Chapter 10: The After-Party

Lily’s mind flitted about like a bird in a cage, unable to focus long enough to reform her body. The darkness of her mind transformed into smoky clouds that curled around her like snakes as she plummeted through the Dreamscape toward destinations unknown. Occasionally she would see her own hands, or even her legs, but her non-existent insides felt like they were on fire.

The smoke parted and she slammed into the cold marble tile of the Black Palace hard enough that the floor shattered like glass, sending her through the floor and into the level below. This floor was identical to the one above, but the world became black and white, as if her landing had knocked the color clean out of it.

When she stumbled to her feet, she saw Tristan coming down the stairs toward her in a silken robe, his crocodile grin revealing all of its teeth. She growled and held her hands out in front of her, her fingertips wavering in and out of existence as she tried to concentrate. Had she already reassembled herself? She was disoriented, and everything felt wrong, somehow.

“You tried to have me killed,” he said, only the voice wasn’t his, but Aladdin’s. When Tristan’s foot touched the floor, a golden wave of light blossomed outward and gave color to the interior of the Black Palace, which then warped and became a different castle from another lifetime ago. His skin peeled away as her present triggered the past, and he completed his metamorphosis, Aladdin now standing over a younger version of herself. It was another memory, and she growled in frustration when she realized that she was stuck once again in a bad dream.

“I did,” said Lily of the past, who was crumpled on the floor. Her wings had been torn up, and she was held to the floor by a golden chain that connected to a collar around her neck.

“Not this one,” Lily shrieked, suddenly realizing where they were. It was bad enough that she had to relive all of her worst moments, but Mike’s soul was the one that was actually chained to the floor right now, and she suddenly couldn’t catch her breath, knowing the pain that was about to be inflicted.

Lily knelt down by her former self, knowing that Mike could hear her. “It’ll be okay,” she told him, then turned her gaze on Aladdin. She knew exactly why her mind had gone to this memory, and it was because of what had happened in the Black Palace. Tristan was just a weak copy of Aladdin from so many years ago, back in a time when he probably could have been stopped.

“It was a bullshit bet,” Lily explained for Mike, walking around the scene that was unfolding. Just because he was stuck in the dream didn’t mean he shouldn’t know what was going on. After all, it wouldn’t just be the events that he would experience, but her thoughts and feelings, and she didn’t want him to live with false hope. “What I didn’t know at the time was that Aladdin no longer had a soul to claim. This was the moment where I fell to my lowest. This first time, he only lasts twenty minutes, and when he came, I tried to pull his soul from his body, only to discover that I couldn’t find it. Hours will pass, and I use every part of my body to get him off while he laughs at me, knowing that I don’t understand why I can’t take his soul.”

When she reached her hand out to touch her past self, it actually connected. She stroked her own cheek and shook her head in sadness. Mike’s soul was about to see this first hand, to experience the degradation of being forced to service Aladdin all night. He would call her names, make fun of her, and treat her like shit until the rays of the dawning sun would scatter through the nearby window, illuminating them both.

“He didn’t have a soul.” She now stood next to Aladdin. “After this bet, I found out that he exchanged his soul for immortality. And do you know how? There are only a couple of rules if you join his society of evil assholes. One is that all knowledge must be shared. True, everyone is still entitled to their secrets, but spells and rituals are meant to be exchanged when discovered. But the other big rule is that you don’t fuck with the ancient ones, those beings who live outside of time and space. Anyone with knowledge of them knows that this is common sense, but there’s more to it than that.

“He found a way to communicate with one of them. They don’t have names, not in the sense that words can properly communicate. It’s a specific feeling, almost like trying to describe the color red to a blind person. You can dance around it all you want, yet never make any headway. So, this asshole opened a door to the other side and handed over his soul to one of these beings for safe keeping. It was a trick on his part, because now his soul is stretched across time and space, kept safe from crossing over. Maybe it’s a chew toy for an elder god, or its fucking teddy bear, but the agreement was that as long as this being has his soul, he cannot be destroyed. That’s why he doesn’t want to others talking with them, because he’s afraid that they will learn his secret and maybe even surpass him.”

Down below, she could now hear the sounds of her past gagging on a massive cock. When she looked back at Aladdin, his eyes had rolled back in ecstasy.

“What he didn’t know was that making this bet freed me, in a sense. You see, because he bet something he couldn’t hand over, I was allowed to continue being my loveable self, to try and stymie him at every turn. He stuffed me back in my ruby and allowed the others to use me as they saw fit. I was a toy that no longer interested him, that couldn’t keep his attention. But the one thing he did know was that I would try to betray him the first chance I got. When you bet your soul against me, it broke his ownership, and now he knows that I’m out there, waiting to fuck up his day.”

