"Civilized" people called her a murderer. The wanted posters, town criers and the semi-scandalized townsfolk who gossipped about her called her the Red Whore.
 
Both titles amused her. The former because it was inaccurate; the latter because it was very accurate indeed. She was no murderer, at least not in her own mind. A murderer, she felt, would be one who took another's life against their will.
 
The Red Whore took lives, certainly... because her "victims" asked her to. She took their coin and made love to them, so she was very much a whore indeed. And she was red in two ways: because her Tiefling skin was indeed a dark crimson hue, and because whenever she found the right kind of client, the end was...bloody.
 
Take for instance the halfling beauty, childlike in stature but oh so very womanly in her figure and lust, who was even now moaning and writhing as the Red Whore pushed a dagger slowly---oh so slowly, oh so sensuously---into her cute, slim little belly and sliced her open from crotch to core. That writhing was agonized, yes...But she was sucking fervently on the Whore's tail as though it were a thick cock even as her innards slipped out of the widening gash in her abdomen, and those big almond-shaped eyes were drunk with lust. She wanted this. She was more than just willing, she was an active and eager participant in her own violent demise. She had, in fact, kissed the Red Whore's feet and begged her plaintively for this.
 
That part was a point of pride. The Red Whore killed only two types of people: those who attacked her, and those whose deepest, darkest erotic fantasy was to be slain by a sensual lover. She loved killing, she revelled in it. It was the only thing that made her feel truly ALIVE. But she knew full well that she was only one small, all-too-easy step from becoming the kind of monster they all said she was.
 
"That's right, my darling. It's happening..." she crooned, and stroked her lover's hair. These moments were so rare, so precious. It took a lot of care and skill to find the kind of lover who secretly desired death. It took even more to help them accept the truth about themselves. Each of her hunts took months. Each one was done with care and delicacy.
 
And not all were successful.
 
As the Whore's tail slithered out of her mouth, the halfling lass looked down at herself, the ruinous gouge up her belly, the way her innards were spread all over the bed. She was pale, and shivering, and dying of blood loss, but...
 
But again, it was point of pride that the Red Whore never took an unwilling life. Not even now. She ALWAYS gave them a last chance.
 
"It's not too late, my love," she whispered as she cuddled her diminutive victim and kissed her trembling cheek. Without looking, her tail coiled around and picked up a spell scroll she had placed on the bedside table. "Just say the word, and this will put you all right. It will be as if it never happened. Or..."
 
She smiled, and set aside the dagger in her hand, the one that had already opened her lover's flesh so intimately and slowly. Her hand moved to rest lightly on the ruinous wound in the tiny cutie's belly. "...Say the OTHER word, and your life ends, here and now."
 
The halfling shuddered, and her tongue left blood on her lips as she tried to moisten them. "I... I'm..."
 
"Hurry, my love," the Whore cautioned. "Which is it? Life? Or death?"
 
Her victim gulped, with some difficulty, then looked her in the eye. She managed to speak, though her voice was weak, raspy and faint. The Whore knew what she was going to say.
 
"Please...Kill me..."
 
The Whore smiled. "I love you," she said, and truly meant it.
 
Her hand moved. Her sharp fingernails slipped up, and inwards, under the ribs and through the flimsy tissues they found beyond. The slim, small body in the Whore's arms tensed up, she screamed in perfect silence at the ceiling as the Whore found the pulsing core of her being, gripped, twisted, PULLED....
 
She sunk her teeth into it the moment it was free of her tiny plaything's chest. The freshest, richest blood washed into her mouth, made her whole being sing with an all-too-rare pleasure far greater than mere sex.
 
Beneath her, the halfling watched in wonder, even as her last rattling breath perfectly matched the slow way she settled on to the bed, leaving behind...something else. Something still and vacant to replace the living, brave, wonderful young woman who had occupied it only seconds before. Her shining, rapturous eyes glazed over, her lips parted into a pretty, stupid pout, but somehow she never lost the lingering smile of utmost fulfilment that had been her final living expression.
 
The Red Whore looked into those happy, glassy eyes, swallowed the mouthful of heart's blood, and CAME.
 
It was a unique kind of climax. Though her many lovers, including this one, had brought her to orgasm time and again with fingers, tongues and cocks aplenty, nothing compared to this moment of feeling another's soul slip through her and away. It was powerful, and sadistic, and erotic, and a hundred other things. The taboo of it, the unique feeling of knowing that she had talked this beautiful young thing into embracing, no, REQUESTING her own demise...
 
Nothing else was quite like the orgasm that heady, perfect moment brought on.
 
Once it was over, once she had rode the perfect waves of bliss back down to the material plane, she finished her meal. Devouring a raw, warm heart wasn't easy—she was no vampire, and the rich bloody mess settling in her stomach made it churn uncomfortably—but she choked it down anyway, willed her belly to accept it. It would have been...profane...to not take her lovers into her, in some way. Each had given her their very life. She owed it to them to carry them with her, forever.
 
Once her grisly feast was complete, she cast a simple spell: the Prestidigitation cantrip, to clean herself, the room, the blade and the bedding, and transform the distinctive musk of an opened belly into something sweeter and more innocuous that should hopefully escape notice until after dawn. With that task done, she kissed her lover's cooling remains on the forehead, gathered her things and dressed, then opened the window and cast a more advanced spell: feather fall.
 
She glanced back at the bed. Those bright blue eyes were still, somehow, watching her. She smiled, truly happy.
 
"Goodbye, Mazzie..." she whispered, and leapt out the window.
 
Thanks to the spell, she alighted silently in the alleyway outside, already muttering the incantation of Disguise Self before she'd even properly reached the ground.
 
Disguise Self worked best when it changed small details rather than trying to cover everything. To an outside observer, her horns were now a pair of thick braids running down either side of her crown. He skin was no longer silky-smooth and crimson, but instead bronzed and human. Her teeth were now flat and even, and the tail coiled tight around her waist, a mere belt. She was still a beauty, to be sure...but not the Red Whore.
 
With her disguise in place, she stepped out of the alleyway and walked the few streets over to the livery stable where her horse, Tathera, was waiting. She kept her gait normal and innocent. Nothing drew attention like a figure skulking from shadow to shadow, or running at night. A pretty girl following the well-lit route home, though? Invisible.
 
Nobody accosted her. There were no shrieks in the night, nor a ringing of watchmen's bells. It was a clear, beautiful eve.
 
As instructed, she found Tathera saddled and ready. Of the stable hand, however, there was no sign. Instead, a woman was stroking the mare's neck. She turned when the Whore entered, and...
 
Shit.
 
This was no random town dweller. The woman's clothes were too fine and she wore what had to be magical items. She was an adventurer of some kind, probably a wizard to judge by the small but robust and masterfully bound book on her belt.
 
A seasoned adventurer, too. One with the funds and experience to acquire the best equipment. The Whore was a bard by training herself, but... even at a glance, she could see this was an unwinnable fight. The mage had been waiting for her, and a wizard with time to prepare and ready the best spells for the situation was as deadly a foe as there could be.
 
Still, the Whore's hand flashed to her dagger in a vain moment of defiance and self-defence, but the mage stepped back and spread her hands wide, in a gesture of peace rather than casting.
 
"Hear me out," she said. Slowly and carefully, she raised her hand and twitched back her hood.
 
She was human, and very pretty. She wore her straw blonde hair in a short and unfashionably bookish cut, but the freckles across her nose and cheekbones, the pronounced bow of her lip and the emerald sparkle of her eyes made it work. Her waist was almost as curved as the Whore's own, though her bust would have made a dwarfish lass proud.
 
And she was smiling.
 
"Mazzie went willingly, in the end? Oh, forgive me. They all do, don't they Azine? Even at the last moment, you always offer them healing..."
 
The Whore's jaw dropped. Nobody alive knew her real name... or so she had thought. "Who...? How...?" she spluttered.
 
"You're well protected by your spells, but I happen to be a grandmaster of Divination," the wizard explained. "Piercing the shroud of misdirection around you wasn't easy, but I managed it."
 
"What do you want?" Azine asked. She was afraid, now. If she could be tracked so totally, then...but on the other hand, a bounty hunter or assassin would never have bothered to speak with her at all. A suspicion formed in her mind, as her eyes strayed to the enticing swell of the blonde human's breast, constrained tight within her robes. "Do you...want to be my next? You would be lovely to--"
 
"No." The wizard interrupted, mildly. "Though, had you hunted me a year or so ago, I think you would have found me easy prey..."
 
Azine sighed, imagining the taste of this one's heart in her mouth. Alas for her that she'd missed such a beauty. "Then why are you here?"
 
"I have an offer for you." The mage put a comforting hand on on Tathera's nose and stroked it. "You can't run or hide forever, you know. Eventually, there will be no more towns where they don't know you, or you'll seduce somebody whose family are rich enough to put a bounty on you that the best trackers will find interesting, or there'll be a particularly tenacious and intelligent guardsman, or you'll get cocky, or unlucky, or you'll encounter bait who's good enough to fool you... You must know that you'll be caught eventually."
 
She looked sharply at Azine. "And when that happens, the magistrate won't be swayed when you tell him about the visions you endured as a child, or the compulsion that drives you. He won't care that you've spent your whole life keeping a tight lock and shackles on the terrible monster your soul sings to become. It won't matter that your victims were all willing, even eager for what you did to them. All that will matter is that dozens of supposedly innocent victims died by your hand. And so you'll hang, or be beheaded, or just have a sword driven through you..."
 
She sighed heavily. "...And then, because the multiverse is just as uncaring as the magistrates, your soul will plunge screaming into the Seven Hells to be tormented until you fade away to little more than a lingering shriek on the infernal winds. It's not fair, really. You were cursed from the beginning, and yet you'll be punished as though any of it was within your control."
 
Azine couldn't understand. This stranger was speaking her innermost fears and thoughts. And her tone was warm. Friendly, even. Sympathetic and understanding. How could a total stranger know her so completely?
 
The mage smiled sadly. "Where are my manners? My name is Theagan Meade, and I have an alternative for you." she said.
 
"An...alternative? An alternative to what? To DYING? Everyone dies!" Azine retorted, though a flicker of hope leapt in her chest.
 
"No, not an alternative to dying. In fact, I propose to kill you. But—" Theagan added, raising a hand before Azine could object. "I can arrange a different fate for your soul. Will you hear me out?"
 
Her gaze hardened. "Or shall I slay you now and claim the bounty on your head?"
 
Very slowly and carefully, Azine let go of her blade and listened to the stranger's offer. It required some explaining, and involved hearing an incredible story, and a bit of a history lesson.
 
This mage truly did intend to kill her. But the alternative fate she offered...
 
Azine thought about it until they heard the sound of watch bells from a few streets over, which rather focused the mind on what was truly important to her, in the long run. It made her think about her own feelings toward herself, the fear of what awaited her, the injustice of it all and what the mage's proposal would truly mean.
 
And under it all...There was an aching curiosity to finally experience the gift she had given to so many others.
 
She accepted.
 
___
 
FOUR MONTHS LATER.
 
Anasticia, Paladin of the Order of the Crown of Roses, opened her eyes and sighed contentedly with a dream fading slowly from her mind.
 
The same dream yet again. A dream of hot sands, of black-skinned women, and of a pair of entwined figures. One was herself, clothed in light, and the other a figure with the most profound and predatory evil burning anti-bright in her core. And yet, in the dream, Ana felt a love for the dark figure so powerful that it hurt, and as she embraced she slowly drew the darkness into herself and burned it clean, leaving nothing.
 
Ana had never considered herself a prophet as such, but she'd received divine visions through most of her life, and she was pretty sure this was one of them. The Gods were trying to prepare her for something.
 
She sighed, and rather than make her brain ache trying to figure it out, she put the dream aside and listened to the sounds of the ship.
 
