Succubus Lord 8

by Eric Vall

  “What about hothead over there?” Todd interjected as he flew over to me and pointed at Eligor’s boulder.

  I looked back and saw that, despite the knight’s best efforts, cracks were beginning to form in the rock. Temeluchas would be out in a few moments, and we needed to be prepared.

  “At least we know how to hurt him now,” Sia explained. “I can hit him with my black Hellfire again, and then you can finish him off.”

  “That won’t work,” Eligor sighed. “He’s a spirit of pure Hellfire. You can injure him with your black magic, but it’s still not going to allow you to kill him.”

  “So, we’re basically fucked?” I growled. “If we can’t kill him with our weapons or our magic, how are we supposed to keep him out of our business?”

  Martatelli said something in Italian, but I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Could we try and turn him on our side?” Libidine asked curiously. “He could be a valuable ally.”

  Angelo repeated the same phrase, but I was too lost in thought to pay it any attention.

  “That won’t work,” I sighed. “If he wasn’t pissed before you trapped him in a boulder, he will be when he gets out.”

  Martatelli was now shouting the same phrase he’d mentioned twice before, and I looked over at Sia in the hopes that she’d translate.

  “He says there are fates worse than death,” the redhead explained. “Particularly, eternal damnation.”

  “The tombs?” I pondered aloud. “He was in one earlier. We saw him break out of it like it was nothing.”

  “Not if we quell his powers first!” Eligor snapped her fingers.

  “I can’t hold my fear magic forever,” Sia protested. “The second we seal the tomb, it goes away.”

  “Not your magic, Superbia,” the blonde knight shot back. “There’s another way … ”

  “Ectoplasm,” I gasped as it dawned on me. “The River of Souls!”

  “Precisely.” Eligor grinned.

  “Can you handle that?” I asked. “It’s a long way away.”

  “Sure I can,” the blonde woman reassured me. “As long as you guys can keep him busy for a minute or two.”

  “A minute or two?” Todd joked. “Goldilocks, the Toddster is the king of ‘a minute or two.’”

  “That’s … that’s really not something to brag about,” I laughed to the imp, and then I gave Eligor a nod. “Let him out.”

  The blonde knight released her elemental spell, and the boulder that encased Temeluchas exploded into a million pieces. The fire demon raised up into the sky, increased the intensity of his flames, and let out a bellow of rage.

  Behind him, Eligor was already focusing on summoning the water from the River of Souls.

  Temeluchas let out two blasts of Hellfire from his hands, and we all ran for cover.

  I threw up a small wall of purple flame in front of Liby and I as the flames bounced off the barrier at an angle.

  Todd’s cover was a bit more unconventional. The imp ran over and threw himself on the ground behind Martatelli.

  The scientist’s body was set ablaze by Temeluchas’ attack, and he screamed in his native tongue as the flames singed his flesh.

  The demon finally let up on his attack, and I used the opportunity to try and distract him further.

  I released my violet spell, changed the Hellfire in my hands to green, and then started to pick up pieces of the broken tombs telekinetically. Libidine must have understood what I was going for, because she followed suit.

  Soon, shards of jagged brimstone were flying through the sky at the demon like tiny black darts. Temeluchas disintegrated the projectiles with his own magic, and then he shook his head and chuckled.

  “Just give up,” he mused. “You’re only another mortal who thinks he can play in the big leagues. You thought the Seventy-Two Servants were tough? You think I’m hard to defeat? King Ralston, we’re just the tip of the iceberg. Do yourself a favor and let me kill you. Because I can promise you, I’ll be much, much kinder than any other demon you’ll face from here on out.”

  “Piss off,” I growled as I noticed the massive pool of gray ectoplasm developing in Eligor’s hands. “You know, that’s exactly what all the other demons said. You know what happened to them? Now, they’re worm food.”

  “You can’t kill me,” the fire demon laughed. “I’m the embodiment of Hellfire magic. It’s in my very soul, you fool. Nothing you could do would possibly--”

  Temeluchas’ monologue was cut short when Eligor threw the ectoplasmic liquid onto his body. The demon’s eyes went wide as his flames flickered and then died. He fell to the ground with a hard thump, and then he began to panic as he tried to re-summon his flames.