She stood for a minute to watch the scene before her, her breath suddenly caught in her throat. Without thinking twice, she knelt down and unzipped her boots, then stepped out of them. The fur of her legs was darker than before, and smelled of a burning campfire.

“I can’t stop this from happening again,” she explained. “But I’ll be damned if I have to watch you go through the same things that he made me do.”

She touched her former self again, and then gave her a hard shove. Mike’s soul fell onto the hard tile as Lily scooted sideways to take his place, to relive the humiliations that Aladdin had brought down on her a second time. It wasn’t even a hard choice, and as she took Aladdin’s cock in her hands, she looked over at Mike.

“I ... this isn’t going to be pleasant.” The dream had frozen, but she could feel it struggling to resume. “You can leave, or go for a walk, this will be awhile.”

“No.” Mike moved over to her and took her by the hand. “If you have to struggle through this again, I’ll stay.”

“Mike, I...” she closed her eyes against the intense pressure of the flashback. She didn’t know how to tell him that she didn’t want him to see her humiliation, but she desperately wanted him to be there for her after. Her inner turmoil was causing the dream itself to strain, and then suddenly it snapped back into place.

“That’s right, use that tongue,” Aladdin commanded. “Let’s see what you’ve learned from centuries of being a slut.”

“I am so tired of this guy.” Mike stood and contemplated Aladdin with his hands on his hips. “I am so tired of watching you suffer. And I am very tired of looking at his smug fucking face.” He balled up his fists and took a swing at Aladdin, and Lily was surprised when his fist connected.

Aladdin was knocked backward onto the floor, letting out a grunt of pain. He put a hand to his face and pulled it away to reveal that blood was now running down his nose.

“Mike! How are you doing this?”

“Does it matter?” Mike walked up to Aladdin and gave him a kick, sending him back down onto the ground. “Why bother questioning the logic of a dream? These memories belong to you, not the other way around. You shouldn’t have to relive them unless you choose to.”

“Mike Radley.” Aladdin stood and his features rippled, transforming him into a middle eastern man in a business suit. “I see that—”

“Not interested.” Mike kicked him again, knocking him to the ground. “You aren’t really him, you’re just a shit memory trying to reassert yourself. Besides, I figured out that you and Amir are the same person forever ago, so none of this dramatic reveal nonsense.”

Lily gasped when Mike knelt over Amir and strangled him. It was true that Aladdin had long ago given up his given name in an attempt to hide the controversy around all of the world’s major djinn vanishing at once, as well as give him a fresh start.

Mike balled Amir up like a piece of paper, his body squishing down as if made of foam. Once Amir was crumpled up into a small sphere, Mike popped him into his mouth and bit down, chewing noisily while blood ran down his lips.

“Tastes like an asshole, too,” he mumbled around the edges of his mouth, then swallowed.

“You ... just ate him?”

“I did.” Mike came over to Lily and smiled at her, then held out his hand to help her up. She took it, and was now face to face with him, his eyes only inches from her own.

“This isn’t like you,” she told him, her arms around his waist.

“And being the damsel in distress isn’t like you, but here we are.” He pulled her in for a kiss, and she felt the heat of hellfire flow from his mouth into her own, warming her up from the inside. The Dreamscape shivered around them and became a blank slate, and she closed her eyes to bask in the moment. It could have been minutes, hours, or even days for all she knew, for time was so hard to track.

When the kiss broke, he touched her cheek and then caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “All these human emotions that you’re feeling can be overwhelming, but there will be plenty of time to explore them later. Right now, I need you to do something.”

“Anything.” She searched his eyes, curious what his request would be. He leaned in until his mouth was right next to her ear, his breath tickling the hairs of her neck.

“I need you to go back to the Black Palace,” he told her. “Find Dana, make sure she’s safe. Then go back inside that building and fuck up that little dragon man. Teach him that you’re nobody’s bitch. Let out all that rage. Be the demon I know you can be.”

“Mike.” She whispered his name like a prayer.

“And once you’re done,” he told her, his voice barely a murmur. “I want you to bring that pretty little ass of yours home.”

He gave her a pinch on the butt for emphasis, and the dream popped like a bubble.

Cyrus watched Dana carefully, wondering what she was about to tell him. He could tell she was choosing her words carefully, and imagined that he would only be getting partial truths at best. Still, he was alive, which meant whatever she had planned, he may still have a chance to prevent it.

“It’s a long story, and I don’t have all the answers.” She turned her eyes out onto the water, and Cyrus relaxed a little. Dana had a predatory gaze that unnerved him, and it was a relief to be away from it. “I was killed by a necromancer. He used his magic to lock my soul to my body, so I can’t die, and my soul can’t move on.”

