Chapter 60

~~Day 80~~

~~David~~

He felt horrible. He felt fucking awful. He felt kinda ... strong. Was that the word? He’d just fucked his girls, and a bunch of succubi. There was something definitely ego-stroking about that.

The problem now was the hangover. They’d stayed up all night, riding the waves of more than a thousand sex auras, his included, and now they were paying for it. Morning twilight was here, and his brain told him to get up. Maybe if he closed his eyes and tried, he could fall asleep, but it wouldn’t be good sleep. If he were seriously injured, he could sleep, but sleeping during the day when the only thing he was suffering was a lack of sleep, just didn’t feel like something he could do in Hell, almost like he was exhausted but took caffeine.

Just a quirk of Hell’s strange sleep system. Instead of his biology lining up with the sun, night and day were real things that had their own power over everyone within. A pain in the ass.

He sat up. Moriah and Tsila were already standing, stretching their limbs and wings, and re-summoning their clothes. His girls had never taken off their clothes, the red silks and black jewelry. Clothed sex was hot. They sat up, too, groaning like they were lifting giant rocks instead of their bodies.

The succubi everywhere weren’t so quick to get up. Some opened their eyes, waved a hand, closed them, and went back to trying and failing to sleep. How many succubi? The platform they’d fucked on was only maybe ten meters wide, but every inch of it was covered in red succubi skin. And unlike other demons, succubi skin didn’t get very dark when unaroused, so it was always soft.

That was a lot of soft breasts, curvy asses, and amazing thighs pressed against him. He pulled his arms free of their bodies, and they stirred and groaned, but didn’t move. So many women, naked, half on him, half on the girls.

He rubbed his temples, combed his shaggy red hair, and stood up with Moriah’s help.

“Think it worked?” he asked.

She spared him a quick smile, but wiped it away, as if she could stop anyone else from noticing.

“I believe so. That was ... a powerful aura.” She punched his shoulder. Gently. “Are you such a whore that the idea of having sex with strangers, many strangers, turns you on so much?”

“What? No. No I ... don’t think so.” He squirmed and re-summoned his clothes, too. “I just ... It really gets me turned on, seeing everyone enjoy themselves, especially you girls.”

Moriah sighed, but nodded and gestured out at the girls trying to get out from under the succubi. In Caera’s case, it was literal. At some point in the night, half a dozen succubi had literally climbed over her, lain on her, and devoured her.

“You are a strange one,” Moriah said. “Empathetic, very much so, yet wholly consumed by lust. An odd manifestation of sin.”

“That’s not—where are the Las?”

“Here!” Lasca’s voice. The little lady crawled out from under a few sets of enormous breasts. “Latia?”

“Here!” Latia crawled out from between Laoko’s left arms. “Laria?”

“Here!” Laria crawled out from behind Acelina’s legs. “Laara?”

“Here!” Laara crawled out from under a few succubi, and fluttered her wings once she pulled them free of several layers of boobs. “Imps and grems don’t normally get to play! Not with volas. Fun!”

The four little ladies crawled, literally. Too many bodies around to move easily, but they were light and had no trouble going on hands and knees and climbing over the mass of thighs and asses to reach him.

“Oh my,” Tsila said. She stood at the edge of the platform and gestured out below with her wing.

David wasn’t sure he wanted to see what waited below, but he had an idea. He took a breath and joined the angel.

That, was a lot of bodies. Incubi and succubi, all naked, and sitting, kneeling, lying, and climbing back to their feet. Some betrayers along the outer edges tried to get up, too, but they were thoroughly exhausted; probably the focal point of a few orgies. No dead bodies around, so at least no one ate anyone during the orgy. Brutes, vrats, gargoyles, satyrs, tigers, bat girls, and one borjin minotaur all struggled to get back up, each of them forced to nudge vola bodies aside.

Someone had changed the scrying pool from rave music and rave lighting, to a sunshine morning. Maybe that was part of the human experience the demons wanted, the utter dread of seeing a bright sun when you had a hangover. He’d tell them to drink water, if that was even a thing in Hell.

Tacharius stood by the giant bowl and pulled Zabulon up from the mess of bodies still on the ground. It wasn’t quiet, with all the breathing and groaning and shifting bodies, but quiet enough Tacharius didn’t have to yell for David to hear him.