  Now that he wasn’t surrounded by bright red Hellfire, I could see Temeluchas was nothing more than a human-looking being whose skin looked like it was charred all the way down to the bone.

  “Temeluchas,” I said in my most regal tone of voice.

  “Oh, oh!” Todd snickered. “Jakey’s going all Shakespeare!”

  “I, Jacob Ralston,” I continued and summoned bronze Hellfire into my hands, “the King of the Fourth Circle and Succubus Lord, sentence you to an eternity of damnation.”

  “Fuck off,” the demon spat. “You’ll never be anything more than a pathetic mortal playing make-believe. You couldn’t punish a fucking fly, let alone--”

  I blasted the sealed tomb behind Temeluchas with my bronze fire, and the lid of the sarcophagus cracked open violently.

  There was a Shade inside who peeked his head out, let out a “whoohooo,” and then pulled himself out and dashed off into the horizon.

  “That is where you’re going to spend the rest of eternity,” I hissed. “It’s honestly too good for you, but your invulnerability to Hellfire didn’t leave me with too many options.”

  “Fuck you ‘King Ralston,’” Temeluchas growled. “When I get out of there, I’m going to--”

  “You won’t get out,” I promised him. “Not while the King of the Fourth Circle is still around.”

  The fire demon opened his mouth to say something, but I’d had enough of his shit.

  I summoned red Hellfire into my hands, charged it up, and then blasted the fucker in the chest.

  Temeluchas’ body flew backward into the fiery tomb, and for the first time ever, he could feel the very same pain he normally inflicted on other people. The demon screamed in agony as the fire engulfed his body, and he struggled to pull himself out of his prison.

  However, we were already on it.

  Eligor used her lime-green spell to raise the lid back onto the sarcophagus, and then Sia ran over and used her golden flames to heal it back to its original, sealed state.

  The fire demon’s screams and pleas became muffled, but that was it. He wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

  I let out a deep sigh as I fell to my knees and tried to catch my breath. The adrenaline was still pounding through my veins, and my heart felt like it was beating at one-hundred miles per hour.

  Sia healed up Martatelli, and then the scientist walked over to a nearby tomb. He studied the markings engraved into it for a few moments, and then his eyes lit up excitedly. Angelo grabbed Sia by the shoulders and began to babble to her in Italian. As he spoke, a sly smile crept up the succubus madame’s face.

  “What is it?” I asked excitedly. “Is that the Porta ad Terram?”

  “No,” Superbia admitted, “but he thinks he knows exactly where it is.”

  Chapter 17

  “He knows where the portal back to Earth is located?” I questioned Superbia. “Like, he knows the actual location.”

  “That’s what he claims,” the madame said with a shrug.

  “How?” I demanded. “Twenty minutes ago he only had a rough location.”

  “That was before he saw the Tartaruchi and found these markings on the tombs,” she explained. “Come and see.”

  The redhead led me over to the nearby tomb and ran her hand along
its side. There, carved into the brimstone of the sarcophagus, were a series of symbols.

  One looked like a stick-figure with horns. Another appeared to be an eye of some sort. Then there was a bird and a rhinoceros. Each one looked to be about as basic of an icon as could possibly be made.

  “Do you know what these are, Jacob?” Sia asked curiously. “They’re Inferoglyphs. It’s an ancient form of writing used by demons before we adopted the human languages.”

  “So, what?” I tried to follow. “They tell us where the Porta ad Terram is?”

  “They tell the story of whoever is locked in the tomb,” the redhead continued.

  “Ohhhhhh, I think I get it,” Todd spoke up. “There’s like, a secret message on one of these things.”

  “And the one with the message is the one that will house the portal!” Libidine giggled as she bounced up and down.

  “Inferoglyphs used only images that represented living things,” Sia explained. “So look for anything that’s not natural. An image of a plane or a pyramid or something of that nature.”

