***The Infernal Plane of Lust***

***Amon***

“You have got to be kidding me!” I cursed silently while I watched the humongous demon lumber onwards like an unstoppable titan, deserving its moniker in every sense of the word. Each step shook the world beneath its feet, his lesser kin truly nothing more than flies hovering around it. Humorously, was indeed reminiscent of a cow that was swarmed by insects.

The creature was somewhat ape-shaped in its proportions, with the arms much too long compared to its legs. A single eye roamed the battlefield with mad, jittery motions. Unlike other demons, this creature had no profound horns, and instead showed off two impressive tusks that glowed with runic spellwork.

For a moment, I wondered whether this was really a demon with intelligence or just some animalistic inhabitant of this realm. But if it wasn’t intelligent, then how could anyone control a creature such as this?

I was still contemplating the hilarious command to stop this behemoth when Ebandon’s warband directed all their magical ranged attacks at the creature. Huge spell mandalas flared up along the entire battle line, sending forth an endless rain of magical attacks.

A few spells struck home, barely injuring the target.

Their efforts quickly proved futile when the monster’s ridiculously long tongue snaked out of its mouth, channelling enough magical energy to fry a normal demon within a breath’s moment. It drew out a set of runes, creating a ritual-level spell matrix with as much effort as I would need to erect a personal shield for myself.

Thus, my earlier question about its intelligence was answered without a doubt.

Hundreds of spells were intercepted and even more pelted the blue barrier that sprung into existence around the creature. The bubble wobbled, but it held steady and prevented anything from even touching the beast. For a moment I thought they would get through, but whatever spell the titan used, it held.

Roaring its misgivings, it raised both overly long arms and I only then noticed the many rocks it was carrying in its fists. The throwing motion that came afterward didn’t concern me too much, as I was already trying my best to gain enough height in order to avoid most of what would be coming.

Then I was cursing and beating my wings frantically as I dodged a hail of stones which was wreaking havoc among our ground troops. I had no choice but to dance to the attack’s tune. Most of the projectiles were larger than me and would slap me out of the sky with ease, shield, or no shield.

I was just about done with evading the literal hill of debris when I realized that the creature had already dug its claws into the ground, readying another attack.

Reaching out, I pointed my palm at the enemy, hoping that my new magics would prove efficient enough against the monster’s barrier. The magical energy gathered in my palm, and I concentrated, putting as much power into the attack as possible.

“Disrupt Permixtio!”

A streak of red energy shot out from my palm, penetrating the titan’s barrier. It impacted the creature’s chest and, accompanied by an impressive explosion, dug a crater into it. The titan didn’t even flinch and lumbered on, but its eye focused in my direction, showing me that it had taken notice of the attack.

I felt a torrent of souls enter my soul-well as they were forcefully disconnected from the behemoth, showing me that this creature must have slain innumerable foes. It had lost a few souls to my spell, but withstood the attack just fine!

Unfortunately for me, it didn’t seem to care at all about the loss it had incurred. The moment the injury had been received, it was already healing at an impressive rate. Strings of bulbous flesh shot out from the wound, connecting with each other to form a veiny scar that was already in the process of healing over. It pulsed with vitality, barely causing the foe to slow down.

“Curse the Infernum!” I couldn’t help but express my displeasure. How many souls did this creature possess that it didn’t even care about chaos magic that directly attacked one’s soul well? Had it even noticed the loss or was I like a mosquito that had taken a drop of blood?

Unfortunately, I was proved to be wrong a moment later. It didn’t exactly ‘not care’, though I guessed that the reaction was more one of annoyance than genuine inconvenience.

Howling, the behemoth opened its mouth and drew out the runes for another spell matrix with its tongue. Only the size and obviousness of the spell allowed me to react in time with a spell of my own. There was no way that I was going to block what was coming.

“Teleport!”

I dematerialized just in time because a beam of plasma incinerated the space I had just been in. Instead, it went on to obliterate everything beyond.

Unimpeded it continued, punching a perfectly circular hole into the flying troops of Khorne’s main battlegroup far behind me. There was no outcry of death, since those who were affected simply vaporized, causing the rest to scatter like a genuine flock of birds that were trying to avoid a predator.

There was nothing I could do but watch impotently from a hundred metres to the left where my spell had teleported me to.

“This thing is above our paygrade,” I mumbled. “If I only had another nuke at hand. I could shove it up that thing’s ass and watch the mayhem that would ensue.”

Weak.

“What!?” I complained to the other, which I had done more often recently. “Do you want me to arm-wrestle with that thing? It shrugged off the Chaos spell and I have maybe two more of those in me until I have to recharge.”