“A necromancer?” Cyrus was now very concerned. The Order actually had a couple of necromancers who worked for them, but they were heavily monitored. Their main purpose was research, whether it meant reviving a corpse to ask questions or assembling a meat puppet to train knights and mages in hand-to-hand combat. “Where is he now?”

“Dead.”

Cyrus grimaced. “You can’t be sure of that. A necromancer has any number of tricks, and—”

“Oh, we’re a thousand percent sure. Lily killed him, she fed him to a mimic to make sure he stayed dead.”

“A what?!?” He stared up at the piece of furniture holding him in place and a cold sweat broke over his body. Mimics had been around for centuries, and the Order had disposed of quite a few. They were little more than beings that existed to eat absolutely anything that came within reach. Mimics were considered to be the same threat level as a succubus because they could hide anywhere for years without needing to take a single bite.

“I wouldn’t worry about Tick Tock. He’s only here to help me. You’ve already met, by the way. He was the engine in my motorcycle.”

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice now high-pitched. “You claim that you were killed by a necromancer, yet you own a succubus and have tamed a mimic.”

“I don’t own anybody. Lily and Tick Tock are my friends, and they came with me to help.” She flicked a small stone off the rocks where it landed in the water. “I was actually just an innocent bystander who got caught up in a much bigger world. That asshole up there has a magical artifact that may help bring me back to life, but we didn’t expect him to be so dragon-like when we got here.”

On that account, Cyrus had to agree. But now another realization had sunk in, and he had to know.

“If you’re dead, then what are you?” he asked. “Or, rather, what sustains you?”

Dana frowned. “Technically, I’m supposed to eat the flesh of the living. But we found a way around it. I don’t want to be a killer.”

“Dana, are you a ... a zombie?”

Her silence was deafening, and when she nodded, he felt his stomach drop. She was a category of being that required immediate extermination, and if his hands were free, he would have already done so.

“You don’t need to worry about it,” she told him. “I’m not going to eat you. In fact, I haven’t eaten anybody yet.”

“But you will,” he warned her. He had never heard of a zombie with retained intelligence. No matter how strong her mind was, he knew that once her instincts kicked in, she would become nothing more than a feral being who consumed all within her reach.

“And that’s why we need that stupid necklace,” she told him, then shifted on the rocks so that she was closer to him. “I’m not a normal zombie, if such a thing exists. If I die, my soul is stuck here, in whatever is left of my corpse. Trust me, if a bullet to the head would have done the trick, I would have done it and moved on already. In fact, one of your guys did put a bullet in my head. I have a pretty good appreciation now of what insanity feels like, all your thoughts flitting around like a swarm of angry bees.” She shuddered.

He didn’t know what to think at this news, but Dana was perhaps a bigger danger than what he had encountered in the Black Palace.

“He eats virgins,” she said, out of the blue, then pointed up. “Tristan. That’s how he became a dragon so fast.”

“Makes sense.” Cyrus had no idea what he was going to do with that bit of information, but a bunch of pieces of the puzzle clicked into place for him. “Dragons covet wealth. In a way, purity is considered equally as valuable as gold. It’s why dragons of old would request virgins, it’s the symbolism. Out of curiosity, did he try to control you?”

Now Dana looked puzzled. “I don’t think so. He told me to do something, and when I ignored him, he had me offed.”

Cyrus nodded. “Dragons are like any other creature. Magic or not, there’s always change over time, a type of evolution. Dragons can make huge evolutionary leaps from one generation to the next, and being able to command a woman who is about to be your next meal was a survival mechanism. It’s how we were taken out, actually. He commanded the women in my team to attack the men, and our strongest fighter happens to be female.”

“Why would dragons be afraid of women?”

“Not regular women. Witches, warriors, anyone who could fight. It’s how we, the Order, used to take them out once upon a time. Send in a qualified wizard or knight as the virgin sacrifice and then kill them when they got close. Dragons have the ability to use magic, so the few malicious ones that had command of magic quickly adapted and passed it onto their young.”

“Makes sense. Yeah, his magic didn’t work on me, and it really didn’t work on Lily. He actually breathed fire on her, and she disappeared. I’m kind of worried.”

“Your succubus will be fine. Dragon fire may be hot, but hellfire is hotter still.” His problems were currently magnified, but he now saw opportunity. If Dana was immune to Tristan’s magic, maybe he could work out a temporary arrangement. “I assume she’ll be back when her body puts itself together. Demons are fallen angels, after all. But now I wonder if maybe we can’t help each other.”

She looked at him and frowned. “It sounds good in theory. I think we both want to get the necklace away from that asshole, but we’re never going to agree on what to do with it. I’m also aware that you are carrying weapons on you, I can smell the magic coming out of your pockets.”

