Zeke stepped forward, only one thing on his mind. Abby waited, her cheeks flushed with obvious desire. She was practically shaking with it. As she gazed upon him, she bit her lip and took a tentative step in his direction. The dead bodies of all the assailants were quickly forgotten as they embraced.
Her body felt so perfect – so right – as it pressed against him, and her hand quivered as she fingered the bulging muscles of his torso. Then, they kissed, but even as their tongues intertwined, Zeke squeezed, and with all his strength.
Because he knew it wasn’t real.
She wasn’t Abby. Not really. She looked like the woman he’d once professed to love, but all the details were wrong. She was too compliant. Too in awe of him. Abby was never like that. This version seemed like she was entirely dependent on him for an identity, as if she was completely defined by her lust.
And given the setting, the danger was obvious.
She gasped as her chest compressed, but she couldn’t break free of the kiss. She never even tried. She only became more insistent, and Zeke’s desire grew so potent that he could scarcely deny it. Only through a sheer force of willpower was he able to stop himself from plunging happily ahead and enjoying what she so clearly wanted to give him.
Even when her bones broke and blood spurted from her body, she pressed against him. Zeke’s mind screamed at him to break away from the kiss – even as her acrid blood filled his mouth – but willpower was a finite thing, and he’d spent his entire store to kill the creature in his arms.
And creature it was.
When it finally fell limp, it was nothing but a sack of bones. However, the shape of its body had changed entirely. It still had a mouth – of sorts – but the thing’s skin was a storm cloud grey and the mouth was more suited to a lamprey than a human being. More distressingly, its lower half extended into the ground, and when Zeke looked around at all the bodies, he saw nothing but grey tentacles lying about.
The implications were clear.
He hadn’t fought a multitude of opponents. Rather, he’d battled a single monster.
What’s more, he’d been destined to win the fight and claim his reward. What would have happened if he’d lain with that creature? Zeke had no idea, but he had no doubts that it would have been horrible.
The entire encounter had embraced his lust – both for Abby and for battle – to a degree that he’d never expected. It wasn’t magical, but rather, purely psychological in nature. It took advantage of his natural instincts, offering him precisely what he wanted. It was a trap of the purest sort, and he had very nearly fallen prey to the creature’s predations. Going forward, Zeke knew he needed to take care, lest he find himself on the wrong end of something similar.
Because he knew that his trials had only begun. After all, he’d spent months wandering the Plains of the Forgotten. Doubtless, the Tempest would be just as difficult – and time-consuming – to traverse.
With the creature’s true nature revealed, Zeke gained some perspective on the situation. He looked around, and saw that the ruins remained the same as they’d appeared, which was something of a surprise. He’d half expected things to change now that he was in his right mind. The fact that it hadn’t was just proof that there was no magical mind manipulation going on. Rather, the influence was more mundane in nature, which was probably even more frightening. He could fight against magic, but against his own mind? That was a much taller task.
In any case, Zeke knew he couldn’t remain in the same place for long. After all, thousands – if not millions – of harpies were still out there, and as easily slain as they were, he still didn’t want to face more than a few dozen at any given time.
So, he continued on, gradually moving through the ruins. Along the way, he was forced to fight progressively larger groups of harpies. And he discovered that with every ten or so that he faced in any given group, their powers of seduction grew more potent. The increase wasn’t exponential, but even an additive rise was troubling.
Still, Zeke had no choice but to continue, and eventually, he reached the nest.
It was much larger than it had been in his past experience. If there were less than a million harpies present, he would have been surprised, and many of them were the larger, more powerful variants. More distressingly, the one at the center of the nest was obviously stronger than any of the others.
It wasn’t any larger. In fact, it was positively petite, and its body was that of a gymnast. All compact muscle and enticing curves. Because, aside from a pair of wings sprouting from the thing’s back, it looked entirely human. Extremely attractive, too, and in a way Zeke couldn’t even begin to ignore. Mostly, that was because she was very, very naked and obviously entirely unashamed at that state.
For a long moment, Zeke couldn’t tear his eyes away, but eventually, he forced himself to do so. The pull didn’t fade, though. The image of her comely form remained fixed in his mind, taunting him with desire.
Or lust.
That was the point of the current circle of Hell, after all. It was temptation made manifest, and Zeke found it incredibly difficult to resist the pull.
Yet, after a few long minutes of taking one deep breath after another, he managed to corral his desires. Not without difficulty, though. There was something so natural about the idea of succumbing. It was instinctual. Evolutionary. Animalistic. Yet, that was also its weakness, because, for better or worse, Zeke was a thinking a creature. He had reason on his side, and it gave him the ability to resist the pull of his baser instincts.
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The only problem was that, from the results of his previous exploration, he knew that he couldn’t simply go around the enormous nest at the center of the ruins. They were built into the city itself, but the real problem was that there was no path meant to avoid it. If he wanted to continue on his way, he not only needed to brave the dangers of the nest containing millions of harpies, but he would also be forced to overcome his own instincts.
It was not a battle most men would win, and yet, it was the only way through.
So, Zeke steeled himself as best he could, spending hours centering his mind before, at last, he pushed forward. The response was immediate. The moment he came within range of the first few harpies, a wave of compulsive desire slammed into his mind. By that point, he was used to their manipulative tactics, so he forged ahead, slamming his hammer into the enemy one after another.
Soon enough, he found himself surrounded by harpies. The monsters laid constant siege to his mind, but the more insidious aspect of the fight came from within. Zeke reveled in his own bloodlust, slaughtering the things by the hundreds. He lost himself in the battle, and eventually, he also lost track of his own goals.