  If Martatelli was right, then this endeavor just got a whole lot easier. Sure, we were still going to have to inspect all of these tombs, but at least we didn’t have to crack them open and risk unleashing whatever horrors were trapped inside.

  “Has anybody seen Ira?” Eligor asked. “She kind of disappeared during the battle.”

  “I know exactly where she is,” Liby sighed and rolled her eyes. “Follow me.”

  The succubus led us over to where Sia had amassed the pile of Tartaruchi bodies. Then, she cleared her throat rather loudly, but nothing happened. She took a deep breath, waggled her body, and then tried again.

  This time, the dead bodies began to stir, and then a few of them were pushed away as the sub’s dark-hair emerged from the mass grave.

  “What do you want?” she groaned. “I was seeing how long I could hold my breath for. I was just getting to the part where my face turns blue and my vision starts to go blurry … ”

  “Asphyxiate yourself later, Crazy Eyes,” Todd cackled to the succubus. “We’ve got a portal to find!”

  “Fine … ” the dark-haired woman grumbled as she crawled her way to the top of the pile.

  A few bodies flopped onto the ground as she moved, and then the sub gave a little stretch as she readjusted to being on her feet.

  “We need to try and figure out what the markings on each of these tombs mean,” Superbia explained. “Does anyone besides myself read Inferoglyphs?”

  Eligor and Todd both raised their hands in the air.

  “No you do not,” the blonde knight scoffed and gave the imp a slight nudge.

  “Sure I do,” Todd shot back. “I was reading Inferoglyphs before I could read English!”

  “I’d actually believe him on this one,” I chuckled and shook my head. “If there’s one thing I know about Todd, it’s that he knows his occultist symbolism.”

  “Damn straight,” the imp agreed, and then he crossed his arms over his chest and stuck out his tongue at Eligor.

  “Excellent,” Sia observed. “Martatelli can read them as well. I’d suggest we let the scientist lead the way, and the rest of us can pair off so we can cover more ground.”

  “I call Lib!” Todd exclaimed as he ran over to Libidine and hugged her leg like a spider monkey.

  “I guess I’m with Todd,” the succubus chuckled.

  “I will pair off with Ira’s half,” Sia sighed. “She’s the member of our team who’s most likely to get into trouble, so she’ll need to remain under my watchful eye.”

  “Then that just leaves me and Jacob,” Eligor announced.

  The blonde knight sauntered over beside me and then intertwined her fingers with mine.

  “I can live with that,” I said as I stared into her deep blue eyes.

  “It’s settled, then,” Sia declared. “We’ll split up and search the tombs. If you find anything, just let the rest of us know.”

  The team gave the madame a nod of confirmation, and then we went on our separate ways.

  The first tomb Eligor and I encountered was one that had a skull, a heart, a stick figure with horns, and a wilted flower.

  “Oh,” the knight gasped. “What a terrible way to die.”

  “What does it say?” I asked curiously.

  “This is the gravesite of a man who fell in love with a nun,” she explained. “When she refused to break her sacred vows and love him back, he had her poisoned with a deadly flower.”

  “You got all of that from a few symbols?” I whistled in disbelief.

  “Don’t let appearances fool you,” Eligor warned. “Inferoglyphs are a highly technical and complex language.”

  “If you way so,” I conceded. “You’re the expert here, not me. That one looks like it’s all in order, so let’s move on to the next one.”

  We walked over to another sealed tomb triple the size of the regular-sized ones. From inside its brimstone walls we could hear low, guttural wails of pain that sounded like a cross between a bison and a whale.

  Eligor knelt down and began to read the glyphs on the side.

  “Oh, wow,” she said as she clicked her tongue. “So that’s where Alphamegnon went.”

  “Alphamegnon?” I questioned. “I’ve never heard of that demon.”

  “There are a lot of demons that never made it into the lore of Earth Realm,” the knight retorted. “This was one of them. As you can see, he was a fairly large beast, with dark black fur all over his body and an elongated snout. Then he had these huge ears and a massive hunch that connected to his muscles.”