She loved sailing. It wasn't necessarily a paladin's natural habitat considering how heavy the armor and equipment she used was, but the rock and sway of a ship at sea, the creak of wood and rigging, the lap of water against the hull and the call of ocean birds trailing in their wake and roosting on the masts...it all spoke to something deep in her soul.
 
This time around, the trip was a lot more comfortable than previous ocean voyages. No hammocks and cramped, stinking below-decks quarters this time, oh no. She had a cabin with an actual BED. Both were meager even by the standards of the cheapest inns, but she'd slept on far, far worse. The cold, hard things from her childhood at the Order's convent had been like sleeping on slabs of rock, and she'd spent a few nights of her life catching fitful winks of sleep while sitting in a muddy hole in a battlefield, fully armored and alert for danger.
 
Compared to those, this bed was a luxury. And, of course, it also contained Belgia Red Feather.
 
Anasticia half-rolled and considered her half-orc lover. She had always found herself pulled in two directions, torn between her lust for men and her lust for women, but Belgia somehow managed to satisfy both sides of her desires. The half-orc warrior was as tall and as strong as any knight, layered in firm rippling muscle and marked here and there by the scars of a lifetime of adventure. She was dashing, handsome, confident, rugged and strong, all the traits that Ana found most alluring in men.
 
But she was also very definitely a woman. Her large, firm breasts rose and fell softly as she slumbered, the tiny tusks that poked up from her bottom lip somehow didn't make those lips any less shapely or feminine, and her muscularity manifested itself in a stunning curve of sweeping hip and backside. The cool grey-green of her skin, the striking squareness of her face, the coarseness of her thickly braided hair...As far as Ana was concerned, Belgia was beautiful.
 
With a smile, Ana cuddled up to her and kissed her. Belgia groaned, stirred, blinked, and gave her a sleepy confused frown for a second... and then it happened. The look of gentle delight that made Ana fall in love with her every morning crossed her face.
 
"...Hey, you."
 
"Hey."
 
Belgia grinned and tidied a little stray hair out of Ana's face. The kissed, then kissed some more, and Ana's hand roamed across her lover's athletic body, tickled her perfect washboard of a stomach...
 
She was on her back shortly, panting quietly in pleasure with Belgia's fingers teasing and toying between her legs when she heard a giggle from the cabin's other bed. Nory Spigyra, the gnomish elementalist and their long-time adventuring partner and occasional bed partner, was awake.
 
"Y'know... if it wasn't really fucking hot, a girl could get sick of you two."
 
Another voice joined the conversation before Ana could reply. "Never in a thousand years."
 
That was Mithinie Starsung, an elfish thief and scoundrel who Ana hated to admit had by far the most talented tongue of the team. Being in Belgia's arms and played like a harmonium was wonderful, but in the hundreds of years she'd been alive, Mithinie had truly mastered the arts of oral sex. Ana hadn't believe the story of her robbing a merchant by sucking his dick until he fainted, until Mithinie had made HER faint just to prove the point.
 
"Just shut up and watch..." Ana gasped, and then moaned heartily as Belgia's thick finger slid slooooowly into her aching body.
 
Ana hadn't always been so brazen. Only a year before, in fact, what she was doing now had been nothing more than a desperate fantasy she was much too shy to realize. Mithinie, Nory and Belgia had not been so burdened, and had enjoyed each other repeatedly and often, but Ana had been...
 
Well, she'd been an abject, shameful coward. Too afraid of her own passions to accept what she wanted to have and what they wanted to give her.
 
But that had been before the Temple of the Avnethi.
 
Ten months ago, a professor at the College of Magery by the name of Theagan Meade had hired the four adventurers for the strangest quest any of them had ever heard of: a suicide mission, all expenses paid including resurrection spells. Her mission had been the temple of a long-dead cult who had worshipped sex and death so much that in the end they'd murder-fucked themselves to extinction.
 
Ana would have run screaming from that job... except for one thing. Her vision.
 
Ana had had two visions in her life. The first had come to her on the night of her Blessed Vigil, when sisters of the Order spent the night in prayer and contemplation, guarding their armor and sword in the chapel. Each was blessed with a vision of what the gods had in store for her, but Ana's had been unusually clear.
 
Where the others saw vague signs and portents and symbolism, Ana's vision had been quite explicit. She'd known Nory's, Mithinie's and Belgia's names and faces long before she'd met them. She'd known where to meet them, and in what circumstances.
 
Following that vision had been simple. Sticking by it and trusting it afterwards once she got a good look the trio's uninhibited nature had been something else entirely. It was quite a culture shock! Ana had been raised in a cloistered convent, taken vows of purity and virtue that most of the sisters interpreted as including chastity...though in fact they didn't, when Ana had reviewed them. Still, her sheltered and restrictive upbringing had left her deeply ashamed of her own sexuality, and afraid to embrace it.
 
Over time, she had come to understand her passions...though she'd never been brave enough to act on them.
 
The second vision had come later, a few years into her adventuring career. They'd encountered a holy spring, and the spirit who watched it had invited Ana to bathe and meditate. When Ana did so, her vision of the temple of the Avnethi had been as clear as waking.
 
She'd seen it as clear as standing before it. She'd seen its graphic murals depicting all manner of erotic human sacrifice. She'd foreseen Nory's death in the mouth and belly of an ancient red dragon who called the temple's entrance his lair. She'd foreseen Mithinie's death, howling in orgasmic pleasure as her body was dissolved by the unique fluids of a pink slime deep in the temple's innards. She'd foreseen Belgia's death, gutted and carved up like a pig and spit-roasted over a fire pit.
 
She'd foreseen that she would finally give in to her passions that day at the temple, and sure enough the others had watched her suck and fuck and take the ghostly cocks of summoned astral guardians in her mouth, her cunt and ass, watched her climax and writhe in the throes of sexual pleasure...and then watched her die, beheaded on the altar.
 
After that, once they'd been resurrected back in civilization, there had been no point in trying to put the genie back in the bottle. So she and Belgia had confessed their mutual infatuation and agreed that although they were still happy to play with Mithinie, Nory and Theagan, and indeed anyone else who caught their fancy, they belonged first and foremost to each other.
 
So far, it had worked. And now, after nearly a year, Theagan had finally come to them with a second suicide mission.
 
Far away across the sea to the south lay a dry, sun-baked land called Enyda where, it was said, the people wore no clothes at all and where huge stone pyramids dotted the landscape. Deep in the desert was an Avnethi holy place where the ancient murderous empire had held some kind of training or induction for their priests.
 
She'd gone on ahead to investigate first, and after a few months had sent a message back to the college requesting her adventurous friends be hired to assist her under the same terms and conditions as last time.
 
So, Ana and the others had left locks of their hair with the temple healers in anticipation of future resurrection, chartered a ship on the college's generous credit line, and set sail. They had spent most of the voyage in their cabin, drinking wine, fucking, and going over their plans for what kind of spells and tactics they'd need... not that they knew the first thing about what they were going to face. All they really knew was that they were going to die again.
 
None of them minded. All, in fact, were quite eager for it.
 
Ana couldn't quite explain why. It wasn't like the experience of being decapitated had been PLEASANT, but nevertheless she remembered it with a profound arousal. Maybe this time she'd be gutted and roasted on a spit over a fire like Belgia had been, or sawn in half from cunt to crown, or have the beating heart carved from between her breasts, or...orrr...
 
She came like a wild thing.
 
When she came down, she basked in the smiles and the applause Nory gave her, then made a "come here" gesture with her head. They were due to arrive later that afternoon. Time enough for a little more pleasure...
 
Soon enough, the cabin was filled with the soft sounds of sex. Nory and Mithinie joined Ana and Belgia on their bed, and Ana lost herself in the moment as Nory sat on her face with a girlish giggle.
 
It was good to be alive.
 
+
 
The rumors about how much clothing the people of Enyda wore turned out to be completely accurate. No matter their race, the swaggering dockmen, swaying market-women and skipping children of the city of Sirindria, the port town where their ship moored and the adventurers alighted, went about their business with not a thread between them and the open sky.
 
The two elves Ana saw wore little more than a few diaphanous, entirely transparent whisps of cloth that did nothing whatsoever to conceal their bodies, but probably spared their delicate skin from the worst of the sun. A buxom dwarf maiden with skin the color of old bronze wandered past with a tray of pastries on her shoulder, naked save for a dusting of flour on her bosom. Everywhere Ana looked was tanned or black skin, swaying cocks, bouncing breasts, and not a single person seemed the least bit self-conscious or really aware of their nudity.
 
Quite the reverse. The strange foreigners coming off the boat were the standout oddity attracting peculiar looks, and Ana felt almost embarrassed to be striding around in her adventuring armor, light cloak and tabard.
 
Not to mention profoundly uncomfortable. The air was heavy and simmering under the remorseless sun, and the whole city had a baked feel. It was no wonder these people went nude: Ana felt like she was cooking inside her gambeson
 
"When in Theme, do as the Themans do?" Mithinie suggested, lightly. She looked around at all the nude bodies with amusement.
 
"...Maybe later." Ana noted with amusement at her own contrary feelings that it wasn't the prospect of going naked in public that daunted her - the evidence that nobody would care or even notice was all around them - but the thought of actually stopping to strip out in the open...
 
"There's the old Ana," Belgia grinned fondly, and ruffled her hair.
 
"I thought you didn't like the old Ana?"
 
"Eh. It was kinda adorable sometimes."
 
Ana blushed.
 
"Leave your gear on, girls," Nory advised, to everyone's surprise. She giggled at the looks they gave her, and explained herself. "We didn't bring a bag of holding, remember? We'll still have to carry everything. More practical to wear it."
 
"Yeah, that's true..." Belgia conceded. "First chance we get though, I'm going native."
 
"Me too," Ana promised.
 
"That's my girl."
 
Fortunately, it seemed that Theagan had predicted their predicament. The wagon she'd chartered to carry them into the desert to the dig site was covered by several thin layers of cloth, so that the shade they cast over its bed was cool rather than oppressive.
 
To Ana's mild surprise, Theagan's dig site at the Avnethi temple complex was not far out of town. The wagon driver, a skinny half-elf with skin the color of roasted coffee beans, barely needed to do any work: his camel seemed to know the route perfectly well.
 
It wasn't the most comfortable ride, especially after the luxury of their chartered ship, but it certainly beat walking under the blazing sun. The four of them sat in the shade and fanned themselves, and tried to ignore the curious looks the locals gave them.
 
Mercifully, there was shade at the dig site: the temple was in a low valley where water must sometimes run, as there were trees among the rocks, growing where their deep roots could find water under the sand. The driver parked under one of them, and started chattering with the small army of nude workers who came dashing up to claim the jugs of water he'd brought along. One of them pointed the four adventurers toward a number of tables and a rather fancy-looking tent. Ana squinted against the sun's glare and just about managed to see a hint of blonde hair in a short page-boy bob. Theagan. It had to be. Nobody else in this sun-baked land was so fair of skin or hair.
 
Theagan looked up, and waved happily as they approached. Somehow, it didn't surprise Ana to see that her friend had "gone native" when it came to clothing and was just as nude as the locals. Theagan was no prude, despite her bookish air.
 
Her greeting died, however, when she saw who else was present.
 
Beside Theagan were the black-skinned women from her dreams. They were twins, the most identical that Ana had ever seen, and their skin was truly black rather than merely a deep brown. Their shredded muscular bodies, almost as incredible as Belgia's, could have been sculpted from obsidian.
 
They relaxed when Theagan smiled and nodded and explained something in the native language. Neither of them, as far as Ana could tell, was armed... but that really didn't mean anything. Their bodies were weapons in their own right, so perfectly honed that they managed to make Theagan, with her thin waist and well-proportioned soft breasts, seem almost dumpy.
 
