Chapter 5

Cae slept.

She slept within a luxuriant, wallowing puddle of pure relaxation, comfort and delight, unlike any she had ever known in her relatively short life – most of her handful of decades had been spent on cold stone or the battlefield’s bare ground, sleeping purely to move from work to work, study to study, war to war. But now, she slept not in a bed that was empty and bare, but in the muscular arms of a flame-bright lover. Her wings cupped in her sleep, cradling the figure that held her, and her head pillowed against his muscular forearm, her cheek warmed by his blazing heat. Even in her sleep, her nose flared and drew in his scent: A masculine tang mixed with woodsmoke. Her breath and his met and matched as she unconsciously drew closer to his warmth.

In Cae’s sleep, she dreamed.

It was here were where mortal, demon and angel all alike shared the same foibles, the same pleasures, the same fears, the same pains. From the slightest of wisps to the mightiest of demon lords, all of them had to sleep.

All of them had to dream.

In her dream, Cae walked along the pavements of Heaven, carrying the stacks of heavy tomes she had gotten from the library. The brilliant light that shone down overhead was carried by the soft singing of the endless Choir that sang the Creator’s glory and blessing, while the empty throne loomed over all, a vast golden edifice around which Heaven was built like the scaffolding around some sprawling cliff-face. The geometric perfection of it would have been breathtaking, had Cae not been running quite late. She had been so absorbed in her books she had nearly missed the bell announcing the upcoming shifts in the vast lecture halls and practice arenas within Heaven’s academies.

When she came to the vaunted entrance of said academy, the way was barred by two quad winged guardian angels, who held their halberds to bar her passage. “Caelel,” one rumbled. “Why do you bear those tomes?”

“They’re from the library,” Cae said, peeking over the upper edge of the stack of books. “I need to return them, before I get to class.”

“Very well.” The grinding creak of the halberds shifting back to upright made her grit her teeth. The questioning, as rote and repeated as clockwork, always slowed her down. Normally, she accounted for it, but today she had a bright spark of irritation in he breast. They had to know that she never took books from anywhere but the library. But there was a way to thing in Heaven – lists, procedures, steps. Order.

She managed, through dint of beating her wings and soaring through the corridors above the annoyed heads of classmates who glowered up at her, to return the books to the library, where a scrivener in long white robes glowered at her for her unseemly haste. Thus, she had time enough to reach the practice halls, dressed in her white tunic and breeches. Dozens of other war angels were already there, taking up their practice weapons, under the censorious eyes of the Proctor. This memory was from before her chastising – and yet, Cae’s dream-self felt the throb of the whip-scars on her back. The Proctor, she remembered, transfixed her with a glower, then moved to loom over her as she took her place opposite one of her fellow war-angels.

“Block high. Low. Middle. High! Low! Middle!” The Proctor’s voice picked up steam as angelic might was honed in those halls. Wooden swords, reinforced by spell wearing, clacked against one another as the war-angels started to warm up. “Keep the count – and listen well. Your muscles are not merely the strength of your angelic bodies. There is magic flowing in your veins, magic wrung from the souls we have Raptured to our glorious paradise. Each strike is powered, fractionally or in whole, by those spirits. It is your duty that their energy not be wasted. High! Low! Middle!”

The clacking sounds rang in Cae’s ears as she felt her muscles burn and then relax. She smiled across the way at the angel she face off against – another female, whose face was intent and unreadable.“Low!” Clack. “Middle!” Clack. “High!”

Cae’s practice blade and the practice blade of the angel she squared off against met ... and the other angel’s blade shattered. Wood splinters flew through the air and Cae jerked her own blade up before driving it into her partner. The whole room had gone silent. Every angel was looking at her. Cae blinked. Such events had happened, but there was a strange heaviness in the air.

“Her wings...” One angel whispered, quietly.Cae blinked. She craned her head, trying to catch a sight of her own wings – but before she could, the Proctor was there. He snatched the blade from her hand, then tossed the wooden weapon aside. “What have you done?”

Cae stepped away from her training master – and backed into the large white pillar that loomed above her, one of the countless array of white pillars that supported the vaunted hall. The angels around her had the impassive, furious faces of a panel of judges, their wings folding behind their back. Their soft whispers rang in her ear. “Corruption ... demon ... a fallen one...” Cae looked not back to her wings, but down to her hands – red skinned, clawed in black. Her eyes widened and flames seemed to stream around her palms as she shook her head.

