The cantina in the warrens of Pandemonium was called Twilight, and Twilight, Adrestia had decided, after so many days of a stakeout’s diet and thrills, was an utterly abysmal shithole. She knew this was a fair and just slander because she had been scouting the oozing orifice as it was inhabited by and spewed back out rotted denizen wastrels and infernal scum. Being a Laconian artisan, she had frequently utilized her gift of grafting greasy guises, she would slither about as one of them, carousing within in the club’s bowels to mask her surveillance. The capacity of the spot was often grotesquely engorged, but she varied her nested spying with camping as an inebriated vagrant out in a nearby alleyway, inventorying its inhabitants and soulless patrons. Time invested yielded that the skewered sweet meat kabobs were good on a Thursday, but other than that, she was tempted just to scour this hemorrhaging anal sore clean - down to the very slab it stood on. She could do just that, she knew by her unseen King’s inevitability, she could rain down wrath upon their scaly heads effortlessly, the act just lacked a certain poetic stylization is all. It would be satisfying, yes, but it would also cause quite a scene. That amount of talent leaves a signature trail, always, and the number one rule of surviving as a eminent bounty hunter was the grim reality that there was always a bigger predator scouting in the vast cosmic sea that could easily levy her scent if she left it so sloppily. It was a better professional practice to spread her scent amongst many bystanders and witnesses - to not leave a trail to be sleuthed. It was a better and more proven tactic to wait patiently, collect knowledge and discern paterns to avoid such dire straits and exposures, to not act before a predestined time and ignore the growls of her other’s stomach for carnage. It was best to not resort to sack and sunder the seedy underground dwelling of her informants. These proven learning outcomes of previous ventures had shown her to identify the weak spot in every situation, preferably not on the fly. Given time to collect reconnaissance, such as the case of club Twilight, shit - they were utterly fucked and wouldn’t be given quarter, behest it was intentional stratagem. Soon she would knock her boots clean of this hole and move on to the next target and ebb closer and closer to him, Ammon Jarro. The stage magician that threatened the source of her prowess and unraveler of her lost dreams.
She held back from laying waste to the shithole because she needed to prod the slime mind of it’s owner, a soul trafficker named Pigg the Gent. Often was the case when a soul was released from it’s fleshy meat vehicle, that Death would guide it to the scales of judgement. The planes of the divine and the infernal weren’t predestined by actions and choices, as so many were lead to believe. No, it was the simple weighing of one’s heart be it burdened verses entirely unencumbered, weighed against a feather. When the soul sees it’s mortal heart laying there at this pinnacle moment of impasse, it is the soul itself, not Death and not the scale that decides judgment. It is the individual’s reflection on their life.
Pigg the Gent had a warrant, a bounty placed on him because he would often hijack these poor souls on their way to the scales and offer them an alternative method of attonement. What they were offered was a half reincarnation and what was the actuality was that their souls would be used or consumed within his club, Twilight. Pigg had it coming, but first Adrestia needed to know from him how to get to his boss. The new usurper to the Ninth ring of the infernal plane, Ob Nixilus. She would wrench upon Pigg’s heavy brass septum, knocking it again and again against his pork-jowled face until he gave her what she came for. Then Death will have it’s due, the bounty would be satisfied by his death and shaming. Then she would perhaps burn it all to the ground, it was very tempting to fantasize about this after being on stakeout over these weeks.
She had been progressing through the infernals meritocracy, scaling the heights of ranks and hierarchy methodically, rung by rung climbing to new marks. When a new name was gurgled by some toady-looking pimp or corrupted deacon of darkness, even the Laconian Choir itself. Adrestia would then reported it to her sponsor to fact check and move on to the next exotic local scribbed on parchments left at dead drops. This bile ranch tonight was just begging for her flair for renovating hellscape architecture and arterial cast-off spatter patterning. It was an art and it gave her meaning for now. The mission fed and sustained her temporarily, it wasn’t a full meal, but it was the only invitation to reclaim her own back story that was hidden from her by trauma and the path that had lead her here.
Adrestia was scribing and refining a list and checking it off steadily. The pay had been in bulk short term memory, theirs or hers (when her client could access such things). This time though, her stowaway in their commingled minds did something surprising - it soothed her. Her need for the memories was significantly less after It applied it’s embrocation to her fragmented mind, and though she knew this “aid” had a twist to it, she also could not help herself, it wanted her to conform to an addiction. There was no need to resist it’s will and nature yet, she felt self assured of this. This was meaningful because her targets were vile villains who preyed on the unsuspecting, the sleepers: those that lacked the insight to peer past the veil and there were plenty of them. The fuckers just backfilled their ranks anyway, overnight it seemed, caring not to question how a superior had fallen (by her bladed hand) only to take their superiors horrid mantle. She collected the intel but there was always more chum clogging up this colon-world it seemed, waiting to expel more and more negative energy. So she saw a benefit to sundering the scum before it piled too high, keep them off balance in their lust to just keep ranking up, this kept them disorganized and an easier enemy to hunt.
