by A. J. Markam
“You’re such a sweet-talker.”
“Aren’t I? You should take me right here in the street,” she whispered in my ear.
The way she said it, I definitely wanted to, but we were on a schedule.
“Later,” I promised. “Carrie’s friends are waiting on us.”
“I still say you should have hate-fucked her.”
“Why would I want to hate-fuck some chick when I can love-fuck you?” I said with a grin.
“Oh GODDESS,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “You’re so corny.”
“You love it. You know you do.”
She tried to suppress a smile, but the corners of her mouth turned up a little. “Maybe.”
Stig just groaned and made throwing up noises in his throat. “So awkward.”
As soon as we entered Zali’s house, I made both Stig and Alaria wait as I set up a Gravesite in a deserted hall. If things went sideways, I didn’t want to respawn five blocks away – I wanted back in the scuffle immediately.
“Alright, people,” I said as soon as I finished casting the spell, “get your game faces on.”
Both my demons looked at me quizzically.
“You mean a mask?” Alaria asked. “I don’t have one. Were we supposed to bring one?”
“I only have one face,” Stig said as he patted his cheeks with his grey-fingered hands.
“And why are we playing a game now, of all things? I thought we had to – ”
“It’s an expression,” I interrupted.
“Oh,” she grunted.
“Ah, fuck me,” Stig grumbled.
“Just get ready,” I said as I walked through the house.
“Is this going to work?” Alaria asked.
“I have no idea. But if it doesn’t, we’re screwed.”
“Mmmmm,” Alaria purred.
“Not that kind of screwed.”
“Like a hate-fuck kind of screwed?”
“No.”
“Like a fuckoff?” Stig asked, sounding for all the world like a chicken. Ba-KAW! FuckOFF!
“NO. Just – get ready to fight.”
We walked out of the house and into the sculpture garden.
Actually, I guess it was more like the ‘performance art garden,’ now.
Either that or Interspecies Mega-Orgy Gangbang 15.
The whole seafloor was a carpet of writhing bodies.
Nagas holding nymphs and succubi in a lover’s embrace, their tails twisted around the women’s bodies and penetrating them as everyone moaned.
Incubi fucking nymphs and succubi in every conceivable position. Missionary, woman on top, doggy-style, sitting, kneeling, standing, blowjobs, anal, threesomes, foursomes, double penetration – a whole smorgasbord of sex.
And succubi fucking nymphs and each other – licking, fingering, scissoring, 69ing, rimming, and lots and lots of tail strap-ons.
Fucking as far as the eye could see.
I looked around for the nymphs’ and Nagas’ weapons.
They were all stacked in orderly piles up against the house. I guess so nobody would roll over one in the throes of passion.
After all, nobody wanted to get impaled while they were having sex.
Not on a spear, anyway.
“Eeee-an!” a familiar voice cried out. “A-laaar-ee-uh! Steeg the eemp!”
I looked over to see Zali striding towards us, his hands in the air like he wanted to hug us all at once. Today he was dressed in an all-white suit with a black dress shirt and a white ascot with a ruby fastened in the center. Dapper as always.
“I am so happy to see you!” he beamed as he walked up. “Have you decided to join us for the art ex-eee-bit?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Excellent, excellent! Just walk out there and cover yourself in art!”
I felt a tug on the right side of my cloak. I looked over to see Alaria biting her lip as she stared out at the sea of writhing bodies.
“Do you think we could maybe just… join in a little before…” she begged, trailing off at the end.
I felt a tug on the left side of my cloak and looked at Stig glaring up at me.
“NO,” he barked.
“Don’t worry,” I said as I waved him off.
“Join een a leetle before what?” Zali asked, mystified.
“Before the others show up. I invited some friends – I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course! The more the merrier!” the little hatchetfish exclaimed. “Breeng all the freends you want!”
“Okay.”
I put two fingers in my mouth and whistled as loud as I could.
FWEE-O-WEEEET!
An angry roar rose up through the water as thousands of protestors swam over the walls of the sculpture garden.
Lobster people, squid people, fish people, human people – all of them with signs on wooden sticks.
“WHAT ARE YOU DO-EENG?!” Zali screamed at the protestors. “THAT EES FOR-BEE-DEN!”
“What, swimming over the walls?” I asked.
“Yes, eet ees very bad manners!” Zali fumed.
The protestors raced toward the art installations.
“Oh… I theenk they like my art,” Zali said, suddenly placated. “They are merely over-exuberant.”
The little hatchetfish cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “COME BACK TOMORROW, AFTER THE FUCK-EENG EES OVER, AND YOU CAN SEE MY ART IN ALL EETS GLOR-EE!”
Zali was right about one thing: the ‘artwork’ was currently devoid of succubi and incubi, who were currently busy going at it on the seafloor.
So no succubi on the crosses 69ing each other. (Well… not 69ing each other ON the crosses, anyway).
No sexy female butt plugs inside giant stone asses.
No incubi about to be buggered by monstrous marble squirrels.
