Cold stone in the back. Darkness over her eyes. Brittle, rusted iron on her wrists and ankles. Drips of water from the ceiling, two voices, the shuffling of clothes outside; Faint chalk. Rotten eggs from their bodies. Smells about the same count as their sounds. Waterlogged wood that fell on stone with a loud bang. The one voice and its steps that went for the cooled chamber pot to freeze her up. The other who said they went to fetch the hammer to break her limbs. She had hoped to find a more opportune moment. The rituals took their time and needed most of the cult. The cultists did the best they could, she was sure. It couldn't be helped. She pulled on the chain once, tested their strength. She pulled anew and they came loose, the stone with them. The guards cried in surprise, pelts rustling as they moved like slugs.She tore off the muzzle and the blindfold, jumped to where the bang had been. The bit of stone on her chain now a hammer, she smashed her prison door open, breathed fire, guards had not even turned. They lit up, red claws still tore out their flamming throats, faster than their shrieks, hungrier too. A pouch smelled and sounded like keys. Chains came off, the pace of a man came near - brisk jog, slightly unbalanced, something large carried. She whirled the iron around, got a feel for the stone - send it flying, straight to his chest, his arm too late. His ribcage shattered; she liked the sound, she lept onto him. He screamed barely, broken lungs. Echoes in the ruined halls, her fangs in his hand, the hammer fell. Razor teeth slit his gut open and like worms from an overripe fruit, hot intestines spilled out that she licked and nibbled, so warm, so wriggly, so good. The man let out an annoying scream, helplessly flailed his limbs about, as she painted the gray stone around them in her bloody colours and her golden orbs threw back his terrified gaze. She knew what he asked for. But why? He already had warned the others. He would die from this. There was no need to prolong his suffering - but neither need to shorten it. Pungent red dripping from her fangs, she left the wretch to fill the halls with his whimpers.With clicks and trods, the other one came on satyr legs, skin and hooves stolen from forest goats, sewn on and fused, still writhing in rebellion."By the Beast..." he stammered. "Brethren... Is she free?"The man on the ground snarled, fighting the chill of the grave. "No... i just decided to disembowl... myself for the fun of it."The other worshipper blinked. "So eager for death to join you with our lord in the Cauldron's Wildness?"The man, despite his grievous wounds, pulled himself against a wall, face torn apart by pained fury "Id...ioit ... We fight as long as we ... or we'll never overcome the gods' tyranny...Run!" The half-demon tilted his head, human lips brayed and shook his compatriot again and again, but no reaction came. Only when a red drop fell on his shoulder, he turned to look up. There, the blood smeared drake had wedged herself between the corridor's walls. Her eyes lolled as sticky drool escaped her maw, unable to wash away the scarlet liquid and discoloured organs that had splattered on her scales.

  Horrified screams and an explosion of wood brought Xunathos back to alertness. Itzil's reptile stench came not long after. He felt the cuffs unlock, then her rough scales, slick with viscera, as they caught him."You can fight?" She asked as she removed his blindfold and revealed the withered, white-yellow stone that entombed the fallen complex. She had already captured their weapons as well as shorter knives and jagged pikes, better suited to fighting in these narrow halls."Think so." He groaned and shook his arms, still staggered, recovering from the imprisonment and march. "You know where we are?" the sorcerer wheezed.The warrior blinked and looked around again. "An old elven refuge, from before the dark age, from before the empire. Once-white stone, these unnecessary carvings of people on the pillars, the fact that the beast worshippers don't build; Itzil thought she saw some elven script underneath their demon writings..." She traced her finger about, pointing her evidence out as she waited for him to recover. He took in runes and stickfigures that sprawled on ground, walls and ceiling in flickering torch light. Crude and profane as material, beastlings with perverse characteristiscs surrendered to hideous instincts, their fornications, debasement and vile idolatry sprawled across every inch, clashes against elven playful orderliness of the always just a little imperfect lines and curves, imprinting in him a strange and vile ideation; that they always were meant to be here; that these ruins, no, the entire world till now had been nothing but the construction of an empty canvas created only to be bitten, torn and violated by the Beast. His to mark in all and any way it pleased. In this world, what use was resistance? The thing would win. It was only a matter of time. He knew. He knew he should surrender. And he was a man. And he knew, he wanted that scally piece of meat, that magnificent animal. The beast would bless their union, he was sure. All he had to do - He gagged, hit his head against the wall. Blood spoiled the glyphs. His mind was clearer again. A look at Itzil told him she was as unaware as she was unaffected, for whatever reason. The blood that dripped from her helmet revealed she certainly hadn't lost her monstrous appetite."

  The cultists come here." She stated with no visible regards to his blight.