She darted over and gave the four adventurers a squeezy, unselfconscious hug, including picking Nory up and spinning her around. Nory just giggled - she'd never been at all uptight about her size.
 
"I'm so glad you're here! You're going to love what we've found!"
 
"I hope so," Mithinie quipped. "We didn't sail all this way just to have a boring time."
 
"No fear there!" Theagan promised. "This place is FASCINATING."
 
"Why?" Ana asked and looked up at the carved temple frontage. "What's so special about it? I mean, besides being an Avnethi temple."
 
"It's one of their most important ritual sites!" Theagan squeaked excitedly. "And the opportunity it represents is...well. If I'm right, this temple holds the key to an ancient and lost form of magic."
 
"Which you'll unlock by sacrificing us," Belgia deduced.
 
"And the twins here," Theagan said, gesturing to the statuesque women behind her. "This is the Avnethi remember, they LOVE their prime numbers... and I think this temple requires seven sacrifices."
 
"How'd you talk them into that?" Nory asked.
 
"The same way she talked you into it," one of the sisters said. Her accent was thick, but her Common was flawless. "Resurrection spells and money."
 
"...Fair enough!" Mithinie giggled. "So. Twins, huh?"
 
"Yes," the dark beauty explained. She touched her chest and bowed slightly. "Hada. My sister is Numé. She does not speak the common tongue."
 
"And you're... okay? With what this temple means and what's going to happen?" Ana checked. "The last time we did this it got, uh, sexual. With your sister..."She trailed off as Hada laughed, a low sultry sound.
 
"The north has taboos we do not," the Enydian replied. "Why should sisters not pleasure each other? Or brothers with brothers? So long as no baby can come from the union, why have a taboo at all? Numé and I have enjoyed each other our whole lives... and we have enjoyed Theagan these last few months, too."
 
Belgia barked a laugh and gave Theagan a high-five. "You go, girl!"
 
"And...seeing her die?" Ana pressed, indicated Hada's twin.
 
"I have seen her die before. It is...it will be different. Exciting! We are coming back, after all. Why pass up this rare opportunity?"
 
"You didn't think I just hired the first people I found, did you?" Theagan asked. "There was an interview process, and these two are... well, they're a good fit. Don't you think?"
 
"Mm..." Ana nodded noncommittally. She was thinking about her dream-visions.
 
"Hells yes they are!" Mithinie agreed. "But you said seven, and I only count six."
 
"Ah. Yeah." Theagan looked a little sheepish. "The seventh is--"
 
"The seventh can speak for herself," a new voice said. Ana turned.
 
The newcomer, just as nude as all the others, was a tiefling. Ana had never met one before. She was tall and lithe with voluptuous curves and skin the color of gore. Twin horns swept backward from her brow to frame the crown of her head, and luscious black hair cascaded down her back.
 
Ana had met many beautiful women in her life. The newcomer outshone them all. Everything about her, the way she moved, the slink and sway in her every step, the dark glitter in her eye as she saw Ana's expression and smiled slightly...
 
Gods. Ana realized her heart was thumping excitedly in her chest and her whole body was suddenly chilly despite the desert heat. As a paladin, a large part of her training revolved around rooting out and thwarting evildoers of all stripes. Sensing the evil in a person's heart was as natural to her as breathing, and the moment their eyes met, she felt it: there was EVIL burning in the woman before her. The alluring, mesmerizing, enthralling evil of succubus-kind, promising pleasure, pain and passion beyond the scope of normal human lust.
 
The dark lover from her dreams.
 
"Azine," the tiefling said, extending a hand like a handsome suitor.
 
"A-anasticia," Ana replied, shaking it without thinking. She almost gasped as their fingers met: Even the red dragon Yaraxa hadn't radiated such a powerful, intoxicating darkness as Azine.
 
Azine tilted her head slightly, clearly feeling the jolt that passed between them too. "A paladin?"
 
"Yes."
 
"You know what I am, then."
 
"A monster," Ana replied, honestly. Azine nodded.
 
"Many have called me that out of prejudice," she said. "But they were right. I'm a seductress and a predator, wanted in several city-states and kingdoms for a long string of grisly murders...Though, if it eases your conscience, my victims were all willing."
 
"...I believe you." Ana admitted. She still hadn't let go of Azine's hands.
 
One of Azine's perfect eyebrows lifted upwards, pleased. "You do? I would not have expected a paladin to even care."
 
"Let's just say that I believe the gods have plans for all of us."
 
"I hope so." Azine smiled and took her hand back, leaving Ana feeling...released, somehow.
 
She felt a nudge in the ribs from Belgia as Azine turned to make introductions to Mithinie.
 
"Hey. You still breathin', lover?"
 
Ana blushed furiously, suddenly ashamed. For a few bewitching moments there, Belgia had simply ceased to exist, in her mind. "S-sorry."
 
"Don't fuckin' blame ya," Belgia replied, reassuringly. Despite her words, she was apparently immune to Azine's bewitching charms, because she simply shook the tiefling's hand and gave her a polite hello. For Ana, though, the small, private wink Azine gave her was almost enough to overwhelm her again. Gods what was WRONG with her?
 
She was given a break from her fluster when Azine turned to Theagan and asked a curious question. "So. Do they know?"
 
"Know what?" Mithinie asked, when Theagan shook her head.
 
"That," Theagan replied before Azine could elaborate, "is going to require some explanation. Come on: my tent is this way."
 
+
 
Theagan's tent was impressive. From the outside it was just a large, square, white canvas thing, rigged against the sand and desert winds. The inside was larger than the outside, and appointed with silks and fine wooden furniture... not to mention a wizard's workshop. Ana recognized the ornate ritual circle on the floor: there was one just like it in Theagan's study at the College of Magery, and the design pulled double duty as a summoning circle and travel doorway. Theagan could probably return to the college any time she liked thanks to her magic.
 
Outside of the workshop, however, the tent was more like a blend of harem and boudoir. The silk-sheeted bed was immense, big enough for a dozen, and the living space was a sumptuous riot of pillows, couches and throws. Not to mention some bottles of wine.
 
"Wow!" Even Nory, who knew far more about magic than Anasticia did, seemed legitimately impressed. "This must have cost a small fortune!"
 
"Just a small one. Fortunately, I have rather a LARGE fortune nowadays, just like you," Theagan replied happily. She waved a hand, and Ana recognized the work of the Prestidigitation cantrip in cleansing her body of sand and sweat. Far more convenient for the mage on the go than something as mundane as bathing. "Wine?"
 
"Always!" Mithinie agreed. Theagan gestured, and the wine bottles flew around on their own, filling glasses which in turn flew to everyone's hands. With the drinks thus distributed, the bottles returned to where they had been, and Ana saw them slowly refill themselves. Theagan had clearly grown in power over the last year. Either that, or she just loved to indulge in her newfound wealth.
 
"Please, get comfortable," Theagan added. "You look ridiculous traipsing around the desert in full armor like that."
 
Ana glanced at the other three, then with a collective shrug they disrobed. Theagan was right, it was a little ludicrous to be equipped for dungeoneering, here in this place when the other four women in the room were all comfortably naked.
 
Soon, the eight of them were relaxing on the silks and pillows, sipping on rather excellent wine and enjoying the simple pleasure of casual nudity. Theagan made sure they were all comfortable before she launched into her explanation.
 
"So," she began, "Closer study of the Avnethi holy book revealed an important fact about them."
 
"Oh? What?" Belgia asked.
 
"You know how I said they didn't know about the afterlife, resurrection or soul magic in general? I was wrong."
 
"Ooh!" Nory looked intrigued. "You mean they WEREN'T just, like, really ignorant?"
 
"Far from it. It turns out the world back then was very different. The Prime Material Plane was cut off from the Outer Planes and the Gods by... the name given in the book translates as something like ‘The Maw-That-Waits.' It was an extraplanar entity, as far as I can tell. Its reach was global, and it...uh...devoured the souls of the dead."
 
Ana felt her heart jump in her chest, and a kind of sickness slump down into her belly.
 
"Devoured them?"
 
"Ate. Absorbed and destroyed. Everything that lived and died across the whole world in those times was just food for it. Nobody passed to the afterlives, nobody came back from the dead...not even undeath was an escape. The first vampires came afterwards, and the rituals of lichdom were useless, as the Maw simply devoured the souls that sustain a lich's existence. The gods were trapped in the Outer Planes, powerless to intercede because without a steady stream of souls into their own demesne they were almost totally neutered..."
 
"That's horrifying!" Nory gasped.
 
"Yes. And so, the Avnethi never bothered with worship or divine magic, or wrote about the gods or the afterlife or whatever because they KNEW. They knew that when they died, they would just be devoured and destroyed. Total oblivion, gone forever. Not even the gods could rekindle their souls once the Maw-That-Waits took them."
 
"...So..." Belgia scowled, draining half a goblet of wine like it was a tankard of ale. A bottle floated across to replenish her. "What changed? We sure as shit weren't devoured by some soul-maw thingy when WE died!"
 
"The Avnethi figured out how to destroy it." Theagan said, with a grin.
 
"...How?" Nory asked.
 
"Ritual sacrifice!" Theagan's grin got even bigger. "According to the Avnethi, as powerful as any ordinary ritual sacrifice is, sacrificing somebody who's not only willing but EAGER for you to sacrifice them is orders of magnitude more potent. You see, according to them, a soul who goes to its death willingly, eagerly and passionately is supercharged with a unique kind of energy. That's partly why a noble martyrdom is so pleasing to the gods of goodness and order, or why the cackling madman who laughs on the gallows and spits at the headsman is so sweet to the gods of chaos and evil. EMBRACING death, truly being eager for it, empowers our souls...And they figured out how to turn that energy into something poisonous to the Maw-That Waits."
 
"And addictive to the killer," Azine added, swirling her wine and nosing it.
 
Ana glanced at her, willed herself not to tremble with desire at the thought of her own life ending in that crimson embrace, and turned back to Theagan. "So...their whole civilization was one giant sacrificial ritual."
 
"Exactly."
 
"Woah..." Mithinie whispered. "Hundreds of thousands of sacrifices every year, for centuries..."
 
"They force-fed themselves to the damn thing." Nory summarized, awed.
 
Theagan nodded. "All those souls, willing and eager and all burning bright with what they called Martyric energy until it...well...overdosed and died, I suppose. If that's the right way to describe it. On that day, the sky brightened, the world breathed a little easier. According to the last chapter in the holy book, it felt like taking off a too-tight coat after wearing it for a lifetime and forgetting it was there. A discomfort they'd always felt but never noticed was just...gone. And the angels and messengers of the gods returned to the material plane to spread the good news."
 
She sat back and poked the fire with a stick. "After that, the Avnethi were left with a problem. They had fulfilled their purpose, the Maw was gone, but they still had a civilization-wide cult fanatically devoted to death and sex. Most of the population didn't know the inner secrets about the Maw, or that the afterlives now awaited them. They were just zealous converts to the faith, and they wanted to die too. They were so wrapped up in the eroticism of death and so frenzied to experience it that they wanted to sacrifice themselves and surrender to oblivion as well.
 
"So, rather than fight it, their leaders decided to allow the Avnethi civilization to burn out in accordance with their principles. They declared the Great Orgy, and over the next twenty years they presided over the most widespread act of mass suicide the world has ever seen, until only the High Priestess remained, on the steps of the great ziggurat as she carved out her underlings' hearts before...well you know the rest. She fucked herself to death with a pair of daggers, and that was the end of the Avnethi. Their secrets were lost for centuries, their ways dismissed as insanity, until five brave, daring, and maybe a little crazy—"
 
"Don't forget beautiful!" Belgia chimed in.
 
Theagan laughed "—and beautiful adventurers were willing to embrace death long enough to open their temple. Nobody's ever done it before, in all these years."
 