Adrestia, the sanguine artist, had been given a new brush and with it she could apply a whole otherworldly set of colour from out of space and out of plane and reason that was unbeknownst to the human, ogloidal, insectoid, yith, divine or demonic eye or eyes, applied to canvases of flesh that she stacked high for the unseen god’s favor. She was apotheon and avatar, blessed with meaning and with her an artistry and talent, her masked lord was most pleased. She was fiercely patient, committed to a sporting kill and tempering into something beyond scared tavern murmurings and wanted postings: she was becoming legendary. She was the King in Yellow’s champion, a dutiful harbinger with flesh of his flesh enveloping and slowly corrupting her.
This companion within her, there was a relationship, an understanding. It was an astral thing and its stars and formlessness saw in every direction, simultaneously. She imagined some arachnious thing made of eyes and imagined how vulnerable and horrible a thing like that may appear tangibly on its own, but that was just it - this creature only appeared as she asked it to. Her serape, her bracers (in which she concealed many devices and playthings), her weapons that she chose it to be (sometimes it reacted and chose for her) it was a clever and sinister thing. A rogue’s lock pick, a fury a darts, a scythe or a tower aegis in just a thought. In one instance, it became a mirror, a vortex, or whipping tendrils with a tensile gravitational strength. The mirror was quite unnerving however, she never saw what the view glass had shown her mark, it only left it quite mad - gibbering and spattering there on it’s throne. This was the Yellow King speaking through it, she supposed - not just influencing its rule, but claiming dominion over it.
It emboldened her, spoke knowledge to her, offered its own insight, and sang when her blood and passion ran hot. This happened in battle and it pleasured her immensely when she was able to dance and leap and execute with horrible accuracy (it fixed her angles and positions in queer little nudges and adjustments). They were growing fond of each other and she knew it was all part of its ploy. She was cautious but even to that sliver of thought…it was never conscious, she buried that final guard deep where it couldn’t read it from her. It was within the same deep well in her mind that she kept the memory of the glade and a beautiful day and a nearly finished portrait on canvas.
This new artistry, her craft as she focused on the hunt wasn’t without its rewards and satisfactions. She brushed on the neurotoxic resin to the razor-fine darts she carried, the skin of Hastur forming protective gloves as she worked. These wicked little barbs, for example, stacked pleasantly under her left bracer. With a kick of her wrist and a push from her companion, they were a stealthy little tool she had used to bypass beefy guards or their dogs. Neither of them cared for mongrels or their keen senses, often acrid clouds would be deployed from wafer-thin caltrops that could be crushed and dashed into an opponents face or dropped behind if she were pursued. The clouds would effectively block a canine’s senses temporarily or create a pungent smoke cloud that would aid an escape. Not that she had met such an opponent yet, she always planned to meet one though.
Tonight was an especially dark and overcast evening. The mark would be guarded by at least two but she had been tainting the kitchen implements slowly on the excursions into the beast’s belly. The kettles and knives, spoons and tankards had been all laced effectively but still subtly. This drug had enough powdered silver combined with dusts from planes of the divine it would certainly dull and slow them, though it really wasn’t all that necessary. A professional in this trade doesn’t take chances though, expect the unexpected. Expect that the cast out crime lords that succor and tempt human souls for enjoyment were ready to be attacked. The powder that she had used to carry the blessed narcotic could not be washed away by normal means and even the scurge that gathered into shitholes such as this were frugal enough to not cleanse their finery with fire. How ironic that a primal force often associated with their very nature could liberate them tonight.
She had been smoking outside of Twilight for over an hour breathing in the fumes. The pipe was far more pleasant than the filth coming to and fro from the cantina. She had no memory why but she preferred a mark in an open spanse verses the cubistic structures that architecture afforded her and her movements. There were far to many corners and entrances and exits to account for. Too many bystanders that may get caught up in her intention. Too many to account for and she would prefer to not sully her reputation, not on this back wash mark.
She had worked her way through a hedge maze of errands, escorts, muling or couriering information, ambushes, sabotagery, and assassinations just to get this cock slime’s whereabouts ….she had to wait patiently until the din of the crowd died down a bit. Too many innocents to account for, one or several were acceptable sure, for none escaped the yellow king’s sigil once sighted but if she could avoid being seen by too many - that would be best.
It was her own method, sure, none the less it always felt cleaner to get what one came for as efficiently as possible. Mayhaps to have a single observer to survive the ordeal unscathed, physically at any rate, for the tale would sound so tall and full of mystique….and that was good for future contracts. After all, it didn’t matter much how well escorted the denizens of the infernal were. They all deserved a reckoning if they roamed these levels.