“No, no, no-”“No!”

She sat up, gasping, her wings snapping wide as she looked wildly around the battlefield tent she had fallen to sleep in. Her golden skin – still the glossy skin of an angel, not the pebbled grotesquery of a war-demon, or the smooth unblemished red of a succubi – beaded with gleams of glowing, pale sweat. Her chest rose and fell as she panted, looking down at her hands. Then she craned her head back, her heart hammering in her chest, lumping like a smith’s hammer blowing against metal. But ... but to her confusion, her wings glowed with the pale blue-white light she was used too, gentle and soothing. They were not the charcoal black of the Fallen. And yet...

She sat there beside, Citri, the Baron of Fire and one of the highest nobles of Hell, had sat up as well, blinking and looking around blearily. But seeing no danger in the tent, only her, he laid back upon the bedroll that they had shared, his flame hair trickling along the pillow – lines of bright red and crackling sparks. He looked genuinely concerned, his voice soft. “Nightmare?” he asked.

Cae panted and felt absurdly shy. She grabbed onto the blanket, tugging it up to try and cover herself – absurd, he was inside you last night! Her own thoughts had the same venom-sharp fangs as the angels of Heaven would have ... had they known what she had done.

“I ... no, I’m fine,” Cae said.

“You’re covering yourself and fidgeting away from me in this very bedroll, Cae,” Citri said, his voice dry. He rolled onto his side, propping his arm up under his head, looking up at her with those red on black eyes of his. “I note your wings have yet to blacken. Your skin remains gold and silver. You seem, for all intents and purposes, as pure as you were before ... our...” He smiled, slightly. “Well, to say anything of my performance would be pure braggadocio, something I do try and avoid-”

To Cae’s shock, that startled a little snort-giggle out of her. She tried to choke it down.

“-but by the Destroyer’s blackened throne, you were as incredible in the bedroll as you were on the battlefield, Cae,” Citri said, then grinned. “And you trounced the Baron of Murder and the Baron of Pillage!”

“Not at the same time,” Cae said, absently.

“No, which actually makes it more impressive, if you ask me. Balati is easier to handle with an army at your back. You faced him down alone.” Citri’s warm smile faded. “ ... I know that it may seem ... hideously self serving, being that I’m ... well, male, and a demon, but ... I don’t think you have any thing to be ashamed of.”

“I fucked a Baron of Hell,” Cae said, her voice as prim as she could make it as she tucked her chin against her arms and rested her arms against her bent up knees. She pinned the bedroll blanket between knees and breasts, and was painfully aware that this did little to cover her from the side – the very angle Citri viewed his very own angel. “In what realm, in what universe, is that not something for a war-angel of Heaven to be ashamed of?”

Citri was silent for a long while. He laid onto his back, looking up at the tent above him. His lips pursed and he shook his head. “You’re talking to a demon, Cae. Our way is to defy. If someone makes a rule, if someone says one must be ashamed, it is our way to say ... oh yeah? Who says? Fuck you.” He grinned, wryly. “I know the Creator built all that there is, and made a plan for everything – but the Destroyer spoke into being an ending of things.”

“That’s what I am trying to stop!” Cae said. “Things should not end. I don’t want to see mortal kind gone-”

“Do you wish to see slavery to go on?” Citri asked. “Oppression? Tyranny?”

Cae turned towards him, laying upon her own side, propping her own head on her own arm, her other arm cupped over her breasts, keeping her blankets over her body. “I don’t know, let me ask the Baron of Oppression, the Lord of Tyranny – members of the House of Tyranny, if I remember my reading correctly.”

Citri scowled. “Our enemies, as much as yours.”

“And yet, they lack halos,” Cae snapped back, her cheeks heating. “And they serve the Destroyer, just as much as you do.”

Citri’s scowl grew darker. He glowered up at the ceiling of the tent. “I suppose you don’t? Considering you are fighting for Ruin, for Lord Arral.”

“I-” Cae choked back her immediate response. Her wings fluttered and she looked aside. “I...”