She looked distant, and a little sad. "But now I know the truth, I want the whole WORLD to know what the Avnethi did for us. The world they left behind was a free one. One where resurrection spells and divine magic and interplanar travel are possible. They gave us back the very gods. We owe them...everything, really."
 
"There's more to it than gratitude and academic fascination though, isn't there?" Ana pressed.
 
Theagan cleared her throat. "Yes, there is," she admitted. "I...I intend to become the first Avnethi cleric in hundreds of years. I don't intend to spread their faith all over the world and kick off mass sacrifice like they used to, but..."
 
"Then why?" Ana asked.
 
"Because the power this martyric magic of theirs represents is something else. We could do ANYTHING with it! For good or evil," Theagan explained.
 
"Good OR evil?" Ana asked, and glanced at Azine, wondering what role she played in all this.
 
"Yes," Theagan said. "That's why I want your help. You told me once that the gods sent you a vision of the Avnethi temple. I'm going to trust them. I think they want this to happen, and I think they want you to help me. I think we could be a powerful force for good in the world."
 
"Through humanoid sacrifice?" Ana asked. "That's the kind of thing liches and cults and things do. How do you propose to do good things through murder?"
 
"It's not a question of..." Theagan sighed. "Look, Ana: With martyric magic, the Avnethi accomplished something the GODS couldn't do! And now that we let that kobold out of the bag--"
 
"How so?" Mithinie interrupted. "Didn't you keep it a secret?"
 
A tic of irritation crossed Theagan's face and she shook her head "The College had the contractual right to publish everything and they have, despite my objections. So now it's only a matter of time before the secret to martyric magic spreads across the world, and... well, I think the first people to start truly researching and using it should at least have good intentions. Better us than some demon cult or necromancer or whatever."
 
Ana had to admit... she had a point. But still...
 
"Still, Theagan, you're talking about ritual murder, blood sacrifice, and death, and..."
 
"Cannibalism," Belgia offered.
 
"Uh, EW!!" Nory objected. "You never mentioned cannibalism before!"
 
"It's what separates the priestly caste from the commoners," Theagan shrugged apologetically. "Eating the flesh of the faithful was their most sacred communion."
 
"Have you...done it before?"
 
"Yeah, she has," Belgia grinned. "She ate me at the temple."
 
"...And you don't mind?"
 
"Why should I? Kind of a waste to spit roast me over a fire pit and then NOT sample the meat, right?" Belgia shrugged. "Besides, she said I was delicious."
 
"You really were," Theagan said.
 
"Theagan?!"
 
"What? You enjoyed being eaten and digested by that dragon, didn't you? Besides, the sanctum wouldn't have opened if I didn't. Like I said, cannibalism is the mark of the priestly caste, and only a priest would be allowed to enter the sanctum."
 
"Okay, now I DEFINITELY have concerns," Ana said. "Theagan, this is heavy stuff! Ritual sacrifice has powered thousands of dark rituals over the years..."
 
"And they were only dark rituals because the sacrifices were unwilling victims. Besides, didn't you say the gods of order and light guided you before?" Theagan asked.
 
"...They did, yes." Ana admitted.
 
"Have you had any other visions since?"
 
"...Yes," Ana admitted.
 
"You never said!" Belgia accused.
 
"It's just a recurring dream," Ana said. "But... it featured the Twins here," she indicated Hada and Numé. "And silver flame. And two figures, one shining white, one shining black, the light burning away the dark until the dark is completely gone." She looked at Azine again, trying to read the tiefling's response. Azine pretended to ignore her, and instead stared pensively into her wine.
 
"Sounds like a divine vision to me!" Nory chirped.
 
"I suppose so..." Ana agreed. She sighed, then considered the twins. "...I'm guessing Hada and Nume and the four of us are going through the same thing we did last time?"
 
Theagan nodded, so Ana nodded too then gestured to the tiefling. "But if my dream IS a vision, then you have something different in mind for Azine."
 
"Your dreams are prophetic," the murderess murmured, and put her wine down. "...I'm going all the way. No resurrection or anything like that for me. When Theagan kills me, I'm going to stay dead. Very, really, permanently dead."
 
"...Why would you agree to that?" Nory asked.
 
"Ask all the girls who got down on their knees, kissed my feet and begged me to kill them," the sultry killer replied. "I don't know why, but the thought doesn't scare me. Quite the reverse, it excites me."
 
"But--" Mithinie began.
 
"The paladin said it herself, I'm a monster." Azine said, sharply. "I've been...gripped...by a compulsion my whole life. I don't know why, but killing is about the only thing that brings me joy. I found a niche in seducing those who lust for their own death, and there are more of them than you would guess, but I'm under no illusions about what I am...or where my soul is destined."
 
"Azine's soul will go to the Seven Hells when she dies," Theagan explained.
 
"You're certain?" Ana asked. "She seems controlled and self-aware, surely that counts for something...?"
 
Theagan shook her head. "The Arbiter himself told me."
 
"Wait, wait, wait. Hold the fuck RIGHT the fuck on," Belgia objected. "You spoke to a god?"
 
"Not personally," Theagan clarified. "Via a cleric."
 
Ana nodded. "The Commune spell?"
 
"Exactly." Theagan confirmed. "I have the Arbiter's say-so on it that there's basically nothing Azine here can do. She's...well, damned. Literally."
 
"And even knowing this, you're willing to die your final death here." Mithinie frowned at Azine. "Something here doesn't add up."
 
"Theagan offered me an alternative," Azine explained.
 
Theagan nodded as they all stared at her. "You see, the Avnethi clerics needed an alternate source of energy to power their magic. So naturally, they turned to the same source the Gods draw from: mortal souls. If I'm to walk the path of an Avnethi cleric..."
 
"Then she needs a willing soul," Azine finished. "So she found me. Instead of being cast into the Hells to suffer for eternity, instead my soul will power her spells until I'm...gone. No afterlife for me, just oblivion."
 
She laughed at their expressions, a low and sultry laugh rather than a giggle. "I know, it probably doesn't sound like a great deal to you," she said. "But I like it better than damnation. It sounds...peaceful. And poignant."
 
"That makes sense," Mithinie agreed.
 
"Plus, honestly, killing people is so fucking hot that I'm really looking forward to it being my turn," Azine added.
 
"Truth," Belgia nodded. Azine grinned at her.
 
"Theagan told me I'd like you," she said.
 
Belgia grinned back, and Ana, spurred by a small twinge of jealousy that she felt quite silly about even as she acted on it, scooted over and sat possessively in her half-orcish lover's lap. Both Azine and Belgia grinned and laughed at that, Azine winked at her, and sipped her wine.
 
"...So there are seven sacrifices?" Ana asked of Teagan, to cover her own blush.
 
"There are seven trials." Theagan corrected her. "I know that the first one is a ritual sacrifice, and the last one will be the moment I bind Azine's soul to me...but I don't know exactly what happens in between."
 
"That's okay!" Nory chirped. "Exploring is half the fun!"
 
"So who's the lucky girl who gets to miss out on the exploring?" Mithinie asked.
 
"My sister," Hada said. She smiled at Numé. "Always impatient. She saw what the first sacrifice involves, and how do you say? Called dibs?"
 
Numé joined in the giggling that swept around the tent. Although she didn't speak the common tongue, she clearly understood enough to follow the conversation, as she drew a thumb across her throat and mimed having her throat cut with a big smile.
 
"I...like," she managed. There were nods and smiles of agreement all around which she drank in happily, then cuddled up to Hada and started to stroke, kiss and caress her body. Hada smiled, turned, and kissed her twin, slowly tenderly and very, very hotly.
 
Ana felt a callused, strong hand---Belgia's---slide up her thigh, tickle up her tummy, and pinch her nipple. She half-stifled a gasp and moan as one of Belgia's small, weirdly sexy tusks plucked at her ear, her eyes fluttered... and when they opened they were looking at Azine.
 
The red-skinned murderess smirked at her. "...Have you ever been ravished by a monster before, paladin?" she asked.
 
"N-no...?" Ana shivered as Belgia's arms wrapped her up. Suddenly, she was feeling POWERFULLY submissive.
 
"Let's remedy that, shall we?" Azine stood and swayed across the room, her tail flicking back and forth behind her like a hunting cat's. To Ana's left, Mithnie and Nory decided to go join in the twins' fun, and she saw Theagan recline back on her lounge and trail her fingers down her tummy toward her own sex as she watched. "I've always wanted to dominate a paladin. What do you say, Belgia? May I?"
 
"Be my guest." Belgia nipped Ana's neck, then whispered in her ear. "Be a good girl for her, Ana."
 
Ana sighed. "Yes, ma'am."
 
Belgia kissed her, rolled Ana aside on the cushions and gave her rump a stinging smack, then stood to go have some fun with Theagan. "All yours!"
 
Azine was on Ana in a heartbeat. Not violently, no. That wasn't her way. She was the slow kind of sadist, the one who ruled by pure charm and presence rather than by overwhelming force. Where Belgia dominated Ana by pinning her down and overpowering her, Azine...transfixed. Ana heard herself whimper as the tiefling slid up her back like a snake, large breasts hot against her skin, fingers toying with her hair, tail looping lightly around in front to brush across Ana's throat and enclose it, but not squeeze. Not yet.
 
"Will you fall from grace?" her voice whispered in Ana's ear.
 
"My vows...never forbade me this..." Ana shook her head. Sharp-nailed fingers gripped her chin and tilted it up slightly.
 
"Do they forbid you from calling a wicked creature like me "Mistress?" Azine inquired, turning Ana's face toward hers.
 
Ana made her decision, and submitted. "...Not like this they don't, Mistress."
 
"Delightful." An inhumanly long tongue slipped into Ana's mouth, followed a second later by the soft pressure of lips against her own. Her tail gently gripped Ana's neck, her fingers ran up Ana's inner thigh and found the already flowing wetness there, and Ana's thoughts dissolved away.
 
She knew nothing but bliss after that. Bliss...and pain.
 
All the others had their way with her over the course of that long night. First, Azine coaxed her down into a place of deep surrender, where all she wished for was to be used. Ana sucked on the tiefling's tail like it was a writhing cock, took it deep inside her nether lips too, gasped and writhed and whimpered as sharp teeth and claws played with her skin and, with her permission, broke it to draw blood.
 
Scratched and bitten, she was turned over to Mithinie, who knew all sorts of fascinating rope tricks to immobilize a body. Nory wielded elemental magic to toy with her senses, jolting Ana's body with little lightning zaps, shocking her with icy cold or thrilling her with fiery heat.
 
Azine took a second turn, and left stinging whip marks all the way up Ana's body from knees to neck. Ana obediently thanked her for each one.
 
The twins cut her. They used short crescent-moon knives to leave a shallow pattern of bleeding wounds in her breasts and tummy, echoes of the raised ritual scars that decorated their own bodies.
 
Theagan fucked her. Mercilessly and without pause with a smooth ivory dildo that was almost too big, until the orgasms blurred together into a new kind of pain that confused her mind to the point where Ana couldn't even plead for the fucking to stop. All she could do was scream.
 
Belgia brought her back up, and held her, kissed her and cared for her as her mind came back and she remembered how to be a person again, and not just a toy to be used. Together they left Ana feeling...light. Free. Cleansed.
 
And more importantly, as Azine closed and soothed the ligature marks, shallow cuts and throbbing welts on her skin with a whisper of healing magic, she felt entirely ready for what tomorrow would bring.
 
-
 
They sent the workers away at dawn, entrusted their expensive gear to Theagan's magnificent magical chest, and approached the temple doors. To Ana, the prospect of entering a dungeon nude and unequipped was a new and intriguing one. Normally she'd have had the familiar, comforting weight of her gambeson, chain and plate packed tight around her, her hood, coiffe and helm on her head, her shield on her arm and her longsword on her hip. Her feet should have felt secure in her boots, but instead she was unconsciously flexing her toes in the gritty layer of dust on the temple flagstones.
 