He didn’t care about getting through the plaza. Instead, he only cared about slaughtering as many as possible. Along the way, he killed hundreds. Then thousands. Tens of thousands. Time passed, much as it had when he struggled against the tempest itself, but he never wavered. He was as inexhaustible as ever, and soon enough, days passed into weeks.
Still, he fought on.
He was a shadow of himself. A creature who only lived for battle. Even if he could have resisted – and that was the furthest thing from what he wanted – that bloodlust was the only reason he managed to resist the more carnal temptations presented by the harpies.
Zeke took thousands of wounds, but with [Hand of Divinity], none were life-threatening. Every sweep of his hammer felled a monster, but his clothing didn’t survive their reprisals. Eventually, he found himself fighting naked, though with how much blood covered him, he might as well have been fully clothed.
It didn’t matter.
Zeke couldn’t bring himself to care about anything but the battle, about slaughtering as many of the monsters as he could. Later, he would realize that the fight was meant to be unwinnable. A temptation that preyed on his desires for battle as much as the lust of a different sort. Yet, Zeke’s inexhaustible nature was more powerful than Hell’s intentions, and eventually, the seemingly innumerable harpies began to thin.
And finally, they were all dead.
All except the single harpy standing against him. She was just as perfectly formed as he’d seen from afar, though with how close she’d come, the effect was even stronger. If she hadn’t been standing there with murder in her eyes, he might have succumbed. However, she’d clearly abandoned any plan of seduction. The wholesale slaughter of her people had driven her into a mad rage, and she’d embraced her own lust for blood at least as thoroughly as Zeke had latched onto his.
In that way, they were perfectly paired.
She threw herself at him, claws glinting in the moonlight. Zeke didn’t have time to wonder when night had fallen. It wasn’t the first, after all. Days had passed during the battle, and he’d never once faltered. He didn’t intend to change that, and he met her charge with one of his own.
She moved like water, slipping aside as he aimed a hammer-strike at her naked torso. Before Zeke knew what had happened, blood sprayed, and a chunk of his torso had been sliced away.
He staggered away, feeling a potent toxin coursing through him.
[Hand of Divinity] took care of that. His flesh didn’t regrow – not immediately – but the flow of blood ceased. Her eyes narrowed in frustration, and it was clear that she recognized the message. She could tear him apart piece by piece, but if she expected him to bleed out, she would be sorely disappointed.
Zeke dropped his hammer.
It was too slow. Too unwieldy. He would fight her hand to hand. Perhaps not the best plan he’d ever had, but in the throes of bloodlust, he couldn’t resist the temptation of returning her attempts to slice him apart by ripping her limb from limb. It was only fair, after all. There was a certain brutal poetry to the notion that, in his violence-addled state, he found more than appealing.
Facing her once again, he rolled his shoulders. He should have felt exhausted. Days – or weeks, for all he knew – of battle should have sapped him of energy. However, he felt as invigorated as if he’d spent days relaxing in the tower. The only downside was that his body had become crisscrossed with so many scars that he scarcely recognized himself.
Or maybe that was a benefit.
“Chicks dig scars.”
“What did you say, human?” the harpy spat. Her voice was just as enticing as her well-formed body. Breathy and deep, but nowhere near masculine.
“Nothing,” he muttered to himself. If Eveline hadn’t been quarantined in her corner of his mind, she would have appreciated his remark. But she remained sequestered, terrified that she would be overcome by the circle’s lust-driven atmosphere.
Zeke clenched his fists, then stepped toward the harpy. She remained in place until he launched an attack. Swaying to the side, she moved almost as quickly as Talia, though far more gracefully. Zeke’s friend was faster, but she moved with an abrupt urgency that felt more like brute-force than out-and-out speed. It didn’t matter, though. The results were the same, and Zeke ended up losing another pound of flesh.
But he didn’t stop, and when she shuddered to a halt, she found his fist already on its way. The harpy blurred, but when she tried to counterattack, her aim was off. She barely scratched him, coming to a stop an instant later. Zeke followed doggedly, having figured out the battle.
Unlike Talia, who could keep up her speed indefinitely, the harpy could only move so rapidly in short bursts. That would have been fine if Zeke had fully succumbed to his blood lust – or desire of another sort – but he was still in control. At least enough to recognize the pattern.
As a result, he took advantage of her weakness, landing a massive blow to the temple that sent her spinning sideways. She recovered quickly, launching into another burst of speed that took a chunk of Zeke’s thigh. Yet, with the strategy uncovered, he knew it was only a matter of time before he emerged victorious.
So, he stuck with it, and for a while, he was only moderately successful. Every punch he landed came at the cost of another hunk of his flesh. Still, with the aid of his massive endurance, natural vitality, and most importantly, [Hand of Divinity], he managed to stay on his feet.
The harpy had no such advantages. In fact, she was a two-trick pony. She had speed, and she had her lust-inducing appearance. In the end, the effect of one landed punch after another took their toll, and her attacks became ever more erratic until, at last, Zeke managed to grab hold of her.
That ended the fight, and just as he had with the Abby-monster, he crushed her to death.
It wasn’t lost on Zeke that he hadn’t truly resisted the temptation that had set upon him. Indeed – he’d fully surrendered to the battle lust that should have spelled his doom. Yet, when pitched against his endurance, the circle of hell had lost.
There was something to learn from that, though even as the slain harpy fell from his arms, Zeke was at a loss as to what knowledge he was meant to take from it.