Citri softened upon the bed, his face relaxing from its scowl. His eyes closed. “I don’t pretend to have all the answers. If it is not fire – passion, heat, burning, crumbling heat ... then I’m no better than a mortal.” He put his hand onto his brow, brushing his fingers back through his bright hair. “But you are not showing any magical signs of corruption. So, what is it you fear? Your angels?” He looked at her, frowning. “I ... couldn’t help but notice your scars, Cae.”

She looked away from him, rolling onto her back. “Angels get scars.”

“Yes, but never in a thousand years would I imagine Caelel Silverhawk, the youngest general to serve in the hosts of Heaven, to get scars on her back.” He paused. “Well, not more than one or two, and those mostly raking claws.” He sighed. “Those were whip scars, Cae.” His hand reached out, gingerly, placing itself upon her shoulder. His warmth, damn him, comforted her. Cae looked away, and saw nothing but folds of brown tent. Her own voice was soft.

“I ... erred in training,” she murmured.

“You? Erred?” Citri sounded so shocked that Cae had to admit, she felt rather pleased with herself.

Cae shifted on her bedroll. For some reason, laying upon her back, keeping her modesty, it was all just too much bother. She sat up, and turned her back to Citri. Her wings flared and lifted up, revealing the complex join of muscle and bone, covered with golden skin, where wing met shoulder blades. Underneath, there were the many raised, silver lines of her scourging. She ducked her head forward and her voice was soft. “During training I ... always wished to be a General. Did you ever know of a time where you wished to be the Baron of Fire?”

“I always was he,” Citri said, sounding bemused. “Wishing for something? That sounds suspiciously like a mortal vice.”

“It is,” Cae said, her voice quiet. His finger touched one scar and she shivered. The heat of him tingled, despite the raised scar tissue. She bit her lip to keep her voice calm, releasing her lip from her teeth only once she was sure she would continue to sound ... normal. “Well, I wished to be a General. And so, I studied mortals. I read of their worlds, their realms, their ways. Their generals. I read of them all – Dammen Kell, Belai the Mongoose, Kurdag Horsehair...” She shook her head. “Lord MacLean and the Loche Warriors. All of them.”

“I ... don’t even recognize half of those,” Citri said, his voice soft. His finger was replaced, for a fleeting moment, by his warm, damp lips, kissing against her scar tissue. Cae did gasp this time, her nipples hardening to immediate eagerness. She looked aside. “So, what was your erring?”

Cae closed her eyes. “I ... I snuck out of Heaven, and disguised my glory. I walked as a human woman in the fields of Tesoy, and there, I found General Belai in his retirement as a pig farmer. I asked him to tell me tales of his campaigns. He said he always preferred being a pig farmer – hogs didn’t rape nearly so often as Le-Vai mercenaries and needed far less strict lectures to keep them in formation.” She smiled, a bit wryly. “He was a handsome man, older and weathered, but with youthful eyes still, and a silver beard. He spoke for quite some time and ... and I wanted to learn more. So, I returned the next day. Then the day after. On the fourth day, he asked me my name, and I ... I couldn’t...” She shook her head. “The choice to lie or to speak truth was stolen from me. The Proctor game, glowing and brilliant and furious. He took me to Heaven, and left that poor pig-farmer quite startled. I ... hope he found Grace and lives now in Heaven, I doubt he lives yet in the mortal realms.”

“They whipped you for that?” Citri asked, his fingers sliding along her skin slowly, teasing not just her scars, but her flesh. The touch was so decadently good, Cae knew that she should ask him to stop, but she couldn’t bear it. “Bastards.”

“I was absent without leave, and risking a mortal’s soul by ... by exposing him to Heaven without authorization,” Cae said, her voice soft. “I deserved it and-”

She cut herself off.

Citri shifted up slightly. His chin rested upon her shoulder, his nose nuzzling against the underside of her wing, his face pressing to her feathers. His breath felt like the wind running under and over her wing, warm thermals that should be lifting her into the air. She gasped quietly – even as Citri crooned. “ ... and?”

“N-nothing!” Cae said, blushing.