However, there were still hundreds of sculptures all around the garden – which the protestors began to attack, whacking them with swords, and war hammers, and even the wooden sticks attached to their poster-board signs.
“WHAT ARE THEY DO-EENG?!” Zali shrieked.
“Just what I told them to,” I said with an evil grin.
Zali looked up at me and gasped. “Ee-an!”
For a second I felt like a diabolical genius –
Until he smiled and waggled a finger at me. “You naughty, naughty boy – ”
That was when I cast my first spell.
“CHAIN OF DARKNESS!” I yelled.
I didn’t need to say it out loud to cast the spell… but it sounded cool.
A lasso of tiny demons flew out of my sleeve and wrapped around Zali.
Immediately he began dropping giant chunks of hit points.
-740
-733
-725
Zali hit back with a water spell that slashed me like knives – but it did 25% less damage than normal because of Chain of Darkness.
“You are deee-veee-ous, I will geeve you that, Ee-an!” he yelled cheerfully.
As I cast Doomsday on Zali, I couldn’t help but look past him to the protestors. I was wondering how soon it would take for them to completely destroy his artwork, which would bring him down to my Level and lower his overall Health –
Except not all the protestors were attacking the art.
In fact, very few of them were.
Thousands of them had turned on the Naga, nymphs, incubi, and succubi – who, until thirty seconds ago, had still been having sex.
The naked creatures screamed piteously, arms up in the air, as the protestors set upon them with swords and knives.
And – I shit you not – giant leather-bound books which I could only assume were the OtherWorld versions of Bibles, which they used to bash the head of any succubus or nymph within reach.
The protestors were literally Bible thumpers.
All of the nymphs and Naga and incubi and succubi were at higher Levels than the protestors, yes – but they were all naked. No armor whatsoever.
And the nymphs’ and
Nagas’ weapons were stacked against Zali’s house, out of reach. The warriors were utterly defenseless.
The incubi and succubi summoned pitchforks to fight back, but all their fire-based powers were effectively useless.
Plus there were about 2000 more protestors than everyone else.
It was a fucking massacre.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” I screamed at the protestors. “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DESTROY THE ARTWORK AND LEAVE EVERYBODY ELSE ALONE!”
They knew that. I had briefed them outside Fathmos because I hadn’t trusted Carrie to make it clear, and I had extracted promises from all of their leaders before I brought them inside the gates. They were supposed to go after the art and only the art. After all, the art was the source of Zali’s powers.
“WE HAD A DEAL! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!”
Then they told me, one by one.
“Deuteronomy 22:22 – ‘If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman!’”
“NONE OF THESE PEOPLE ARE MARRIED, YOU IDIOT!”
“Deuteronomy 20:17!” another one yelled. “But you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded!”
“THESE AREN’T HITTITES OR AMORITES! AND WHAT THE HELL DID THE HITTITES OR THE AMORITES DO TO YOU, ANYWAY?!”
“First Samuel 15:3! ‘Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey!’”
“SERIOUSLY?! WHAT KIND OF FUCKED-UP PSYCHOPATHIC BULLSHIT IS THAT?!”
“Language!” several of the lobster people shouted angrily.
The irony – the people perpetuating wholesale slaughter were more upset about my using the F-word.
If innocents weren’t being killed because I’d made a deal with the devil, it might have been funny.
“WHAT HAPPENED TO ‘LOVE THE SINNER BUT HATE THE SIN’?!” I yelled. “WHAT HAPPENED TO ‘LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF’?!”
Of course, nobody replied to that one. They were too busy killing.
I looked at Zali, who I was still fighting.
He’d only ever wanted me to have a good time.
Then I looked over at the protestors. I saw one stab a succubus in the back, and another spear a nymph in the chest.
“That’s for your immodesty and immorality,” the protestor snarled at the dying woman.
You know what?
FUCK THESE ASSHOLES.
That was when I turned my attention away from Zali and started attacking the protestors.
The Jesus freaks looked at me in shock as I waded into the fray, blue lightning blasting from my fingertips.
“What are you doing?!” one of the protestors screamed.
“FUCKING YOU UP!” I bellowed.
“YES, EE-AN, YES! HA HA HAAAA!” Zali crowed as he jumped in beside me. His hands sent walls of water slamming into the protestors, scattering them like bowling pins.
I was now on the same side as the guy I’d just been trying to kill, fighting the religious zealots I’d brought along to help kill him.
What a fuckin’ day this was.
The protestors suddenly turned on me –
And Alaria.
A hundred of them went after her at once.
“Kill the demon!” they shouted.
“LEAVE HER ALONE, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES – SHE’S WITH ME!”
“She’s a demon and a witch!” they screamed. “Exodus 22:18 – ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’”
“Wrong!” Alaria snapped as she jabbed her pitchfork at them. “I’m not a witch, I’m a badass bitch!”
“ALARIA, TAKE STIG AND GET OUT OF HERE!”
“What about you?!”
“JUST DO IT!”
She looked at me fearfully, then grabbed Stig by the arm and took off straight into sky.
Water.
Whatever.
The protestors tried to swim after her, but because of the Galatan trinket of speed, she easily outdistanced them within seconds.