“Impressed?” Tacharius asked Zab.

Zab winced, rubbed an eye and horn, and nodded. “That aura was absurd, unmarked. You ... dominated everyone.”

David shook his head. “You sure? I’m pretty sure I felt a lot of sex auras going on besides mine.”

“What’s the word?” Tacharius asked. “Fish? In the ocean?”

Zab nodded. “Exactly. Those were just fish in your ocean, unmarked. You drowned us. We were...” He gulped and looked down for a moment, before lifting his head and meeting David’s eyes. “You enthralled everyone.”

David gulped, too. The ocean metaphor was a little too apt. “Did you see anything in the ocean?”

The two incubi traded glances. “What? See? It was a metaphor.”

“Never mind then. We’re good.” He smiled and sat on the terrace edge, letting his legs dangle. The thousand and some demons slowly got up, and he watched, glancing back a few times to see his girls do the same. Judging from the grumpy looks, no one was happy. Satisfied about last night, sure, but no one liked a hangover.

Laoko stood to her full height, adjusted her red silks so they hung over her breasts and privates, and stood over David. Behind him, she leaned forward so her heavy breasts hung underneath her, set two hands on his shoulders, two hands on the top of his head, and combed his hair as she grinned down at him.

“This body of yours,” she said. “It is full of surprises.”

He gulped and looked up at the enormous woman. “I guess.”

“You had no idea you could do that?”

“No, I didn’t.” Not entirely true. That moment where Latia nearly died, his body had responded. It’d changed, molded his fingers together and created some sort of strange spike shape. But when the angels showed up and saved him and his little gremla friend, the change vanished, and his hand snapped back to normal.

Was this the same thing? Some sort of connection between states of mind?

Acelina climbed out from under half a dozen succubi. Many had curled up and snuggled to her thighs and breasts, ready to fall asleep, only for morning twilight to ruin it. The spire mother groaned, grumbled, hissed, and pushed the succubi away, earning some squawks of surprise.

“Be gone,” she said. She adjusted her clothes, ensured her breast curtains covered her nipples, barely, and fixed her dangling silk skirt. Unlike Laoko, she didn’t much care where she walked, and her hooves stepped on more than a few tails. Succubi squealed and quickly learned to get out of her way.

“Acelina, be kind to the volas,” Laoko said.

“I will be kind when they learn to not rest on my wings.” Grumbling louder, she stretched out her arms and her ridiculously enormous wings. They may have been thinner and weaker than Jes’s, but they were at least twice as tall and wide. She reached up, ran her hands down her four enormous horns, behind her neck, and stretched out her back. David stared.

“David,” Caera said. She prowled over the bodies, doing a much better job avoiding stepping on anyone, and she sat beside him at the edge of the platform. “Wow. That’s a lot of orgy victims.”

David choked on a laugh and smiled down at the crowd below. Maybe victim was the right word, considering how drained and exhausted everyone looked.

Acelina joined them, flared her wings, and gestured out at the onlookers below.

“That is just a taste of the unmarked’s power!” She spoke to the crowd, voice booming. “I know word has spread of his battle with the angels. You know he is strong. And you now know he delights in what the Scar delights in. Carnal indulgence! Decadence. Bliss. You know what I say.”

David glared up at the spire mother, and she looked back down at him with a wide, shark smile, all her white sharp teeth on display. If he didn’t pay attention, Acelina was going to be the evil woman who pulled all the strings, while her marionette king — him — danced for her. Or she’d become the Jafar to his Sultan.

Jes and Dao joined him, standing around Laoko. The gargoyle leaned around the tetrad and whispered to him.

“Bet you didn’t think you’d be here a few months ago, did you?”

“A few months ago, I was taking programming classes in university.”

Daoka clicked several times and gestured out at the demons below. More and more stood up, and all of them looked up at David with a mix of a hangover, but also wonder.

Caera nodded toward the crowd. “You should probably say something.”

“Say something?”

“Yeah. There are a lot of rumors about the unmarked, and about you. Clear things up.”

Clear things up. Easier said than done. He had to be careful with every word, filter every sentence, make sure he didn’t give away everything.

He sucked in a breath and put his palms on his knees, legs still dangling off the platform edge. The groaning crowd went silent.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t talk to crowds. He was actually pretty good at it. He didn’t have a fear of public speaking, either. The issue was, he just hated talking to strangers in general. But this was important. If he was going to do this, he was going to be honest about the sort of person he was.