  “A bear,” I chuckled. “You’re describing a bear.”

  “I’m not familiar with the beasts of Earth Realm,” the knight admitted. “But do these ‘bears’ have claws the size of your arm and jaws like that of a dragon?”

  “Not quite,” I joked. “They’re much more timid. As long as you don’t fuck with their honey, of course.”

  “It says here Alphamegnon was infected with the Divine Light during the Battle of Babylon and had to be sealed away so he didn’t wreak havoc in the netherrealm,” Eligor explained.

  “So he’s on our side?” I asked. “Why don’t we just release him and let him fuck up the Sixth Circle?”

  Eligor shook her head and gasped.

  “Let him out?” she spat. “Beings who are infected with both Divine and Demonic magic are the most dangerous creatures of all. They have no allegiances to any higher power, and that makes them unpredictable.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I shot back.

  Eligor’s face turned red when she realized her blunder, and she covered her mouth with a slender hand as her eyes went wide.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to--”

  “It’s fine,” I laughed and shot the knight a wink. “Every woman on my team knows I’m dangerous.”

  Eligor rolled her eyes, and then we moved on to the next tomb. We continued searching for the Porta ad Terram for another thirty minutes or so, but to no avail. Finally, I slumped down on the sandy ground and leaned back against one of the sarcophagi.

  Todd and Liby walked over and shrugged their shoulders in frustration.

  “Nothin’,” the imp sighed. “We’ve been to dozens of these things, and I haven’t seen a single clue to the portal, bro. We did find some really badass stories, though. You see that tomb over there? Guess who it belongs to … Friar. Fucking. Tuck.”

  “From Robin Hood?” I asked skeptically. “I thought that was all just a legend.”

  “No, bro,” the imp said as he began to make large, sweeping gestures. “The Inferoglyphs talk all about how he landed here after him and Lil’ John raided a corrupt cathedral and stole all their shit.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘Little John?’” I couldn’t help but snort as the words came out.

  “That’s what I said, bro,” Todd continued. “Lil’ John.”

  “Riggghhht,” I conceded as I leaned by head back
against the rocky structure. “I wonder if Sia or Martatelli are having any more luck?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Superbia’s voice spoke up from beside me.

  I looked over and saw the petite redhead approaching with her head hung in sadness. She sat her ass down on the top of the tomb, laid back, and then let out a loud groan.

  “Where’s the sub?” I questioned the madame. “Please don’t tell me--”

  “Lord knows,” Sia said with a roll of her eyes. “Probably off pinning herself under a statue or something of that nature.”

  Martatelli was off in the distance, squatting down to read the symbols on one of the brimstone boxes.

  “What about him?” I asked aloud. “He’s a Shade. Does he get to come with us when we open the portal?”

  “Yes and no,” Sia explained. “Once a human is dead, they’re dead. If Martatelli follows us through that the Porta ad Terram, he will lose all of his physical sensations and the ability to interact with physical objects. In short, he’d be a ghost.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Libidine admitted.

  “It’s not,” Sia agreed, “but it would be quite frustrating to go from being a full-fledged being down here to a disembodied spirit.”

  “Yoooohoooooo!” Ira’s sub called out from somewhere behind us. “Guys, come look at this!”

  “I don’t even want to know what you’re doing,” Superia growled.

  “It’s not that, Sister!” the sub promised. “Come look!”

  “Again?” Todd snickered, and then he made his way around the tomb and over to where the Sister of Wrath was located.

  The rest of us stood up and followed the imp until we finally reached the succubus. The sub was leaned up against a regular-sized tomb as she smoked a cigarette and made orgasmic noises.

  “What’ya got for us, Crazy Eyes?” Todd asked as he hopped up on a small, stony pillar a few feet away.

  “These markings look funny.” She shrugged. “While I was inspecting this rock over here, I noticed this tomb has a marking we haven’t seen before.”

  “This … pillar?” Todd shuddered as he looked down at the rocky surface that his bare hooves were standing on. “Is … is that why it’s so sticky?”