes roved over her wounded, naked body with a satisfied smile.

“Do you know what happens to your kind when you are starved of every last drop of tantric power, my dear?” he asked as he positioned her hips above his cock. “You described the experience as being quite terrifying, I recall. Agonising. You wept for hours when I was through with you. No? You cannot remember?”

He tugged her down onto his cock, and she wailed as that familiar joy assailed her once more.

“Let me remind you!” spat Karaszen. And then, they were fucking once more.

Lyssa could feel another orgasm building, even just as he began. She wanted to feel that long, lingering explosion of pleasure again. Her body craved it. She knew she could have it, too, if she just bounced herself on his cock at the right tempo and with the right energy. His lovely, glorious cock would bring her such joy, if she let it. Lyssa realised that she was fucking him with wild abandon, staring down into his eyes with a distant, faraway neediness. She realised that she was going to let him to it. Let him take from her absence. If only to feel the pleasure of climax again.

His hands on her waist were firm as he thrust up and into her over and over. Karaszen’s smile was proud. He knew what he was doing to her. He knew that she could only hold on for so long.

“You came so far!” he hissed as he worked her. “You drank so deeply! Only to crawl back to me! Such is the power I wield, Melyssa! S-Such is the… the dominance I hold on thee!”

Lyssa moaned and gasped as she rode him. The heat of his body and the powerful piercing of his cock inside her were bringing to her mind more of those stray memories. Memories of Karaszen. Memories of nights with him. How hard she had tried to please him, just for a taste of her magic returned from within him. The arcane secrets she had shared with him to get that taste. The humiliations she had endured for him. Long years, learning his language. Long years, seeing his rise. Taking her place beside him, but not as an equal. On her knees, as a dog. He had paraded her in front of the lords of the land as a show of his strength. And she had drunk of them, too, when he commanded it. At his command. By his decree…

“K-K-Karaszen!” she moaned, letting her head fall back and her hair trail across her face. “M-M-My lord!”

The words did not take much coaxing. No, they were right on the surface. And when she looked down at him again, she saw the effect they were having on him. Karaszen was grinning madly. He loved that she was his dedicated servant.

“My lord!” she cried, loud enough for the Dark Adherents to hear at the edges of the arena. Their jeering quietened so that they could watch their master’s domination. “My lord! I love your c-c-cock inside me!”

“Y-Yes!” he agreed through gritted teeth. His hands became claws on her hips. “Yes, Melyssa!”

“Oh, Karaszen!”

“Y-Y-Yes!”

“Karaszen!”

“Yes!!”

With a triumphant push down on his cock, Lyssa made him come. She felt his semen shooting up inside her with shocking velocity. Coating the insides of her womb with slick fluid. So much! A mighty load fit for a mighty cock! Karaszen’s eyes rolled back in his head.

And she saw him. The Dark Lord’s essence. His was a great, burning bubble of black matter, spinning and twisting like a storm cloud. Only, as she drew near, Lyssa saw colour within the black. Multifaceted shimmers like a school of fish flowing as one. Reds and blues and greens and golds. The tremendous, cataclysmic miasma that was Karaszen’s stolen magic. And stolen from so very many!

She quickly identified her friends at once. Tomas, light and wispy. Arram, thick and resolute. Delain, shining and glorious. And Charisse, marred yet lovely.

And one more familiar face, deep below the surface.

Lyssa drank of them all, as much as she could contain. The bonds around her spiritual form did not hold her back any longer. She drank, even as she was yanked back up to the surface again.

Back into the wide, staring eyes of Karaszen. As he gasped for breath, his yellow gaze stared into her. And Lyssa saw fear for the first time.

“Where are your chains?” he whispered. “Melyssa… who has unbound you?!”

A blink of an eye, and then they were both moving. Lyssa knew that he would next try to enchant her into obedience again. She had to stop that. So, pulling up her one unbroken arm, she latched her fingers around Karaszen’s neck and began to choke him. The Dark Lord’s eyes bulged as his enchanted command was halted in an instant, and he flailed against her. He battered her with his fists. Lyssa held him down with the weight of her body as her wounded form took blow after blow from him. And all the while, she fucked him. He was still hard, after all. Something in this mortal peril was exciting him.