That left just me and Zali.
I looked down at my wingman, only to discover he was crying as he fought back the protestors.
“What’s wrong?!”
“Oh Ee-an… my life’s work… they have ruined eet,” he sobbed.
I looked beyond the protestors at the sculpture garden.
They’d taken their goddamn sweet time, but the marauding invaders had finally started wrecking the art.
The ten-foot-tall stone asses cracked and collapsed into rubble.
The sacrilegious, bent-arm crosses came down like felled timber.
The marble squirrels got beheaded.
As they went about their work, the protestors shouted more Bible verses:
“Second Kings 23:6! ‘He took the obscene phallic Asherah pole from The Temple of God, burned it up, then ground up the ashes and scattered them in the cemetery!’”
“Deuteronomy 12:3! ‘Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places!’”
I was really starting not to like the Book of Deuteronomy. Seemed that was one of their favorites.
Every second that passed, another sculpture tumbled to the ground.
Everywhere I looked, artwork was being destroyed.
And it was killing Zali.
Figuratively and literally.
I felt horrible at seeing him cry – mostly because it was all my fault. I’d invited the barbarians in; it was on my orders that they were destroying his life’s work.
But more than that, he was dying.
I checked his stats and confirmed it: he was dropping Levels with every piece of artwork that crashed to the ground. And as his Level diminished, his Health cratered, too.
Five minutes ago, I would have been overjoyed. Victory would have been within reach. Another one of Alaria’s ex-masters scratched off the list.
But now he was my ally against these fundamentalist assholes… and he was dying.
The protestors were all Level 15 and below, so they couldn’t inflict much damage on him individually – but there was a horde of them. And they never stopped coming. And when they died, they respawned and came back.
Drop one lobster guy, and two more took his place.
“Zali, use Soul Suck!” I yelled at him.
“Eet does not matter – een a moment I will be too weak for eet to make any difference!” he bawled.
He was right.
Every Level that he dropped, he lost more Health. Where he had once had 74,000 hit points, he now only had 18,000 max – and half of that was gone because of the Damage he was taking.
In another minute, he would be reduced to Level One, and even the weakest of the protestors would be able to kill him with a single blow.
What do I do?
But I already knew.
“ZALI, FREE THE INCUBI AND SUCCUBI!” I yelled at him.
“What?!”
“FREE THE INCUBI AND SUCCUBI, AND I’LL SAVE YOU!”
Zali waved his hands as I fended off the protestors, sucking their souls out of them as fast as I could.
All of the Collars of Gorbolik fell off the succubi and incubi at once.
“I release you!” Zali cried out. “I release you all! Fly away, my darlings, fly away!”
The incubi and succubi all looked at each other in surprise – and then they flew up out of the garden, far beyond the reach of the protestors.
“NOOOO! The demons are getting away!” the protestors screamed in fury.
They might have chased after them, but there were too many naked, helpless victims lying at their feet. Easy pickins.
Once the incubi and succubi were safely away, I shouted at the Naga and nymphs, “They can’t swim as fast as you! All the Naga, grab the nymphs and SWIM FOR IT!”
T
he Naga warriors followed my directions: they grabbed the nymphs and helped them swim straight up over the city.
The protestors tried to pursue them, but the Naga were designed for speed in the water. The protestors were not. And without any trinkets to help them, the Jesus freaks rapidly fell behind.
Which left just me and Zali to bear the brunt of their fury.
Except I wasn’t sticking around for that shit, either.
“Zali, let’s go!” I yelled.
“I am com-eeng, Ee-an – ” the fish said pitifully –
Just as some lobster dude with a Bible verse sign planted the pointy end of his stick in Zali’s back.
The hatchetfish went down on his face, and the lobster raised one triumphant claw.
“Woo hoo!” he yelled. “John 3:16 – ‘For God so loved the world – ’”
“FUCK OFF!” I roared as I blasted him with a Darkbolt.
I scooped Zali into my arms and took off like Superman into the sky.
Water.
Whatever.
The protestors tried to swim after me, but I had a Galatan trinket of speed on my side. I quickly outpaced them, and the marauding horde’s screams faded away beneath me.
48
Once I was far enough away from Fathmos, I drifted down onto what used to be the plains of battle in the Naga-Nymph War.
Now, though, there was nothing. Nothing except me and a dying hatchetfish.
I settled him gently on the sand. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow.
I looked at the translucent ID tag hovering over his head.
Zali – Warlock
Level 1
My plan had worked, however much I now wished it hadn’t. With all his art destroyed, Zali was as weak as an absolute beginner.
Even weaker, I found out, when I looked at his remaining Health.
Health: 1 of 154
One fucking hit point. That was all he had left. He was barely clinging to life.
Ah, the irony. I’d been trying to fuck over Carrie to get what I wanted… but she’d fucked me over first, unknowingly or not. At least her people had.
And yet I’d still gotten what I’d wanted.
The biggest irony of all was that I didn’t want it anymore.
As I was looking at Zali, a shadow passed over the sand.
Something was behind me.