Last time, they'd worn their gear and approached the temple as adventurers, determined to push past as many of the dangers within as they could. This time was different. This time, she wasn't here as a paladin. She was here as a sacrificial supplicant.
 
Only Theagan carried anything. She wore a curved knife on her right hip, a book on her left, and a circlet of silver and moonstone on her brow. She passed down the line and anointed each of them with a fragrant oil, on their forehead, their lips, their hearts, their nipples, their stomachs, and their nethers. Tingling heat spread from each spot, and Theagan grinned at Ana when the paladin gave her a questioning look.
 
"An aphrodisiac," she explained. "Very important in Avnethi culture."
 
Ana bit her lip and squirmed a little. The oil was VERY fast-acting. "...If you keep on leading me into wicked temptation like this, I'm going to Fall."
 
"Nonsense, there's nothing evil about what we're doing," Theagan promised her.
 
"You're sure?"
 
"I got three questions with that Commune spell, remember? I checked. The Arbiter said we're good."
 
"The gods of order and light give their blessing to this?" Ana frowned, concentrating past the mounting heat in her loins. "Are you entirely sure?
 
"Ana..." Theagan hesitated, but she looked a little hurt. "...If you don't trust me... We can delay this. Until you're certain."
 
Ana smiled at her, and took her hands in her own to squeeze them fondly. "...I trust you," she said. "Especially now that you made that offer."
 
Theagan smiled back, kissed her cheek, then stepped back to look up and down the line at her seven willing victims. "Everybody ready?"
 
"Let's do this," Azine said. Ana considered the tiefling as the others nodded their readiness. Azine seemed more relaxed than Ana would have been in her circumstance. Not only was she facing a real, permanent and final death, she wouldn't even have an afterlife Which was arguably a blessing for somebody otherwise destined for the Hells, but she seemed remarkably at peace for somebody whose very existence was now measured in hours at most.
 
The tiefling caught Ana watching as Theagan pulled Numé out of the lineup and led her toward the sacrificial bowl that would open the temple.
 
"You're staring," she purred.
 
"I'm just reflecting that I've never actually watched somebody...end...before."
 
"Thrilling, isn't it?" Azine gave her a sharp smile, and tilted her head toward the bowl. It was chest-high, with a kind of kneeling step on one side, which Numé had knelt on before leaning forward to grip two handholds over the far side of the large stone basin. Her hard nipples pointed down into the bowl's bottom, and her throat and heart were utterly exposed.
 
She smiled at Theagan, nodded, then shut her eyes and nibbled on her own lip as she tilted her head up and back to bare her throat.
 
Her smile turned into an almost orgasmic expression when Theagan's ritual knife opened her throat to the bone and high-pressure blood hissed out of her. It ran down her chest and dripped from her breasts, it poured into the bowl as her expression went slowly dazed, then sleepy, then blank.
 
The moment she expired was quite obvious: Avnethi runes around the bowl's rim lit up a brilliant blue, and Theagan stepped back just in time before the pooled blood in the bowl erupted in a startling blue-white flame.
 
"...Wow!" Ana breathed. There was something deep about the flame that mere hue and color couldn't describe. They burned higher and fiercer as Theagan sawed through Numé's spine. She turned the vacant, beautiful head in her hands and planted a delicate kiss on her full, slack lips, then tossed it into the flames.
 
The fire in the bowl became a tornado that plucked and whipped at Ana's hair and blew loose gritty sand across her skin... and then it settled and vanished, leaving the bowl totally clean.
 
The temple's huge stone gates issued a loud CRACK and rumbled open.
 
"That was...pretty impressive," Nory agreed. "THAT'S martyric energy?"
 
"Yes," Theagan smiled.
 
"No wonder we're doing this."
 
"She's okay, yes?" Hada asked, concerned. In any other situation, that would have been a strange question to ask of one's decapitated sibling, but they all knew what she was really asking: whether Numé's soul had come to any harm in powering that spell.
 
"She's fine," Theagan promised. "That little flare was nothing."
 
"Didn't look like nothing," Belgia muttered.
 
"Trust me, if I'd channeled enough energy to actually harm her, It would have turned the desert for miles around into a plane of molten glass and wiped Sirindria off the map."
 
"...Wow..." Nory's expression was avaricious.
 
"The Avnethi used Martyric magic to poison something more powerful than the gods themselves," Azine said, and stepped forward, leading the way through the open doors. "Were you expecting a cantrip? Come on, let's see what awaits us!"
 
"You're eager..." Nory commented as they followed her.
 
"You bet I'm eager. Do you have any idea how many willing girls I've snuffed? And every time, I wished it was me..." Azine sighed fondly at her memories.
 
Ana felt the ember in her nethers pulse a little at the thought. Azine was one of those rare people so totally captivating that Ana was having a hard time not staring at her. She could SEE the darkness in their temporary companion's soul, but the real danger Azine presented wasn't that she was obviously disgusting and foul. Quite the reverse: hers was the mesmerising evil of a siren's song. The beguiling, whispering, bewitching evil that was all too easy to succumb to. She was a walking temptation.
 
And frankly, Ana wasn't sure if she herself could have resisted, had she crossed paths with Azine. The idea of languishing between those red thighs, kissing those crimson lips and having the life slowly drawn out of her like an orgasm...
 
Belgia touched her shoulder. "That aphrodisiac oil's powerful stuff, huh?"
 
"Huh?!" Ana jumped. Belgia grinned at her.
 
"You were starin' at her and fuckin' whimpering, lover."
 
"Oh...shit..."
 
Belgia chuckled and kissed her. "I don't mind. I'm havin' a hard time keepin' my eyes off her too, but..." she said, but put an arm around Ana's waist and pulled her firmly in to an embrace. "MINE."
 
That possessive growl made Ana weak in the knees, but it also focused her mind again. She looked around as they followed Theagan into the temple. Blue flames, likely also powered by Numé's soul energies, flickered along the edges where the walls met floor and ceiling. Illuminating the passageway.
 
Mithinie seemed unaffected by the oil. She was at Theagan's side, her lithe, pale body almost glowing in the eerie light as she stayed alert for traps. Nory and Theagan were chatting animatedly as they considered the bas-reliefs and inscriptions on the walls to either side of them. Hada simply strolled along behind the two mages, considering her sister's soul-light and fidgeting animatedly with her fingers. Ana got the impression she would normally have been twirling a knife or something to keep her hands occupied.
 
Azine was a picture of serenity. She was literally a sacrifice on her way to the altar, and she seemed entirely happy about it. Previously, her tail had twitched back and forth behind her like a hunting cat's. Now it was still, balanced and poised, just like the rest of her.
 
The passageway ended in a circular theatre, maybe fifteen feet across. The space was small and intimate, and as they entered, Numé's soul-fire spread out around the edges. With illumination came the familiar figures of three Astral Guardians, and their return called up some intensely erotic memories in Ana's mind. The three humanoid forms standing in front of her were physically indistinguishable from the two that had finally fucked her out of her shell nearly a year ago.
 
Astral Guardians were a kind of golem, though not fashioned from any kind of solid matter. Their substance was perfectly solid, but formed of the very stuff of the planes, and such a perfect expression of the golemancer's art enabled them to behave with something like intelligence. They could interpret their orders, rather than merely blindly follow them. They could understand intent rather than mere literal meaning.
 
Only the fact that they seemed to have no discernible desires or personality of their own kept them from sapience. In every other regard, they appeared as physically flawless humanoids with shifting skins the subtle black-blue of the sky an hour or two before dawn.
 
And, being Avnethi constructs, they were FANTASTIC lovers. Back at the other temple, they had pleasured Ana into an orgasmic daze and then, while she lolled senseless in their grasp, had cut her head off. She kind of wanted to do it again. But this time, something different beckoned. The trio of shadowy figures held forth... implements, of some kind, which they presented to Theagan.
 
The mage giggled. "Of course. The first trial would have to establish that the aspiring cleric had read the holy book."
 
She turned to Mithinie. "Your turn!"
 
Mithinie raised an eyebrow. "Already? I kinda figured you'd want me around for traps or devices or—"
 
"There are none in this temple, Mithinie."
 
Mithinie mock-tutted, but her eager expression betrayed her real thoughts. "And it was just getting interesting, too..."
 
"I think you'll enjoy this one, though. It's going to be...intense."
 
"Good." Mithine grinned. Ana nodded to herself. It made sense: Mithinie was by far the oldest among them, and had lived a shameless life of seduction and pleasure for at least three hundred years. Over such a time, Ana could imagine that simple sex could grow a little stale. She knew well that Mithinie needed to push her limits to really enjoy herself.
 
Theagan smiled, and took the first set of implements from the guardian on the right. It looked like a set of four cuffs, linked together by a slim silvery chain which stretched effortlessly out from no apparent source as Theagan fitted it to Mithinie's wrists and ankles. Then she spoke a word, and the soul-fire leapt from its trench on the floor to the shackles, and Mithinie was yanked up to float just an inch or two above the ground, so that she couldn't reach the flagstones with her wiggling toes.
 
She groaned as the shackles stretched her out to her limit, until she couldn't even wriggle or pull against her restraints
 
"Ffuuuucck!!!" she moaned. Ana could see why: she looked like she was being tortured on a rack.
 
"Quiet now, darling," Theagan instructed her, with a sultry confidence Ana hadn't seen in her before. She took the second implement from the guardians and locked it to Mithinie's face, simultaneously gripping her throat and forcing her jaw open and her tongue down. The energy field crept across to include the new mask, and Mithinie's head was yanked back.
 
Ana panted, unable to keep her eyes off her friend's lithe figure. Every one of Mithinie's muscles stood out now, straining under her skin.
 
The last item was a polished semiprecious stone the size and shape of an egg, which Theagan presented to Mithinie's mouth. The elf's gag was making her drool, and Theagan lubricated the stone with Mithinie's spit before slipping it down her body, painting Mithinie's chest and tummy with her own saliva before reaching her pussy.
 
Mithinie groaned and twitched feebly in her restraints as the stone egg was pushed gently but firmly up into her cunt. Apparently it did something good, because her eyes closed, she gasped, and she seemed to relax a little and the new moan she uttered was less pained and more lustful.
 
Theagan smiled, and let her bask in the combined torment and pleasure of her predicament for a second... and then started reciting something.
 
Mithinie twitched as she spoke, and Ana could see why: every word that spilled from Theagan's mouth wrote itself in fire on Mithinie's skin, so that an Avnethi prayer of some kind literally burned itself into her in angular runes that Ana couldn't read.
 
It went on for some time, and Mithinie could do nothing except twitch helplessly in her restraints. She made so many noises despite being gagged: orgasmic moans, groans of pain, the heaving rush of her hyperventilating breath through her nose. It looked like torment.
 
But Ana could see her friend's eyes. Mithinie was DELIRIOUS with a heady blend of both pleasure and pain, and had totally submitted to what was happening. Her hips, the only part of her that was remotely free to move, were humping slightly against the stone inside her.
 
Soon, there was very little of her that wasn't covered in runic script, and her moans and groans had blended together into a mounting howl of delicious agony. Through it all, Theagan kept chanting, steadily but with mounting fervor until both she and Mithinie reached a climax - hers tonal, Mithinie's orgasmic.
 
In that moment, the last of the writing and runes joined up. Mithinie SCREECHED, and the tools holding her still sprang into bloody motion.
 
They tore Mithinie's elfen skin right off her body in one piece.
 
A bald bloody mannequin of meat fell into the Astral Guardians' arms, whimpering and shaking from a torment unlike anything Ana could imagine. The guardians cuddled her and kissed her until Mithinie finally expired with a last shiver, and then there was a burst of shimmering silver flame that burned her away away to nothing.
 