Citri reached around, under her arm. His hand cupped one of her tits, squeezing her flesh as if he owned her, as if her body was his. The blazing touch of him, the squeezing pressure, the way his bright red fingers found her nipple and tweaked it, drew a moan from her, wanton and eager as last night. She squirmed, and remained unable to quite find a reason to tell him to release her. She bit her lip to keep her traitor mouth from releasing another mewl – even as he purred in her ear, leaning in close.

“And what, my General. I do outrank you.”

Cae’s teeth sank deeper into her lip as he teased her nipple with his finger. Her sex was aching, growing moist and eager between her thighs. She bucked. Squirmed. Wriggled. Then, finally, she gasped out. “S-Stop, please!”

“Not until I get my way,” Citri said, chuckling. He tugged her again and she gasped out.

“F-Fine! Fine!” She had to get him to stop or ... or else ... she was terrified that she would climax then and there, purely from his teasing, from his tugging. The idea of getting off so quickly and so easily made her feel as if she was trapped between mortification. But still, she hoped there was a way she could squirm out of this, like an army caught in a pincer movement, but with expert scouts who had brought warning in the nick of time. Citri released her – but he did not stop nuzzling her neck, kissing her golden skin, licking her sweat up as if it was droplets of dew. She blushed and squirmed, then said, as carefully as she could.

“I ... the ... whipping I undertook, to chasten me, was not so terrible as I believe the Proctor had envisaged,” she said, firmly.

There! That was rather-

“By the Destroyer’s balls, you got wet didn’t you?” Citri asked, sitting up, his voice and his excitement clear – his cock, hard and blazing hot, slapped against her ass cheeks, making it clear that while he was a demon, part of him could never, would never lie to her. Cae’s cheeks turned as incandescent as his hair.

“How the- what but-” She stammered.

“When did you start moistening?” He asked, eagerly. “The moment they chained you? Or when the whip blows began to fall upon your glorious shoulders?”

“I-I...” Cae stammered, then ... collapsed, her resolve caught betwixt pleasure and shame. Her cheeks burned harder and she continued. “T-The moment they stripped me nude for the whipping. Fixing the chains only moistened me further. The actual pain? I ... I don’t know. It hurt. And yet, as it hurt, it throbbed and left my back feeling even more sensitive. I think I would have preferred it had they not drawn blood ... yet ... yet it still felt...” She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

Citri nodded against her back, his cock slotted between the cleft of her ass. “Do you know who is the best at whipping among us?” He grinned. “Degi has such a way with it. But if you wish to be ... stripped and bound and gagged and made to crawl upon the floor like a worm, oh, it is Rue you must go to.” He purred into her ear. “I prefer my partners to be lively and burning bright – restraint and constriction and pain requires a different skill than mine.”

“Y-You pig!” Cae gasped. “Y-You hold me in your arms, your lover, and you already ... trot me out to your ... your fellow Barons!?” She spluttered.

“You’re already theirs?” Citri said – and Cae noticed, her brain catching upon the tone like a finger sliding over a splinter jutting from a poorly carved fence – that his voice held not assurance, nor cocky confidence, nor even priggish smugness. No, he was more ... bemused. As if she had just called the sky blue when it was clearly green.

“What?” She whispered.

The tent flap opened and Laeushale stuck her head in. “General?” she asked. “Oh, are you not done yet?”

Cae found herself standing and wrapped about in a blanket so swiftly that the whole tent fluttered with the wind of her progress. “Report!” she barked.

Laeushale smirked, slightly. “The army is ready to return – since Destruction’s army has routed and our villages are secure.”

“Very good,” Cae said. “I will be out in moments.” She swept her wing down, stretching it to its upmost. Her feathers cupped around Citri and, using enough magic to keep herself aloft for a solid five minutes, she lifted him and threw him bodily from her tent. He sailed out past Laeushale, who stepped back with a smoothness that made Cae think that this was not the first time Citri had been so rapidly ejected from a tent.

The fire spirit gave Cae a grin, a wink, and closed the tent flap again.