He fought her desperately, but Lyssa refused to hold back. She rolled her hips on his cock with wild abandon, rutting and slapping and squeezing as best she could. She bent her head down beside his ear and hissed at him as he beat her with swings of his fists.

“My Dark L-Lord!” she managed. “How d-d-delicious you are!”

He garbled something out through his closed windpipe, but Lyssa, mercifully, couldn’t understand it.

“L-Lord of the black stone!” she sang as she fucked him. “Lord of the E-Era of Sh-Shadow! So mighty! So powerful!”

Lyssa nipped at his earlobe with her sharp teeth. “A foundation built on larceny! You stole my power from me, Karaszen! You took all that I am from me! You will give it back to me!”

The last face she had seen drifting in his essence had been her own. Lyssa’s very own soul, taken away from her in those early days. The darkest, most potent of her magic.

“Give it back!” she snarled against his ear, pumping his cock with her hips all the while. “Give… it… back!!”

But it was no use. For all that she was a being perfectly designed to drag a climax from a human victim, she was weak. Her battle with Charisse in the village of Slate had left her weakened. And he was strong in his body, where she was injured. Her broken bones cried out as he battered against them with his fists. Her fingers around his throat were aching. She could not hold him forever. And he would not come. Not like this.

“Thief!” she wept bitterly. “You thief! Y-You monster!”

With a shove of his hands, Karaszen pushed her away. Lyssa’s fingers slipped from around his throat, and he took a painful-sounding gasp of air. His eyes were aglow with unspent magic as he set his sights upon her. And Lyssa drew on the very depths of herself as she tried one, last play for control. Karaszen parted his lips.

“Come!!”

No words came forth from the Dark Lord’s mouth. Just a terrible moan of pleasure as he spilled another load of semen into her vagina. His body was wracked with stiff shakes of tumultuous climax in obedience to her frightened, desperate enchantment. He pulled himself back under control with effort.

And while he was doing so, Lyssa was drinking. Her own magic was the most effective. It was how he was controlling her. Her saturation within him was making him immune to her, just as Charisse had been immune when he was fully under the curse. She had to take that defence away from him and turn it against him. Lyssa found herself, deep in Karaszen’s soul, and she began to take it back.

The Dark Lord’s vision sharpened savagely as the last of his climax faded. He made to speak.

“Silence!”

He was rendered mute. True panic flared to life in his topaz eyes as Karaszen made to strike at her with his fist.

“Stillness!”

His limbs fell limp onto the arms of his throne. He glared up at her.

“Come!”

He did. Lyssa felt another shot of sperm add itself to the overflowing fluid already inside her. And she drank. She drank deeply. Her bouncing on his cock was nothing but instinct, but she allowed it to continue. Up and down, up and down on his wet, sloppy manhood, the product of vain magic and experimentation. Up and down. Draining it of its seed.

“Lord of thieves!” she crooned as she devoured him. “Lord of scum! Touching at the powers beyond your ability to understand and thinking yourself a god! Come!”

Karaszen tried to howl, but he could not. He could only climax.

“Truly, you would give my brothers and sisters in Hell a lesson in sin! Come!”

His bubble was so empty, when it had been so full. Lyssa didn’t pay any heed to how much raw energy was entering into her. Somehow, she had the space to store it.

“Witness the end of your grand empire!” she said, resting her hand gently on his shoulder and rolling her hips on his precious rod. “Witness the end of the Era of Shadow! Karaszen, fallen Lord of the Dark!”

And what would come after, she wondered. What would follow the Era of Shadow? Lyssa could hear chattering voices, yet distant but drawing closer with every spent breath from Karaszen’s lips. Those voices had ideas for what to spill upon the terrestrial lands of a humanity that had lost its humility. Lyssa swallowed the lump in her throat. The power was going to her head, clearly.

“Come,” she said instead.