“It’s true, I am armed. And yes, you’re right in that I expect the necklace to come with me when we’re done.” He grunted in frustration. She wasn’t wrong in the fact that he would take a shot at getting rid of her as soon as things were over. He couldn’t allow her to continue living as she had, but he definitely couldn’t go into the house, rescue Tasia, and take down Tristan on his own. “What if ... So I know a spell I can cast, a binding spell. It would keep us from harming each other until sundown tomorrow. That way, you know I won’t stab you in the back, and once we’ve taken down Tristan, we can argue over the necklace with plenty of time before the spell ends.”

Dana turned her head toward the water, as if in contemplation. He hoped it wouldn’t occur to her that any spell he cast wouldn’t apply to Tasia herself, who would be happy to finish the job for him. He turned his gaze toward the building above, suddenly worried about his subordinate. She was easily one of the strongest knights the Order had produced in a generation, and he really hoped she would be able to come out of this ordeal intact.

“Let’s wait for Lily, but then you’ve got a deal.” She stood on the rocks and limped toward a crevice that was invisible in the shadows, then wedged her leg in it.

“Oh, please tell you aren’t going to—” he winced when she twisted around and let out a loud grunt, then pulled herself across the rocks. There was a scraping noise, followed by a loud pop, and Dana let out a moan and pulled her leg free.

“That’s disgusting,” he muttered in horror.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know my dislocated leg made you so uncomfortable.” She was walking around now, then did a couple of stretches. “Before Lily gets back, do you have any plans for how to get back in and take him down?”

Cyrus grimaced, then looked up at the home above them. He had more than a couple of ideas, but all of them hinged on being able to separate Tasia from Tristan. “It’ll have to be before morning. He’s leaving to check something out, and I’m hoping his militia’s guard will be down.”

“That all depends on Lily. I’m not going back up there without her.”

He nodded. Truth be told, he felt exactly the same way. His main concern was that the succubus wouldn’t be so forgiving in his presence, and the thought of having his soul eternally damned truly frightened him. He had seen so many things in his life, saved so many lives, that he felt that he deserved at least the illusion of a peaceful afterlife, not whatever hellscape awaited those that the demon consumed.

His attention fell back on Amida, and he fought back the sadness that threatened to overwhelm him. So much potential, gone in the blink of an eye. His entire team had been wiped out by a creature that would have challenged a hardened team.

He felt a bulk of their loss directly on his shoulders. There were plenty of reasons that he couldn’t have foreseen just how far Tristan’s metamorphosis had carried him, but he also saw plenty of room for improvement. His interactions each time with the succubus had been the same way, all of them ending in failure as well. As he lay on the hard rocks, pinned in place by a mimic, it occurred to him that maybe he had lost his touch.

It had been a long time since a mission had gone sideways like this. The last one he remembered was back in the seventies, a hunt that had ended in the death of his partner, the knight Jeffrey. While still considered a success, he had learned an overabundance of caution from the experience. His future missions were even more meticulous, and he had quickly climbed the ranks inside the Order as a result.

But now? He felt as though he had stepped completely out of his depth. It had been years since he had run into such difficulties, and now he wondered if, perhaps, this should be his last mission. After losing an entire squadron of young mages and knights to a bloodthirsty dragon that commanded his own armed militia, nobody would blame him. He would still be held in high regard for his many years of service and allowed to retire to the location of his choice with a pension that would provide for the rest of his life.

A sigh escaped his lips, and he closed his eyes. He had known plenty of others just like him, working well past their prime until one final mission claimed their lives. He was clearly on the precipice of such an event, and he wondered if he would have the strength to survive and actually get to choose whether or not he was done.

Dana shifted on the rocks next to him, and he opened his eyes and watched her. It was dark enough that he couldn’t see much of her face, but he noticed that she kept looking over her shoulder at Amida.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Just hungry.” She pulled her knees up against her chest. “When I heal from injuries, I need to eat.”

His heart skipped a beat, and he looked over at Amida’s corpse. On the one hand, he didn’t want to encourage her to partake of human flesh. On the other hand, he knew that whatever life remained in Amida’s cells was fleeting compared to the hot blood that ran through his own veins.

“What happens if you don’t eat?” he asked.

“I think you know.” She shifted again, and he thought he heard her stomach growling over the waves. “I just need Lily to come back, she has a way to help me.”

“How does she manage that?”

“Don’t feel like saying. Now shut up for a bit. I can smell your breath, it’s like ballpark hotdogs on a summer day.” Her lips smacked together when she spoke, so Cyrus switched to breathing through his nose.

An hour passed, and Dana moved away from Cyrus and down toward the water. In the dim light, he watched her stare morosely at the water, her fingers tightly gripping the nearby rocks. The waves slapped against the rocks, and he wondered if perhaps it was still too late for a mermaid rescue.