There was a stunned silence. Even the unflappable Hada looked appalled at what she'd just seen, but Azine was staring with a rapt smile on her face and Theagan just looked satisfied as she watched Mithinie's mortal remains vanish in a coiling lick of iridescent fire. The implements she'd used floated away, bearing the newly-inscribed elf-hide over to a far door, where they locked into place and hung the grisly decoration upon the stone. The door issued a loud CRACK! And swung open.
 
"Theagan..." even Belgia sounded shaken. "What the FUCK. That was even crazier than what I went through!"
 
Theagan turned and shook her head reassuringly. "The stone has many functions, but one of them is to blur the line between pain and pleasure," she said. "Under its influence, even the worst agony can be enjoyed."
 
"She definitely enjoyed it," Azine declared.
 
"How can you tell?" Ana asked, still feeling shaken.
 
"I've murdered a lot of women, paladin. I know the difference."
 
Nory laughed disbelievingly. "Wow. So even when she's skinned alive, she enjoys it? I know she's kinky, but..."
 
"You're one to talk," Theagan said, and headed for the door. "How many times did you cum when Yaraxa ate you?"
 
"Well, three, but..."
 
"And that was without the magical pleasure stone."
 
"...I guess, don't knock it ‘til you've tried it, huh?"
 
"So you're up next?" Belgia grinned and ruffled her hair teasingly.
 
"Nuh-uh, I didn't get to watch ANYONE snuff it last time! I wanna be one of the last."
 
"So who is next?" Hada asked.
 
"That..." Theagan sent a small ball of light ahead of her to illuminate the next chamber, "depends. Hmm."
 
Ana looked around, and immediately recognized the kind of space they were in. "...It's an amphitheatre. Ritual combat?"
 
"Yeah, looks like it," Belgia agreed. "Trial by combat, I'm guessin'."
 
Theagan eyed the runes around the ceiling, and nodded. "...Yes. One of the priestly duties was to preside over duels."
 
"Which of course were always to the death in Avnethi culture," Ana guessed.
 
"Naturally. It was the major means of resolving grievances among them."
 
Belgia chuckled darkly. "Well, I have a grievance against you, Anasticia Varrani," she nudged her lover in the ribs with a wide grin.
 
"Oh?" Ana planted a hand on one cocked him and looked back at her.
 
"Yuh-huh. Last night you went an' called another woman "mistress" without my permission."
 
"Uh-huh," Ana flirted. "It was pretty great."
 
"Oh, you unrepentant slut!"
 
"Only because I'm following your example!"
 
The others, even Azine, were giggling as they watched the flirty, exchange, but Theagan, with some effort, managed to put on a serious face and and thrust her hands dramatically in the air.
 
"A grievance has been declared!" she announced. "By the Avnethi tradition, ritual combat is invoked!"
 
Astral guardians stepped out of the shadows around her, each one bearing an assortment of equally insubstantial weapons.
 
"So, we're doing this, huh?" Ana checked with Belgia.
 
"O' course! I love you, Ana, but killin' you is gonna be fuckin' hot!"
 
"You have to beat me, first," Ana retorted, turning to accept a sword and shield from the nearest guardian.
 
Belgia bared her tusks eagerly as she claimed a greatsword. "Oh, I will. Gonna shove my blade right through that sexy belly of yours, lover."
 
"I'd like to see you do that with no head."
 
"Hmm. Just for that, maybe I'll slice your tits off first..."
 
"You two flirt in the WEIRDEST way," Nory commented, before adding a "GAH!" when Belgia pulled her into an affectionate headlock.
 
Ana bounced on her toes and gave the sword a couple of practice swings. It was oddly shaped with a curved blade, more like a khopesh than the arming sword she was used to, but it had real weight in her hand despite the magical nature of the non-stuff it was fashioned from. It would do.
 
"Well, it's true," she said. "I think I'm going to enjoy this!"
 
Belgia stopped grinding her knuckles into Nory's scalp and let her go. "Ooh! What happened to that nice girl attitude?"
 
"I'm a servant of Good, not a servant of Nice," Ana pointed. "I don't think there's a warrior alive who doesn't enjoy the rush of battle..."
 
"Attagirl."
 
They moved to opposite sides of the circle, took up their stances, and waited as Theagan stepped forward. She looked between them ."...This is to the death," she reminded them both. "Lovers you might have been, but in this circle, you are deadly enemies and this trial can only end when one of you is a lifeless corpse. Do not hesitate."
 
"I won't," Ana promised. Belgia just grinned fiercely again.
 
Theagan nodded, and stepped out of the circle, taking Hada, Nory and Azine with her. "Then begin," she said.
 
Belgia charged.
 
Ana had seen her lover fight many times, she knew most of Belgia's tricks...but that meant Belgia knew most of hers. Tempting as it was to fight defensively and let Belgia exhaust her strength and her rage in battering harmlessly on her shield, Ana knew better. Belgia would smash her guard open long before she tired.
 
The fact was, of the two of them, Belgia was the superior warrior. She'd fought her whole life growing up in the Red Feather tribe. She'd once said she couldn't remember a time when she HADN'T been fighting, or hunting, or killing. The Red Feather's children grew up learning how to swing an axe and beating each other senseless in training.
 
Ana's training was more formal, and she'd been fourteen the first time a sword was ever pressed into her hands. She could vividly recall that day, whereas Belgia had been holding weapons since before she could remember.
 
Still, pride and prophecy both demanded that Ana win. And so, as it often did for her in these moments, time slowed and her options laid themselves out.
 
This had to end fast. Belgia would win an endurance fight. She was also quicker on her feet than she looked, and her reflexes were SHARP. She fought on instinct, not on thought, and of the two, instinct more often won.
 
But not always. Sometimes, a clever trick got the better of instinct. And Ana had seen this moment in her dreams too.
 
She threw her shield at Belgia's face.
 
Instinct did its thing. Belgia swatted the shield out of the air with her axe, but just for an instant, she'd been blinded. And Ana had been just behind the shield. Her sword came up from below, under Belgia's guard. She turned, stepped, pushed, TWISTED...
 
The astral blades were supernaturally sharp. It took Ana no effort at all to cut Belgia's hand off at the wrist, twist the blade around, disembowel her, then finished the job with a third cut that took both her lover's legs out from under her at the knee.
 
Belgia crashed to the sand with a shocked gasp somewhere between surprise and agony. Her axe fizzled and disappeared as the astral golems concluded that Ana had won the duel.
 
"Wh--? the fu-?"
 
"Sorry, Belgia."
 
Belgia laughed, and propped herself up on her remaining hand. "Fuck y'apologisin' for?" she asked, then groaned and slumped back down as the movement caused some more of her innards to spill out. "...Gods an' Demons...Y'got me fuckin' good..."
 
"Yeah, but you won't fall for that one again."
 
Belgia shook her head and rolled over to flop down on her back, trying to hold her guts in. She was already going pale from blood loss, but she grunted out a pained laugh. "Nope...fuck. 'S a pity we can't do this more often. It's great training. I reckon...I just learned a lot..."
 
"Who knows what the future holds?" Ana asked, and raised her sword. "I love you, B."
 
"Love you too, Ana..." Belgia was clearly having to fight to remain conscious. "...Now...snuff me...already..."
 
Ana bit her lip at the bloodthirsty thrill those words inspired in her, then obliged. Her blade dissipated into nothing the second it had passed through Belgia's neck and buried itself in the sand: Belgia's corpse twitched mightily, while her smiling head rolled a half-turn away from it and toppled over. She landed facing Ana, smiled, winked, and then... faded. Her face went slack, her eyes defocused, and she was gone, for now.
 
"Damn, Ana!" Nory commented. Behind her, Azine and Hada both looked quietly impressed.
 
Ana stepped forward, picked up Belgia's head, and planted a soft kiss on her lover's cooling, unresponsive lips. With that, she placed Belgia's head between Belgia's thighs, and stepped back, looking to Theagan. The mage nodded, and addressed the guardians.
 
"There has been a victor," she said. "The trial by combat is over."
 
The guardians bowed, and fizzled out of existence. Silvery flames engulfed Belgia's remains, burning them away to ash just like Mithinie's and Numé's before. And, with another loud CRACK, the doors at the far side of the chamber split open.
 
As they left the duelling chamber, Ana noted the thin trails of blue flame that followed them on either side. One from each chamber. She wondered what that signified. Were her friends' and lover's souls now bound to witness the rest of the ritual?
 
What if there was more to this than Theagan had said? What if there was more to it than Theagan knew? She was operating off the memorized instructions from a millennia-old holy book after all, not walking the footsteps of the Avnethi clergy with a mentor to guide her. This was soul magic, and while the death of her mortal form held no fear for Ana...
 
What Theagan proposed to do to Azine gave her chills. What if she was unknowingly about to share the tiefling's fate?
 
She trusted that Theagan at least truly believed what they were doing was safe. If she was wrong...Well, Ana could forgive her that. And of course, the only reason Azine was doing this was because there WERE worse fates than having one's soul devoured.
 
Still. There was cause for fear. But Ana had found over the course of her career that fear excited and attracted her, rather than scaring her away. That was probably true of all adventurers. She was scared on a more mundane level of the agony she'd doubtless feel soon...
 
"So, who's next?" Nory chirped as they entered the next chamber. "Your turn, Ana? I definitely wanna see--"
 
Ana shook her head, interrupting her. "I'm sixth," she declared firmly. Hada and Nory both gave her a confused look.
 
"So certain?" Hada asked.
 
"My vision says so. I'm...there. At the end. Somehow. I don't know exactly. But it's not my turn yet."
 
"Aw, come on," Nory complained. "I wanna watch you snuff it!"
 
"Nory, if you really want to that so badly, all you have to do is pay for the resurrection and I'll let you snuff me yourself," Ana promised her. "You can afford it."
 
"Aww, thank you! But...we don't HAVE to follow your vision, do we? Like...once you know the future, you can change it!"
 
"Faith is important," Hada disagreed. "If the Gods send her visions, we follow them."
 
Nory sighed and fluffed out her hair stoically. "Fine. but I'm TOTALLY taking you up on that offer later," she promised. "What's this next trial, anyway?"
 
"The second and third of the three holy sacrificial forms," Theagan said. She'd been reading the runes and bas-reliefs around the chamber they'd just entered, and indicated the floor. "See? Two magic circles this time. Avnethi prime numbers again. There'll be five chambers total, the first sacrifice to enter, the holy reading, the overseen duel, the second and third sacrificial forms here, and then...well, the two deaths and the imbuing in the next room, however that works."
 
"Our turn, then," Hada said. She strode toward the circle on the left. "Which one is this?"
 
"The second form is...well, it's a bit like what I did to your sister. Purely physical. I'm supposed to carve your heart out."
 
Hada nodded. "And the other?"
 
"Evocation magic. Fire, frost, lightning, that kind of thing."
 
"Dibs!" Nory squeaked, and darted into that circle.
 
Theagan giggled, and moved toward Hada's circle. "Let's begin, then..."
 
Ana retreated a few steps to watch her work, and became aware that Azine was...
 
Azine slipped up next to her and coiled herself around Ana's body, arms legs and tail.
 
"I have a suspicion..." she whispered into Ana's ear.
 
"...Oh?"
 
"Did last night feel...RIGHT, to you? Very, very right?"
 
Ana sighed, but she wouldn't deny it here. Lying in this place would be heresy.
 
"It really did..." she admitted. Over by the ritual circle, Hada and Theagan shared a kiss, and Theagan trailed one of those slick magical pleasure stones slowly down Hada's body to present it to her pussy. Hada nibbled on her own lip as she spread her legs slightly to accept it, and her eyes fluttered as the egg-sized trinket slipped easily inside her.
 
Azine grinned, and her fangs pricked Ana's neck in a sort of kiss. "I think, if we had met before this, you're the sort of girl the Red Whore would have seduced..." she murmured.
 
Again, Ana could not lie. "...I'd have resisted," she said.
 