“As many of you know,” he said, “something that isn’t demon or angel has come. It’s trying to break its way into Hell and destroy us. I’m on a journey to False Gate to put a stop to it. I also know Tarkissa and Azailia were both planning to sacrifice me to something here, in the Scar. So that leaves me with few options. I’m going to push through the Scar. I’m going to get to False Gate and save Hell — and probably the rest of the Great Tower — from these alien invaders. And I’ll probably deal with the unmarked pushing through the Red Pits on the way.” Sighing, he rubbed his knees and scanned the crowd. “I hear a lot of you aren’t too happy with Tarkissa these days. Well, I’m not too happy about him either. I ... I know he’s going to get in my way. I could just keep walking like I have been for the past two months, just keep walking and deal with things as they happen. Or, I can do something smart, and deal with a problem before it gets in my way.”

He clapped his hands together once, held out a hand, and summoned a spike of stone from the ground. Nearby succubi jumped back, gasping, as he snapped the spike off, and told the rest of the spike to melt back into the ground. He held the innocent foot-long chunk of rock in his hand and idly passed it from palm to palm.

“I’m going to take this place over,” he said. “The Scar. I’m going to take the whole place over.” Every demon gasped. It was almost comical, and he smiled. “What say you?”

The demons looked at each other, heads tilting.

“You can fight Tarkissa?” Zab asked, probably for the benefit of the crowd.

A succubus in the crowd waved a hand. “I saw him fight the angels. A thousand angels! If it weren’t for those weird alien invaders, and that scary silver angel, he might have won, by himself.”

Others in the crowd nodded, and others stared at each other, blinking. They either hadn’t heard, or had but didn’t believe. They did now.

“I don’t want war,” David said. “It’s not my intent to just march into the spire, kill everyone, and take it over.”

“Why not?” a demon asked.

“Yeah, why not?” another asked.

David blinked and shrugged. “Because then I’d have to kill thousands of demons?”

Zabulon shook his head. “Maybe. A lot of demons don’t like Tarkissa anymore. He’s only been acting stranger and stranger.”

A vratorin stood up straight, a foot taller than the sex demons around him. “Some people say Tarkissa has been killing demons, too.”

“Hardly unusual,” Acelina said. Because, of course, it was perfectly reasonable for the demon in charge of a province to just eat other demons if they didn’t like them.

“Killing, but not eating them,” Zab said. “Some demons have been randomly disappearing, and no one knows what happened to them. And it’s been happening for decades, only getting worse lately.”

David looked to his girls, and they nodded. Something connected to Azailia’s plan to sacrifice David, probably.

“So everyone wants Tarkissa gone?” David asked.

Many in the crowd nodded instantly. Some did not, looking around nervously.

“The bailiffs,” Tacharius said. “They have devorjins and tregeeras with them, and they’re loyal.”

David frowned. “Enough to take on thousands of you?”

“No, but, I don’t exactly like the idea of throwing my life away.”

That was actually a little surprising. David scanned the crowd before looking back and up at Moriah, and sure enough, the angel had a raised eyebrow, too. Demons generally wanted to live, sure, but they were also all too happy to go into battle and fight if it meant they earned power. Power meant easy food, and vices.

If succubi and incubi really weren’t ready to throw their lives away at the drop of a hat, that was one more point in the ‘more human than other demons’ category. Maybe he could actually grow to like the Scar?

“I don’t want to throw anyone’s life away,” he said. “But I’m not going to dance around this. If I take this place over, it won’t be clean, no matter how much I want it to be. Demons are going to die. I’ll do my best to save as many lives as possible, but if I’m going to march to the spire and take it over, that’s civil war.”

The few brutes nodded and punched their palms, and the other non-volas in the room did, too. They were onboard. And slowly but surely, the volas nodded, too.

“Weapons,” Acelina said. “And armor. Do you have them?”

The volas shook their heads. “Just some, not a lot.”

Zabulon raised a finger. “Most meera metal in the Scar was traded out to the Red Pits and the Grave Valley centuries ago. I mean, we have them, but not enough to properly arm every single vola.”

“And if you had them?” Laoko asked.

“Well, I bet I can convince other sections of the Floor to help more easily, and the Dens.”