The army did not depart as it had arrived – in drips and drabs. Cae wasn’t sure how the Realm of Ruin normally handled such victories, and she knew that compared to the vast sundering conquests that took place within the mortal realms, this paltry skirmish was little to write home about. She said as much, but Citri would brook no argument and the idea of arguing with the man and being perpetually aware of how he had known her so carnally made Cae’s cheeks burn too brightly to continuance. And so, the army marched with faded banners, rusted armor, and sorrowful weeping through three villages, where the villagers feted the miserable army of infantrydemons and archers with the passionate wildness that Cae would expect from the Barony of Fire. Flaming banners, cheers, laughter, celebratory dances and song burst out from the souls that dwelt within the crumbling villages and flame wreathed houses – and the halberdiers that Cae marched before took it in with the somber melancholy she had grown to expect from the demons under the service of Despair itself.

Citri basked in the pleasure of his villagers, waving to them, and stopping in each village to do the same damned thing: He would snap his fingers to bring forth an aura of flames that pointed like a chevron down towards Cae, as if she needed any help in being distinguished from the rest of her army, and call out to the villagers: “All hail, General Silverhawk! The Angel of Ruin! The Woman who Slew Murder!”

“I didn’t kill the Baron of Murder, I barely fought him to a standstill,” Cae had hissed the first time he had said such absurd things, her voice soft and wrathful, while Citri smiled at her, utterly and totally assured in the rightness of his position.

“They deserve some eagerness, some comfort after all this, don’t they?”

And to her irritation, Cae had found little to no response to that – at least, none she dared risk. She could imagine all sorts of passionate disagreements, about truth and reality being founded on something more than baseless emotion. About how she abhorred lies when they weren’t used to win battles. But then she would imagine what would happen next: She would get into the Baron of Fire’s face, declaiming and riposting with swords made of hammered words and fierce rhetoric, oh yes. Then she would feel him clutching her, drawing her close ... and would she be able to resist his tongue, his mouth, his hand upon her breast?
She hadn’t done such a good job doing that last time she and he had fought with words.

Thus, Cae kept her silence as they stopped by village after village, and finally, came before Lord Arral’s demesne and his grounds. The day they arrived was bright and shining, the sky the slightly too-blue of a chemical oasis, the clouds oddly spindly and spiked. The Manor itself looked as crumbling and ancient as she had seen it last – and yet, Cae felt herself actually sensing a kind of relief and eagerness in her belly ... an eagerness to be among a familiar bed, and familiar smells, with familiar food. All of that was nearly as disquieting as the other thought that had gnawed at her the entire route back.

When not thinking of how to avoid being with Citri again ... Cae, perforce, had thought about the other facet of the thing: Ruti. Sweet Ruti, the gentlest soul she had met, for all that he was a Baron of Hell itself. She still couldn’t grasp how someone so kind and soft could be a part of Hell itself, let alone a highly ranked noble within it – but she knew it was true. And she knew, too, that ... he had felt something for her.

Oh, who are we kidding? Her snide, inner voice muttered. He had an erection you could slay an elephant with, dreaming of your body.

And she had oggled the entire thing, drinking it in with her eyes as eagerly as a woman dropped into the vast deserts of Vash-Naka and left to wander on hands and knees might drink from an oasis. She could, if she closed her eyes, recall his girth and his weight and his heft to her mind. And ... and instead of making what entreaties to his mind, his soul, his heart that she could manage while being his prisoner, she had instead cast aside his tender interest in favor of Citri. Citri! Arrogant, brash, empty headed Citri. Her cheeks flushed silver at the very thought of her and her stomach did a slow, painful flip flop in her belly.

How could she ever explain this to Ruti?

Could she?

You could leave it unsaid! The coward’s voice she was worried spoke in the heart of every war-angel whispered to her. That was the same voice that said it was not worth risking immortality for a paltry mortal, a voice that she had to sternly turn aside from. But now, it was more ... difficult to argue with. After all, you are not going to make love to Citri again. You’ve made that quite clear. Thus, it will never happen again. It will remain something in your past, and the farther into the future we get, the more inconsequential it shall be. From a certain perspective, not telling Ruti is more kind.

But no. Cae felt the certainty settle within her like a granite boulder. She could no more not tell Ruti than she could break from a field and leave mortals at the teeth of demons. If she were to do so, she would no longer be Caelel Silverhawk.