My mana manipulation made it easy to cast spells far beyond my limited mana pool, but even I had limits when it came to channelling energy. There was a point at which I had to retreat because I would inevitably fail the next spell due to a lack of concentration.

Well, if you had bothered to learn ‘real’ Chaos magic, then this wouldn’t be a problem. The solution is so obvious, and yet you are unable to see it. It’s like you are missing an essential part of your brain.

But excuse me. What am I talking about? Aren’t you ‘indeed’ missing a part of yourself? Me. Let’s show everyone our true power, now that I have more control.

“Hah!” I found that hilarious. “ What are you gonna do more than I can? Am I supposed to cut its Achilles heel?”

Wait. Did creatures like this behemoth even have tendons? In order to support such a humongous body, their biology would have to be entirely different from what I was used to. Normal flesh would simply crumble at this size. Or was it circumventing the laws of physics with magic, as much as the laws of physics applied in the Infernum? Maybe a well-placed counterspell would bring the thing to its knees?

Don’t worry your little head. There is a solution. After all, the bigger you are, the bigger is your weakness.

Even an attack that was designed to attack an opponent’s souls did nothing more than inconvenience the beast. I may be a fool compared to my other half, but at least I had the excuse of inexperience. I wasn’t the part of myself that had the knowledge of a Demon Lord shoved into its consciousness until it spilled at the seams.

I probably shouldn’t comment on that.

Anyway, as a soul mage you don’t have to care about your enemy’s biology. All you have to do is to take their original soul, and no matter their size or power, they will fall before you like any other demon. Isn’t that why demons fear true soul magic so much, and incidentally why your succubus girlfriend is so respected by the others? Without the foundation of their very being, a demon unravels and will be undone no matter how many souls he has to throw in the way of your attacks.

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I halted, wondering. “How am I supposed to find that one soul? Am I supposed to get Isabella to latch onto that thing’s…” My eyes wandered downwards, but thankfully the Infernal thing didn’t have a gender? “As it may be, am I supposed to ruffle through the thing’s stash of souls until I find the right one? How many souls does a behemoth like that even have? Millions? It would take days! I think its escorts would love nothing more than to smack some fly who landed on the monster’s shoulder.”

If you allow, I would teach you.

My hand twitched, and I had that distinctive feeling that came along with the other trying to do something to my body, but it wasn’t able to when I was conscious of its meddling. We had our hands full in the week after it made itself known with figuring out who exactly was in control of this body.

Which was definitely me!

It was a question of whether I was willing to give up some control in my pursuit of power.

But was it truly giving up control when the other was just another facet of myself? Shouldn’t I rather strive to…

I hesitated to continue the thought but did so in the end.

… to become one with myself rather than to enforce this split personality of mine?

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly while I tried my best to relax.

My body moved, cutting a palm with my new spell staff, to hold forth a bleeding fist infused with magical power while a spell matrix formed that I had never seen before. It looked similar to the teleportation spell that I had adopted recently into my portfolio. And yet...

A single droplet of blood fell, impacting the swirling vortex of energy that the other had conjured into existence. A clear sound echoed in my ears, and reality cracked open. A little portal flared to life, seemingly shattering space and time within its sphere of influence. It looked like a broken mirror that didn’t reflect but granted access to another world.

The ever-changing sight of the other side made the hairs on my neck stand up. Unimaginable power seeped out from that other place, promising everything and nothing, creation and destruction, eternity, and utter oblivion. And then my mouth moved.

“I open ye! The gate of beginnings and ends, of the waking dream. That which fails comprehension, come forth to gorge on the world!”

“Chaos, heed my call! I wish for you to grant me power, to kill the world, to kill them all!”

The power spilling from the open gateway wrapped around me, welcoming me like an old friend instead of granting me the madness and utter oblivion that anyone else might have received from calling upon it. And then the other laughed as the world turned a hazy red, speckled with countless orbs of light. The behemoth facing me was a star compared to myself, with me being just a little candlelight. The creature was a font of power and souls far beyond anything I knew.

But there was a single spec of energy in its single eye. A mote of red that was different from the rest, the origin of its very being.

Laughing crazily, I shot forward with incredible speed.

My flight was far faster than I had ever been in my life. Dizzily, I studied the spell matrix that the other had used to achieve this. Unlike my own technique using my wings, this was raw powered levitation, combined with an energy field that guided the air around me in order to prevent friction.

The wing of demons that guarded the behemoth could do nothing to stop us. The other simply ripped through them like an adult going through a group of toddlers.

One brave demon who barred our path exploded into a fine mist upon touching the aura of chaotic energies that surrounded us. Another lost the lower half of his body, falling towards the ground and screaming his agony all the way.

Then we were through the defenders, flowing around the behemoth’s fist as it tried to whack us out of the sky, and a moment later I punched through the soft tissue in its eye, seeking that little mote of energy.