"For how long?"
 
"I...don't know." Ana watched as Hada stretched herself out in the ritual circle, eyes bright as she watched Theagan's blade. "A year ago, I was...very buttoned up. And then there's my vows...I'm supposed to devote my life to protecting people."
 
"But you would have been tempted," Azine purred.
 
Ana watched Theagan's blade come down and puncture Hada's trim, tight, muscular stomach. Blood welled up instantly, and the Enydian warrior arched her back, face crunched tight into an expression that could have been agony or orgasm, and was probably something of both. She didn't answer.
 
Instead, she shivered as Hada coughed out a short of gasp as Theagan, with a sickly crunch, cut her open and spread her ribs apart. Blood washed over the stone as Theagan reached into Hada with both hands.
 
Something warm, muscular and slick quested forward down Ana's cheek. She turned her face toward it, and Azine's tongue slipped between her lips. They kissed as Theagan butchered Hada in the ritual circle, and when the statuesque black beauty's body burned away to silvery ash and white flame, Ana broke the kiss with a gasp.
 
Gods. Not even Belgia kissed her like that...
 
Azine gave her a truly evil smirk, and kissed her forehead. "I think you would have given in to that temptation," she purred, and Ana knew, deep in her heart, that the tiefling murderess was right. Thanks the Gods their meeting was now, here in aid of a divine cause and not their own crazed pleasure.
 
She didn't say as much. She just trembled and watched as Theagan ran her hands through the silvery flames without coming to any harm, then turned to Nory, who was standing in the middle of her ritual circle with one hand resting on a cocky hip.
 
"So let's see what you've got!" she challenged.
 
Theagan grinned at her. "Did you use the stone?"
 
"Of course I did! Come on, hit me with your best shot!"
 
"As you wish...Burning Hands!"
 
Ana and Azine both flinched. The fan of flame that roared out from Theagan's palm to engulf Nory was searing hot even from several feet away. It only lasted two or three seconds, but its effect on naked skin was impressive. Nory staggered and fell, smoking from head to toe and uttering a loud gasp that Ana honestly couldn't decipher. Was it pain? Pleasure? A bit of both? Her hair was burned down to the skin, nothing a minor magical healing spell wouldn't fix, but the shudder that ran through her was...
 
Wow. She'd definitely enjoyed that. And Nory wasn't done yet. "Oh Gods...More...!" she said.
 
Theagan giggled, and extended her hand. "Witch Bolt!"
 
Nory collapsed with a squeal as lightning sprung from Theagan's fingertips, and writhed on the ground, twitching and juddering as the energy shot through her limbs. It looked torturously painful, but...
 
"Oh fuck! Fuck me! YESSSS!!!!"
 
"Demons fuck me dead. Wish I'd had some of those stones during my career..." Azine whispered.
 
Ana didn't reply. She was watching the way Nory literally humped at the lightning as it ravaged her body. Gods...she'd had sex with Nory many times over the last year. But she'd never seen the cute little gnome look hotter than at this moment.
 
Theagan lowered her hand and Nory collapsed, red and blistered and ruined. When she let out a long, orgasmic moan, a coil of steam drifted out of her mouth. Ana wondered how the hell she was even alive.
 
"F...fuck..." Nory's voice was hoarse from screaming. "D-do it. Snuff...mm-meee...."
 
Theagan nodded, smiled, let the moment linger for a second, then raised a finger.
 
"Ray of Frost."
 
Nory's last gasp ended in a squeak. She arched her back, gaped at the ceiling in the exact expression she wore when having on of Mithinie's "special" tongue baths, and then her body burst apart into silver flames and a thousand glittering shards of ice.
 
Azine sighed as they watched Nory die. "You know...I hope my soul has some influence on Theagan," she muttered for Ana's benefit, then clarified when Ana gave her a worried look. "I don't mean...Mine isn't a path I'd wish on anyone. Not when it leads to the hells. But if she's to be a priestess of death and ritual sacrifice, I hope she'll at least inherit some of my artistry. She needs to learn how to savor the kill."
 
"Well. There are still two deaths to go," Ana said. "Perhaps there's still time to educate her."
 
Azine smiled. "I hope so...though truly, is it strange that I am more concerned with her sense of art than with the fact that I will just...end...in a few minutes?"
 
"I think it sounds like you're at peace with it," Ana replied.
 
"...I suppose I must be." Azine thought about it then laughed at herself. "So this is what peace feels like. I always wondered."
 
The last door opened with a stoney crack, and once again the lines of blue soul-fire raced ahead. There were two final ritual circles in the chamber beyond, touching like an hourglass, and Theagan made an "ohh..." noise of sudden understanding as they entered.
 
"I see," she said. "I understand."
 
"What?" Ana asked, looking around.
 
"It makes sense. Binding her soul to mine isn't trivial at all..." Theagan muttered. She'd regressed to full academic mode as they entered the final chamber. "So that's how they overcame Ethilin's Law. A martyric evocation to debride the liminal animus of its lineament inertia...Genius."
 
"Did that make sense to you?" Azine asked Ana.
 
"Not really."
 
Theagan gave them an apologetic look. "Souls are inherently unstable," she explained. "It's why liches need to constantly find new souls to power their undeath: the ones they gather eventually sort of...fizz away into nothing. The only stable existences for a soul are to reside within a body that is uniquely theirs, or to exist freely in their compatible afterlife, on an outer plane aligned to their nature. So even though I know the spell to pull your soul from your body and bind it to mine, Azine, unless I somehow found a way to overcome your soul's ‘lineament inertia,' it would just disperse or become a ghost long before I'd used even a measurable fraction of your martyric energy."
 
She indicated the blue flames powered by their companions. "This ritual uses the energies of their souls to burn away all of the personality and individuality that causes that instability, and leave behind nothing but power in a metastable, useful form."
 
Azine made a nervous laugh. "You made destroying me sound better when you weren't using Arcana to describe it. What will that feel like?"
 
"Well...knowing the Avnethi, it will probably feel rather like the most intense orgasm you've ever had," Theagan said. "And it won't ever stop. You know that moment of climax when all the thoughts in your head stop? Imagine that, except you won't ever start thinking again. "
 
Azine's laugh turned more genuine, and more sultry. "Now you're speaking my language," she said, and swayed into the closer of the two ritual circles. "But first...Ana here has to die, right?"
 
"Yes. By your hand, in fact."
 
Azine's pointed teeth showed as a pleased smile spread across her face. "Really? One last kill before the end? Perhaps the Gods planned this for me after all..." she turned to Ana. "And oh, Ana. My love, my darling. I can't even say how happy I am that you insisted on being last. As beautiful and wonderful as your companions are, I'd have felt cheated if my last ever kill was any but you."
 
"That...may have been my other reason for insisting," Ana admitted. Azine's eyes glittered darkly in the silvery light of five burning souls. She didn't say anything; she only beckoned. Everything that needed to be said between them already had been.
 
Ana gulped and, with a pounding heart, stepped into the circle.
 
"Watch and learn, Theagan," Azine purred, as she accepted the ritual knife from Theagan's hands. "THIS is how you snuff a girl properly..."
 
+
 
It began with love. Azine was tender. Slow. Intimate. She surprised Anasticia with her strength by lifting the paladin in her arms, and bore her to the altar in the middle of the chamber like they were newly-weds.
 
The kiss they shared wasn't the kiss of women gripped by lust. It was mutually nervous, a slow exploration of each other. Questions and answers, spoken by tongues and lips and yet without words. A confirmation that, yes, they both wanted what was coming.
 
Perhaps the gods knew it had to be like this. Maybe the soul to fuel an Avnethi cleric could only be stripped bare this way. Perhaps mere sex was too profane to do the job. Perhaps none but Ana, who'd felt a surge of infatuation for Azine the instant she first laid eyes on her, could have been the correct sacrifice.
 
Even the swell of guilt she felt was soothed gently away before they progressed. Belgia was her love. Belgia would be her love. This was not a betrayal. This was holy. A paladin's sacred mission was to cleanse evil, and Azine was, truly, gripped by evil. To wash her clean, though, demanded not fury or righteous hatred, nor violence. Ana would cleanse her by loving her, as completely as she could love.
 
And what more complete act of love was there than to give herself, wholly in body and in spirit? What greater love was there than to lay down her life?
 
None that was within her power.
 
From love, they moved on to pleasure. Mutual pleasure, given and received in equal measure, and unlike any Ana had felt before. This wasn't Belgia's rough fucking, Mithinie's honed skill, Nory's playful fun or Theagan's inventive excess. Azine gave pleasure with her fingers, her lips, her tongue, her teeth, her tail. She gave pleasure with her skin, the silky warmth of it sliding across Ana's.
 
She gave pleasure with her voice, whispering in Ana's ear, humming against her throat, lifting Ana's soul with kind words. She really was a siren, utterly ruling Ana with words alone, and Ana knew, knew, that she would have gladly been one of the Red Whore's victims, had they met in other circumstances.
 
From pleasure...they moved on to pain.
 
Teeth, at first. Biting and sharp. Enough pressure to bruise without breaking skin, here at the side of her neck, here at the curve of her breast, here at the delicate scent of her inner thigh. Enough to make Ana gasp each time. But it wasn't the teeth that thrilled her: it was the knife, meandering across her body, dimpling the skin and quickening her heart but not yet...not yet...
 
The first cut was beside her bellybutton. It was shallow, a scratch really. A line of pain that warmed the heat in Ana's cunt to blazing. Her cry was a moan of pleasure and submission, more than of pain.
 
As was the next...and the next...but as the blade cut a little deeper each time, Ana's cry became shriller, less pleasured, more pained.
 
Azine's voice in her ear. "Are you mine, Ana?"
 
"I'm yours..." Ana whined "...all yours..."
 
"Shall I be cruel?" Azine purred.
 
"As cruel as you please..." Ana groaned. It was her last time. Let her have her fill.
 
Azine thanked her with a kiss. Her free hand pinched Ana's nipple, pulled her breast taut. Ana's breathing quickened to something shallow and frantic as she saw the shape of what her lover meant to do—
 
The knife was not designed for stabbing. It was a curved blade, meant for opening throats and spilling veins. Azine, however, was creative. The slightest twitch of its razor edge, a parting of most sensitive flesh, and Ana shrieked a prayer to the echoing ceiling as the hard nub of her left nipple parted ways with her breast.
 
"Oh, Gods and Demons..." Azine sounded awed. She took Ana's hand and squeezed her fingers tight around her palm "Scream again!"
 
Ana didn't need to fake it: the squeal she emitted as her own fingers rained onto her chest was heartfelt and genuine.
 
Her mind retreated from her body, which continued to writhe and scream in agony. Azine's face was glowing with fervor, the sadism of her evil nature on full display. She cut slowly, sparingly, taking Ana's body piece by piece. Her tongue trailed over Ana's chest, licking the blood from her wounds, then found the discarded morsel of nipple: with a lash and a lick, she ate of Ana's body, sharp teeth chewing the intimate meat with obvious pleasure.
 
Ana should have felt mortified, disturbed, sickened. But...no. Every fiber of her sang with rightness, a radiant certainty that this was a holy cleansing, not a desecration.
 
"More..." she croaked. "More!"
 
Azine obliged her. Ana gave herself to agony, and wailed pitifully as the ritual blade scraped up her chest slowly, too slowly, perfectly slowly through the soft flesh of her bosom. First one breast, then the other, in an endless white-hot moment that laid her very soul bare,
 
And then, the agony was in her belly. From somewhere, somehow, she found the strength to lift her head and watch, aghast, as her own guts welled up out of her.
 
Her breathing came in ragged jerks now, almost impossible. Her heart was crashing randomly around in her chest, skipping beats from a heady blend of animal fear, dying desperation and insane desire.
 