With this resolution weighing around her shoulders like a vast leaden cloak, she and Citri entered into the manor proper and found themselves once more standing before the banquet hall that served as the heart of the Realm of Ruin. There, sprawled upon the high backed chair that was his ersatz throne, was Lord Arral himself. Cae, in the days she had been away, had forgotten how quite... tall he was. Lord Arral loomed over her and Citri despite sitting, his vast bulk still a shadowed enigma beneath his sprawling cape. But his face was still the same: Ember black, with bright eyes and the sweep of his elegant, stag-like horns. The expression on those carven lips and wrinkling the folds of black-on-black skin around his eyes was an expression of barely controlled fury. Cae felt her throat go dry as she took a knee and bowed low.

Does he know? She thought, wondering. But no. That was impossible. How could he-”I am very disappointed in you,” he rumbled.He knows!? Her brain shirked. Cae jerked her head up, explanations tumbling up her throat like bile, so fast they choked one another, stopping before escaping her teeth – and this moment of confusion gave her time enough to see he was not looking at her. No. Lord Arral’s eyes were focused, with total intensity, upon Baron Citri. “What!?” Citri exclaimed. “But-” “Sir, I-” Cae started, at the same moment.
“General Silverhawk, I am deeply impressed with your skill and valor on the field of battle. Take yourself to your chambers, rest. Laeushale will tend to your needs. But Citri? I need to talk to Citri.” Cae stood, her armor clinking, her wings shifting nervously behind her back. She fell back, in this moment of confusion, on her training, on her most well indoctrinated lessons: Obey. The rules, the orders, the plan, they all exist for a reason. She bowed her head low. “Yes, my Lord.” She turned and walked past Citri – whose arms were crossed over his chest, his lips turned into a fierce scowl, smoke trickling past his ears and up to the ceiling the vaunted hall. He didn’t even spare her a glance, instead, he simply glowered up at his Lord and master. Cae stepped past the doorway and it closed shut with the magic of the Realm of Ruin. She frowned, intently, and shook her head. In what way had Citri done anything that would need to be upbraided? She supposed it was possible that Lord Arral was mad that he had made love to her – but if so, why be mad at him? Had she not been the one to surrender herself to him? Or ... Or maybe Lord Arral thought she was such an obvious whore for demon cock that he couldn’t blame her, but instead, had to blame the male who had thrust into her? ... no. She shook her head. Even in her most anxious moments, Cae could never believe that of Lord Arral. It was not in his character, what she had seen of it. She frowned and then stepped closer to the door – and stopped herself. “No,” she whispered. “I’m not going to ... listen at keyholes.” She paused, then frowned. “Although...” While she had sworn to protect the Realm of Ruin, she knew that she would one day return to Heaven. She would bring news there, intelligence. Everything she had learned would one day go into a tome, would be discussed by the generals and planers that conducted the Creator’s plan in her long, quiet absence. Thus, it behooved her to gather as much intelligence as she could, no? With that certainty fixed in her mind, Cae stepped close and leaned in, pressing her ear to the door. The two had been speaking – but as she pressed her ear in close, she could ever so faintly hear Arral’s rumble, coming close to legibility. She strained. “ ... what if you had ... there’s no way that she could-” Then a quiet growl.

Citri’s voice responded back, softly enough that Cae only heard the edge of it. “ ... again ... there’s hope for ... but then, we need to let her go. Heaven will not...”

Arral let out a rumbling chuckle. The thumping sounds of his hooves made Cae think he had drawn closer to the door – and she was right to believe so, as his voice came through clearer again. “You always think you can rise above everything – even Heaven itself now, hmm?”

“Thermals and smoke, Old Relict,” Citri sounded amused.

“Did she ... did she really make the first move?” Arral sounded unsure.

“Well, I mean, I did stand in proximity while being my charming, gorgeous- eek!” Citri let out a surprisingly high squeak and a laugh. “Arral!”

“Tell truth, little spark. I believe you, when you say that you made the sweetest of love to her – but this claim? That she leaped upon you?”

“I am! She did! She made the first move!” Citri said. “I do hope that I can get her and Ru-”

“What are you doing?”

The question jerked Cae away from the door so fast she almost smashed into the wall. She came to attention, turning and saw that a spear-wielding guardsdemon was peering at her through the slit visor of his rusted, pitted helmet. His cocked head was more curious, and his position made it clear he had walked in from the side corridor, part of his patrol.