Any other form of attack might have just blinded the beast until it regenerated, but when my hand closed around that intangible mote of power I felt the titan shudder in fear!

***The Infernal Plane of Lust***

***Isabella***

“Your boy has a few more tricks up his sleeve than I thought,” Jada commented while feeding loudly and unashamedly on a sack of popcorn that she had brought to the couch in one of our castle’s living rooms.

I drew in my legs and hugged my knees while I watched the huge wide-screen TV that was showing us different parts of the battle. The device was fed by a divination array that one of my more scientifically inclined sisters had created.

Normally, I would have been there to help Amon, but Khorne himself was acting as the legion commander, and I had no desire to meet the man.

Danielle had taken a break from her passion for sculpting for once and was sitting with us on the couch. Though, the artist in her wouldn’t be satisfied with simply doing nothing, so she sat with a board and a sketching pen, drawing something.

Leaning over, I studied her work of art. “Should I be worried that you are drawing my boyfriend?”

My older sister blinked and tore her eyes away from the wide-screen TV, smiling. Despite that, her hand never stopped sketching out the scene she had in her mind. “Am I hearing a smidgen of jealousy in there, dear? I am sure you aren’t so vain as to deny sharing such an Adonis of a male?”

I stiffened.

Unlike the rest of my far older family, the triplets were the approachable ones. Not even the bond of blood could overcome a rift of several centuries, making it hard on the child who had only a few decades on her back when compared to sisters who counted their age in millenia.

But as far as my forty sisters went, the triplets were the closest to me. They were sociable and seemed to care about me, even if they didn’t always show it very well. Even so, there was a line when it came to my man!

I was about to burst when Danielle started laughing. “That’s so precious! Thank you for that expression! I will make sure to sculpt it in my next great work.”

Someone ran a finger down my spine, causing me to twitch and slap the offender’s hand away.

Claire laughed from behind me. “Don’t tease our little Isa so. I am sure that she will be willing to share once she has her relationship with this Amon figured out. Maybe we could have a fivesome later on!”

“He would die!” I rebutted the mere idea vehemently! No matter how strong the male, he would never survive a night with four succubi. Not to mention that if I would let the matter slide with the triplets, Amon would find himself crowded soon enough by all forty of my sisters. And once Mom heard of it…

I shuddered. Let’s just say that she was the reason for our liberal sharing when it came to men who stumbled into our castle.

My mother’s head spy didn’t even blink. “I am sure we could feed him with some vitality-rich food. Haven’t you praised his prowess yourself? Which brings to mind, when I was sneaking through Kasdeya’s laboratories I found out that she was researching mana to vitality conversion just recently. Your guy has a thing with creating stuff, so I am sure he would come up with something that helps him to survive if we nudge him in the right direction.”

I hadn’t even formally presented Amon to my mother and my stupid sisters were already forging plans to entangle him in a harem. Not that I could present him to Mom, given the circumstances. She would probably smite him on the spot just to keep the peace! But I also wasn’t willing to ‘share’ him just like that. I was more than capable of fulfilling any dreams he might have. Sexual or otherwise! He would suffer no unfulfilled desires in my care!

“Oh, wow!” Jada gasped and pointed at the screen. “He punched the titan in the eye! That takes guts. If I didn’t already have my Shaxy baby, I would be tempted to join in on a little fun.”

My attention snapped back to the surveillance screen. It was showing the shuddering titan howling while having sunken to its knees! The creature was clearly in a state of high distress, as it was doing its best to gouge out its own eye in an attempt to get out whatever had gotten in there!

“I am so glad that we have that on record,” Claire commented. “I am sure that the others will want to see that.”

Danielle shrugged. “While it’s impressively entertaining, I doubt that the others would want to waste their time with-”

Her words were cut short when Khorne’s legion directed its long-range spell projectors at the titan, punching through its shield and coring out its chest cavity with a single, gigantic spell. The resulting flood of blood and gore spilled forth like a tidal wave, rushing over Ebandon’s warband and covering their ground troops in ickiness.

The titan went limp at that, its arms falling to its sides as it let out one last pained shudder.

I sighed in relief when one of the screen’s scenes showed Amon trying to peel himself out of the creature’s eyeball. He had delivered yet another impossibility.

“Oh, oh!” Danielle pointed at another corner of the screen, where a dimensional rift had opened in order to admit a new participant to the battlefield.

My eyes widened when I recognized the bloated figure of none other than Ostreios himself, gnawing on the remains of a white-feathered wing! The Lord of Gluttony had somehow found his way back from whatever dimension we had left him in. And going by the number of demons that were tumbling out of the rift behind him, he had his entire legion with him!