He did. One last time, Karaszen spurted a scant taste of his own semen into Lyssa’s waiting vagina. His body twitched as he was rid of the last of himself. His bubble, utterly bereft, popped. The arcane pearl on his brow split neatly down the centre. And he died. It was over.

Lyssa breathed deeply and hungrily. She was exhausted. Yet also, she was invigorated. Her void was so full of magical energy, the essence of the Dark Lord, that she felt like she would float away! Stiff limbs and an aching heart contained all the joyful lightning of new creation. A paradox, and Lyssa its name.

Slowly, Lyssa rose up off the corpse of the Dark Lord, his limp cock slapping against his thigh as she did, and turned about to face the throne room.

The first thing she noticed was that she was tall. Lyssa knew her human form to be an average height for girls her age. But now, she towered. And not just because of the height of the ziggurat. Six feet tall, possibly even seven? She could feel long, powerful legs beneath her and great arms to match them at her sides. And when she moved her naked body in a curious test of her strength, sensing the changes that had come over her for herself, she felt new weight at her back. Some form of slender limb was whipping around from the base of her spine. And higher, the fluttering of leather. And higher still, atop her temple, was a pair of… somethings. Dense bone. A crown. Lyssa looked down at her long, slim fingers, and her full lips parted with a sigh of recognition. She was restored. This was the way she was meant to be.

But then, the second thing that she noticed. The throne room was deathly silent. Around the pillars stood the cowled shapes of Dark Adherents, and they were staring up at her. And closer, at the foot of the steps, was the huge Deathlord. Its pale eyes likewise gazed up at Lyssa with a dry, ancient awe. It lowered its broken blade to its side.

And as Lyssa watched, the ghoul fell slowly to one knee and bowed its head to her in supplication. Lyssa licked her lips, unsure of how to react. Indeed, there was something resonating inside her new vault of energy in time with the bowing of the ghoul. Was this a spell that Karaszen had manifested, with its control now in Lyssa’s hands? Or did the Athelos people draw on the same fiendish power that gave Lyssa life, and this dead vestige of that empire recognised her as something to be revered? Either way, she could feel its readiness to do her will. And further afield, out across the land, she felt the other ghouls too. Bowing across the entire stretch of existence for her.

There was a great ruffling sound of many cloaks being adjusted, and a wave of dark motion at the edges of the throne room. The Dark Adherents were also falling to their knees and bowing their heads to her. As one, they repledged themselves silently to her, the slayer of their former lord. The held breath was shared by all as the air in the stone throne room became still…

Charisse roared. His body was mangled and bloody, his lunge weak and uneven, his iron chipped and worn. But he still managed to bring his weapon powerfully down on the back of the Athelos Deathlord’s neck. There was a crunch of ancient bone, and he drew back his axe again. Another desperate cry, and he lopped the creature’s head entirely off its body. The Deathlord’s armoured skull struck the floor with a metallic thunk, and then its whole body toppled over.

Charisse was gasping for breath as he set his sights on Lyssa. Sweat and blood poured down his face and dripped from his chin. She could feel the primal rage emanating from his curse-riddled body. That curse had kept him alive today. It had drawn on his fury to make him strong. Now, he glared up at her with narrow, glowing eyes. What did he see, she wondered. And would he-…

Her human friend and constant ally dropped his axe to the stone with a clatter. His expression softened as he bent on one wounded knee, just as the Dark Adherents were doing, and he bowed his head with a sigh of relief at his lips.

“My lord,” he said softly.

Lyssa looked out at the men and women arrayed before her. All hers to command. And such power in her belly that she did not know what to do with it. So much that she could now achieve! The voices of Hell were getting closer, calling her name with relieved recognition. She was returned to them, after so long away! They hadn’t been able to see her, and now they could! And the land that Charisse and Claire called their home was yet ravaged by Karaszen’s madness. She could rebuild it. She could increase it. Or she could render it unto desolation. All was within her grasp.

It was too much. Lyssa shook her head slowly. This was all far… far too much. Why, a girl could be carried away by such ambitious thoughts!

Lyssa took a seat on her throne to quell some of her dizziness. She didn’t feel the body of the Dark Lord beneath her at all.

pathoflyssa