  He wretched. "Don't know if i'll be ready."

  "We will know when they come." She said, neither gentle nor scoldful.

  She led him outwards, over countless broken bodies, down the corridors and towards what Xunathos hoped was the exit. The monster slashed and burned a path through those foolish enough to rush at them ahead straight ahead, belched fire and swung her weapons, unwilling to devour those evidently corrupted. With a flick from his hand, the dead rose behind them, shuffled on without their souls and minds. "Rotters!" The other cultists echoed through the elven halls. One, as a hand more club than limb, smashed the hand and wodden shield of his compatriot, wailed as shrapnel embedded istelf in his neck. It had missed the artery. Xunathos flicked his hand and the splinter tore the flesh apart. The artery was missed no longer. Yet still more lambs rushed to the slaughter. The next were torn apart by a rotter whose pulped had Xunathous had turned into a deadly bone knife. It was so easy to start anew. He and Itzil still brimmed with tiny things, invisible to the naked eyes; mites, slimes, worms, things that lived in their saliva and blood. Wherever she struck, death and life returned - as did his power. Soon, their pursuers dwindled; their hunters realized that the gain of this prey would be lesser than all the cost they incured. Like the beasts they strove to be, this meant retreat. And as the draft of the open night sky blew through their clothes, the escapes steps quickened too.With one more fiery breath, Itzil made the last enemies barring the entrance into charred husks. Xunathos, reached out to raise them, to give them the time they needed once out. And again was foiled. startled, he realized one was beyond his reach, was still alive."Itzil!" He cried out and raised his finger to where the survivor rose. They cast of their burning pelts to reveal the smooth-skinned, white-haired haired succubus whose horns grew to rival Itzil's height. Instead of the rough-hewn, tortured live sticheries from before, an elegant black dress of chitin grew downwards from her neck; fused to her torso, it clung tightly, but by the legs turned to drapes that shimmered and revealed oily insectile wings fluttering on the breeze."Itzil sees you have gotten away from the goat who kept you leashed and unable to say hello to your friend." The drake greeted the demon, in a tone Xunathos thought to be of calm interest. "Ohhh myyy..." The succubus purred as she stroked a hand girded in umbral beatle scales across an angular, symetrical chin and the fishlike tail that grew from her back, a cancerous mutant spout, swished in the air. Itzil rolled her eyes. "We know each other. Cease this play.""Look at those two lost souls..." A snap and the blood and the bodies at the exits of the befouled hall froze and cracked. Snow and frost approached from either end, left them without escape. The creature's flesh melted and reformed, candlewax in the hands of a master, until the hair was blonde, the insectile buried within, the feminine swelled, and only small scales remained across the back. She strutted towards Xunathos, the incarnation of the demesian beauty, generations of careful breeding, flesh sculpts and the culling of the unpleasing. The necromancer turned away, sickened at the sight."Well, if one of you's boring, maybe-" The demon's fangs lengthened, the scales spread, a maw and reptilian tail erupted, until a male drake stood before Itzil. "-The savage's easier to catch..."

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  "Do we have to do this?" Itzil flared her nostrils in annoyance.

  Xunathos tore his eyes from the bizarre scene, alarmed by a sound in his back. The cultists rallied as they took aim from the tunnel the two had fled from. The sorcerer made good on the distraction Itzil gave and reached for the frozen blood under the icy winds, sharpened and flattened it, then send out thin, razor-sharp discs. Some foes, they tore apart and gutted like fish and cattle, most they grazed. It was enough. The necrotic infection spread. He called to their blood and remade it into liquid spears of his own, flung and bend them into other victims. Sweat on his brow, wafting with white wisps of mana, he raised his fist. The first of the slain moved again, to spread more death among former allies. But he approached the end of his powers."You don't have to play a role before Itzil." The drake yawned as she mustered the demon. "Her teeth and tongue sink to the core of your being; the shell is little matter." She bared her fangs. "Shame yours are so small.""It's not the size that matters...""A perfect body otherwise." Itzil thumbed her tail down. "Beautiful claws. Sharp claws. Glossy chitin scales. Tender flesh." The long, dragonic tongue slid across her maw, spread glistening saliva over the countless, horrible teeth. "She will enjoy breaking it, once again."Xunathos stared at the both of them, before he had to turn again to the cultists. "Are these flirtations or death threats?""No difference." They answered at once.The succubus purred. Cat-like, a vulgar gaze mustered Itzil, disrobed with eyes alone. "Such a proud animal. Remember that i need to win these games once only. Then, i can give you the body you deserve. Invite you to my master's wonderful world of submission and pain. Like so many others of your kin..."Itzil's pupils shrank, her feathers lifted.The monster in front of her smiled. "Oh, darling. How delicate you are!"