She saw the question Azine was going to ask of her, before the tiefling's black lips even formed the words. Even now, even knowing what it would cost her an infinity of torment, Azine was going to offer her healing and life.
 
Ana wanted neither. Strength somehow surged through her limbs, enough to press a denuded, fingerless palm desperately to her lover's mouth and silence her. Azine's surprised eyes bored darkly into hers.
 
"Kill me..." Ana pleaded.
 
Azine blinked, then squeezed her hand, set the knife aside, and bent down to kiss her. That long, skilled tongue tasted of blood as it slipped tenderly across Ana's own.
 
"...I love you," she whispered.
 
She didn't give Ana the chance to reply. Sharp-nailed fingers led the way, invading Ana's opened belly, driving up and up and forcing the air out of her laboring lungs. Ana stopped all thought, went tense, shivered through something that was like an orgasm and yet totally different...
 
The world started to fall away from her. She watched Azine holding something fist-sized and crimson pulsing in her hand. Saw her sink her sharp teeth into it. White-blue fire was creeping in around the edges of her vision. She saw her own flesh dissolving into silvery ash as Azine tipped her head back and moaned her delight around a gushing gulp of Ana's very heartblood...
 
And then the blade in Theagan's hand opened Azine's throat to the bone. The last thing Ana saw was Azine sighing and relaxing, and closing her eyes with a wide, peaceful smile as she, too, gave herself eagerly to death...
 
The white flame rushed up, and burned the world away.
 
—
 
She dreamed. Walls of silvery fire containing her, trapping her own light up against another, this one a darkness around light. Her own flame leapt, burned brighter and higher, fed and strengthened by the walls around them. Driven by a will and instinct beyond her own, she surrounded the dark flame and took it into herself, devouring it, burning it clean, stripping away all that was Azine.
 
She dreamed of love, and gratitude, and peace, growing weaker and fainter until what remained was more flawless than any polished gem, more perfectly calm than the stillest lake...and utterly, totally without will or mind.
 
She dreamed of weeping. She dreamed of letting go only reluctantly when the perfection she'd washed clean was pulled gently but firmly from her grasp and taken away.
 
She dreamed that the silver fire faded away, and gave way to void. She dreamed of a high mountain, where she could go if she so chose, and thereby pass from the mortal world and its pain and loss and terrible hardships. Her gods-given task was fulfilled: she could die without shame.
 
...But no. Another, expected door opened. The material world still beckoned, and surely it was and would be full of pain, loss and hardship...but also love, triumph and joy made all the sweeter by contrast. Perhaps she had fulfilled her gods-given task, but there were still tasks ahead to give herself.
 
She turned away from the mountain, and dreamed of life.
 
—
 
This time, her resurrection was dry, and smelled of incense, perfume and wine. As she stirred, she felt silken sheets, then weight, firmness and coarse hot skin beside her.
 
Belgia.
 
Ana opened her eyes, and checked herself. She had fingers again. And...yes, her breasts were back where they belonged, nary a scar or line to show they had ever been carved from her body. Nipples intact, tummy flat and unblemished. She pressed her palm to her chest and felt her heart within, steady and calm. If there was a Tiefling's teeth marks permanently imprinted in it, they didn't impair its beat.
 
She didn't even notice she was weeping until a thick, callused thumb tenderly wiped the tear from her cheek. She turned her head, opened her eyes, peered through watery grief into the tusked face of the woman she loved.
 
Belgia rested her forehead and nose against Ana's, cupped her face, understood, and forgave. "...You loved her," she murmured.
 
Ana couldn't summon the strength to speak, but she could nod, sniffling miserably. Belgia kissed her forehead.
 
"You did her right," she said. "I guess it worked, huh?"
 
Theagan's voice gently cut into their moment. She sounded soft, and just as drained as Ana felt "If it didn't, you wouldn't be up and about yet."
 
Belgia turned, and Ana sat up: Theagan was seated at her desk, a quill pen and journal set aside next to her. She looked different, somehow. Something in the way she carried herself, less of the bookish mage and more...something else.
 
More like Azine had.
 
"...You have her?"
 
Theagan shook her head. "I have energy. So much of it. A whole soul's worth and more, charged by your own martyric energies and rendered stable. But of Azine herself..." she shook her head with. "Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even the gods themselves could restore her, now."
 
"I thought...an echo, a trace, something..." Ana whimpered, but Theagan shook her head again, more firmly.
 
"None of her uniqueness touched me. If any part of her lives on at all, it's in you, Ana. It was your soul that burned hers clean."
 
Ana looked inwards, searching for...something. Anything. A voice, a presence, a warmth. Any lingering echo at all of the powerful, bewitching, enthralling woman who had somehow sauntered into her life and owned her from the moment their eyes first met.
 
She found nothing. Pain welled up in her heart and mind again, prickling behind her eyes.
 
Theagan swept across the room and knelt with her. "Ana. We saved her," she stressed. "YOU saved her."
 
Something small and warm cuddled up to Ana's side. She looked down: Nory stroked her arm, kissed her shoulder, then leaned in. Mithinie's slim, firm figure cuddled up to her and Ana felt the weight of her elfen friend's head resting on her shoulder. Belgia's strong arms encircled them all.
 
There were others, too: Hada and Numé, reaching in to lay their hands on her and bless her. Theagan's hands on her knees. She was glad to see them. She really was. The cold hole in her heart filled and felt a little warmer, thanks to them.
 
But she knew it would never quite go away.
 
___
 
They held a funeral for Azine out in the desert. Curiously, her body had not burned away to nothing upon death, but instead remained as she had been at the moment Theagan murdered her. They cleaned her with water, rather than magic, until there was no more gore on her skin. They wrapped her in white cloth, until the deep, fatal cut in her throat was hidden.
 
They didn't touch her face. Her last resting expression was peaceful, a small smile turning her lips upward, nobody wanted to ruin that. Only the fact that she was cold, immobile and heavy spoke to the fact that she was truly gone.
 
None of them quite knew what to say. For Ana, the words of faith she knew seemed inappropriate. The Gods themselves had stated certainly that Azine was truly and irrevocably damned, which just...seemed unfair. Perhaps Azine had sacrificed her life and very soul for selfish reasons, simply to escape eternal torment...but Ana couldn't help but feel that there'd been a true goodness lurking under the sadism, murder and will to dominate. Azine had been a predator and a murderer, yes...but scrupulously consensual.
 
It was giving Ana a crisis of faith. She now knew, beyond any possibility of doubt, that there was a divine plan and she had served a role in it. Indeed, she still might. But what good was it when it involved creating a soul with such darkness in it, just to be sacrificed? How could the gods call themselves good when they set a life on that kind of a course?
 
She couldn't find it in her to pray. What point was there in praying for a soul that simply didn't exist any longer? What good was there in saying words over the empty vessel that could never be refilled?
 
Theagan found some good ones anyway.
 
"She is gone, forever. She touched our lives, though: she taught us, she changed us, she set the course of our futures. She has done a service to the world unlike any other since the old Avnethi, and even once we here have passed and her name is forgotten, the ripples she sent out into the world will never fade. In that sense, she is immortal."
 
It was enough. Ana kissed Azine's cool forehead, stroked a stray dark hair into place, then stepped back. She took Belgia's hand, stepped back, and watched. With a soft gesture and the faintest whisper, Theagan burned the body with silver fire until the ash blew away on the desert breeze. They watched until every last fleck was gone, to mingle with the sands.
 
And then, they turned and went home.
 
—
 
THREE MONTHS LATER
 
Ana squirmed on the altar, testing her bonds. She was held perfectly securely, naked and spread, not that she really wanted to escape. It was just that she couldn't NOT squirm, when Mithinie was practicing every trick she'd ever learned between her thighs.
 
To either side of her, Belgia, Nory, Hada and Numé stood ready with their sacrificial blades and expressions of mild, amused envy. Any one of them would have loved to take her place, but Ana had won the draw. The fantasy of those sharp knives thrusting into her flesh, as they surely would in a few minutes, was making Mithinie's oral expertise even more potent.
 
It wasn't for fun, of course. They were sacrificing her for a purpose.
 
Despite her new talents, Theagan had predictably failed to keep the secret of martyric magic contained. Her colleagues at the College of Magery went and published everything, just as she'd said they would and in defiance of her warnings.
 
Theagan's reply was to resign.
 
She didn't need the college any longer, after all. The resurrections and magical artefacts that the College's resources had previously brought her were redundant now, given that she had the same energy source as the very gods used at her fingertips. Azine's sacrifice had elevated Theagan to the power of an arch-cleric or more. She could resurrect her friends almost without effort, and each such ritual taught her more and more about how to preserve the power she commanded. All of the energy to restore Ana to life after this would come from Ana's own martyric surge, not from the soul energy permanently bound to Theagan. Azine's soul energy was a precious and finite resource, after all: none of them wanted to waste it.
 
Everything came with a price, though, and the price Theagan had paid was a steep one: she couldn't die.
 
Nobody outside their little circle would have thought of that as a price, of course. So long as Theagan's soul was empowered with Azine's martyric energies, her flesh would remain young, her body whole and protected from harm. To the uninitiated, a blessing. To Ana, as a convert to the Avnethi faith, it was a terrible sacrifice to ask of somebody. Death was sacred. Death was holy. To be robbed of it...There were times she felt very sorry for Theagan.
 
There were other times when she admired her friend greatly for what she'd given up.
 
Of course, the old Avnethi doctrine had been a faith for a different time. In the modern age, without the Maw-That-Waits, the Avnethi lessons were...different. Theagan spent much of her time trying to write a sequel to the Avnethi holy book and adapt its philosophy for a world of gods, souls, resurrection and afterlives.
 
Ana knew why she was struggling: she herself still wrestled with a crisis of faith. This was all part of the plan, she knew. The gods, for their own reasons, seemed to approve of the return of the Avnethi cult, though for now it was only practiced by seven: herself, Belgia, Mithinie, Nory, Hada and Numé, with Theagan as their High Priestess.
 
What did the gods know? Why unleash the power of martyric magic now, in this form, so ripe for exploitation and abuse? Theagan's conclusion was that there was something that (whisper it) frightened the gods themselves. Perhaps they foresaw some threat. Ana had meditated and prayed for some time before being forced to agree. The gods were preparing them for something truly terrible. It was the only explanation that made sense.
 
Hence today's ritual. If the Avnethi faith was to return, it required consecrated ground, a headquarters, a place to grown from. It required a temple. With a fragment of Azine's energy, guided and strengthened by a martyric ritual, they would have exactly that.
 
All Ana had to do was cum. And all it took to make her do so was when Theagan, still chanting, set her blade across Ana's throat and pressed, too gently to cut, firmly enough to feel.
 
Ana's breathy gasps and moans collapsed into a long cry of release and pleasure. "Aaaaooohhh...FUCK! DO IT!! KILL MEEE!!!"
 
Her friends murdered her. Ana gasped and arched, shuddered uncontrollably as their knives stabbed into her breast, her belly, her womb, her heart. Theagan's long, drawn cut passed cleanly through flesh and bone before scraping across stone, leaving Ana gleefully beheaded for the second time in her life. She swung by the hair from her friend's hand, treated to the rare privilege of getting to see her own body from a different angle.
 
Gods...was it wrong to find the sight of her own decapitated corpse so beautiful?
 
There was a surge, a rumble. Magical power flooded from Theagan's fingertips, catalyzed and focused by the sacrificial ritual. As Ana's vision faded to gray, she saw the walls of the New Avnethi temple rise from the earth all around her, and smiled before falling gleefully once again into death.
 
Once again, she dreamed of the mountain and once again it called to her...but she was immune to its call, now. That was not the fate she wanted. There was much to do first, though. Many deaths and resurrections ahead of her, but she saw clearly what was at the far end of them all. One day, Ana knew, she would spend her very soul on something wonderful.
 
And what happier way was there to live?