  The drake let loose a horrible screech as her hindpaws catapulted her forward, axe raised. The succubus awaited her with raised hands, like a lover. As the beast drove the axe into her shoulder, right down to split the heart's breast, the demon moaned, taken by the ecstasy of her torment."Ohhhh! You know how to treat a woman!"

  Her good hand tried to jab the drake's insides, but Itzil's left seized the arm and twisted it, till it bend and twisted like a slug in salt."You hurt Itzil enough. Receive your gospel." The demon moaned still and from her open mouth, lips now swelling into an insectile tube, came forth a cloud of frost.The drake waited no longer. Her maw bit down on the creature In the bestial kiss, she tore away the full lips and red tongue, spat them out. As the frost came still, the drake lighted up with flame and poured the searing heat into her rival and love. In the grip of death, the demon cried out as she burned, from beautiful head to sculpted feet, she turned to molten flesh, then to rotting slime, then to ash. She wailed in passion as from her womb burst a cancerous stillbirth of herself, a ball of hair, flesh, eyes, bones and teeth. The undead thing begann to mutate, grow new mouths, new heads, scales like Itzil. Xunathos turned and hasted to the exit's barrier. Whatever history the two had going on, he had not intention to interfere in its maelstrom. Not when he had better things to do. He began to unweave the magic when a tearing scream echoed through the hall. He barely had time to fall down before a torn-off spine flew his way. The orgasmic shrieks of the protoplasmic yet unliving mass turned to horrified yelps of pain as Itzil, with dagger, claw and fang, tore her apart and fingers, chitin, bones and slime flew about. Finally, the beast ripped a hole into the mass' center, shredded soft, slimy, tumors in the imitation of organs apart. Then, with an animalistic roar, wrested out two fused hearts, still quivering. The dark warrior stood atop the carcass as it melted, covered in the demon's ochre slime."You bitch."One of the remaining faces smiled and snickered with air hastily pressed from failing lungs. "You are the best." Itzil nodded, serious despite the squeacking pitch of her partner. "She is. She hopes it was as great for you as it was for her.""I'll be some years. Try to survive till then."

  "Itzil will not try. She will simply do it." The thing's mouth yet smiled when it decayed into black gunk and the barrier faded moments later. Xunathos did not look back, just stumbled out, into the dark. Itzil tore open a corpse spared by the corruption and washed the filth away with a generous shower of blood, then followed the wizard back into the oily night. Outside, the barren and bleak trees that revealed itself in their lamp- and wizardlight were still a welcome sight against the constricted skeletal white halls and corridors defiled by the cultists. They hasted on, side by side. In a place where nothing happened, their trail was read with ease, especially by the cultist, who surely had a Cauldron hound made from one of their previous victims. Rest was a far-off luxury for now."You do this often?" Xunathos asked."No. Just for this one.""And you don't see anything wrong with this relationship?"

  "It worked. She was ready to use her womanly wiles against us, so Itzil was too. But be assured, fearful lamb, Itzil is loyal to those who don't wish to steal her soul and don't rejoice in treachery."Xunathos smiled, weakly. Sure, she could claim this - but would she keep to it? Doubtful.... But hadn't she rescued him, not once, but twice? Except... He sighed, reasons and feelings waltzing back and forth in his mind."Strange we didn't see the old man again. Do you think he will come for us with the hunting party?" The wizard asked, eager for a change of topic."Itzil doubts it. It is in the nature of leaders to have others die for their sake. He only showed himself when we surrendered in that clearing and were no evident threats. Unless you want to go back in and clear them out." She laughed joylessly. Xunathos frowned and shook his head."Speaking off, why did you give up that easily back then?" He panted, still exhausted. Permanent loss of breath, one cost of the improptu surgery back in the village . "You could have defeated them, at least judging from how you managed to deal with all of them back in this ruin.""Itzil defeated one or two of them, many times, back there. She could not have defeated them all at once." One of her pupils focused on his side, mustered him. "Strange. The demesians she has known were eager students of war. She thought you'd know this."“Well, if I'd wanted to kill people, I wouldn't have taken up necromancy. As i am sure you would have taken up necromancy if it was the most efficient way to kill.” He protested.“You speak true there, human.” She either did not catch onto the implication - or did not mind it."Well, but at least they helped us cover the tracks against the empire. It still might have some tricks up its sleeve, but a cultists prison beat the Inquisition's dungeons, right?"

  Itzil turned to him and bopped her head. "Yes. You could almost count us lucky that we did not notice them until they had us encircled." She lifted her lips to reveal an unsettling grin. Was it a grin? She at least seems almost about to laugh, thought Xunathos. He did not fathom whatever joke she had made.