She approached the security grunt, passed the heavy jawed and leathery maned ape thing a card upright towards it. It grunted at the pretty picture of the chariot and pocketed it inside it’s suit coat, offering her a glance at a second pair of shoulders, arms and hilts of armaments beneath. This was supposed to be a warning to her behavior and intent but the gifted tarot was of her and she wasn’t troubled.
Pressing past the ornate door and was concussed by the auditory assault of percussion and toxic music all meant to dull the unprepared. She slinked in but observation was unavoidable, the tricorn and serape were garnering there own prestige by now. She found a space and a table and meant to set them both there, they dissolved neatly as her will asked of them. Nearly the infernal and thrawls accompanying those patrons that were near the entrance looked on but either didn’t notice the dissaperation or just didn’t seem to care. Ether of lost souls stolen from Death’s door was being consumed in many chalices and adorned mugs, there were other substances too, likely just as volatile.
In a nearby alcove, a slender figure was transmuting with accentuated gesticulation several thin crystal vessels from clear liquid to another darkish plum coloured refreshment. The attendees in laurels and thorns, fangs and talons applauded the meager blasphemous trick. The bat-snoutted, leather-scaled, and garbaged breathed, the rabid poets, the manipulative scholars, and whores (literally and figuratively) all congregated in these places making jest of the beliefs of the material realms (Lacon was one of many). Twilight held access to the obfuscate markets that tempted the pious and made the flesh sing in out-worldly pleasures beyond comprehension. Inhabitants were the breakers of will, devotion and love, they lurked in both shadows and broad daylight for the opposite sides of a coin were closest confidants, whispering their manipulative poison into thirsty ear orifices. Many copulated together in places like Twilight. They sold what the human souls ached for, they gave freely the things dreamt of but those who were unwilling to labor and sacrifice for. They gave it through pact and prayer, they met over loved-ones recently departed tombs and on holiday gatherings. They were found in wicked places and within the lining of a wino’s expended skin. They rarely directly intervened with the mortal plane, but they influenced its bias and sway selfishly. They were asked and beckoned for, they were often called saviors and heroines, but all were doom to those who called upon their services. One of these fiend’s knew the bloody way to access Ob Nixilus, a recently promoted scab-dick. She would squeeze airway, purify them rectally with blessed boot and holy water and smash horny-foreheads until they gave him up.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
With a pirouette, and a shivering, slithering transformation as she spun, a lavish ankle-length gown of sheer material covering her now. Only the thigh-high boots remained, hugging those powerful extremities. The material shimmered and showed her lithe musculature and the many winding vines of body art that thrilled the ensnared eye, regardless of sexual preference and appetite. The twined and encircled provocative piercings not so subtly placed. No other garment was visible to them, not a one…and yet she was not displayed or exposed true to them, this was a glamour as well. From raven-black hair (that held an odd indigo hue in the right light), to her nails to the jewels upon aforementioned piercings.
She bought dregs of wine and sat in laps. She laughed at jokes, twirling hair all the time…all the while the smoke that she had imbibed outside, while sharpening her senses was now being released and passed about the place in these flirtations. As a succubous played with one of her nipple piercings, admiring the onyx gem set there - a subtle pheromone was passing through the space also. This paired with the drug lacing….she had already won against the fools that had allowed there respiratory routines to remain, these biological behaviors, like eating and defecating, weren’t necessary to their kind - they just did it to be closer to their prey, their envy, their lust and jealousy. All hubris.
The succubus and incubus were dancing with her now, his male-like protrusion begged entrance to her back-side right there in that place, but unknowingly these two minions were at epicenter for the ongoing pheromonal attack that was overwhelming all of their paranormal senses in the club. The horny dullards were already defeated, the succubus did have nice hands though, she noted as the grinding continued. The music fell off-beat, the turn-tablist was being affected and Adrestia grew concerned that mayhaps this would give too much of a warning. So smoothly, with a catlike smile to him, she dismissed the invitation from barbed penial intrusion and poisoned salival trappings to go stimulate him to remain “on-point” and on beat for the time being.
The music mixing maestro of the malevolent saw her approach through glowing wraith-like eyes that were in several sets of drowsy and delapitated. He had surpassed sloppy scratches and was approaching a state they would cause quite a stir if she allowed its hasty progression.
Her open-handed slap, followed immediately by a kiss on the cheek roused the bard of bass beats most effectively, the erotic stimulater salve in her lips and she pressed them to the reddened slap mark she had made found its way to violating the nerves of whatever served as a coccyx within him. She had about ten minutes until his heart gave out, but until then he was an enraptured pawn hellbent on mixing up “Miss Alissa” by the Eagles of Death Metal.
Pigg the Gent was in another alcove across from the staged turntable stand where she lingered and observed. While she spied the mark, behind her bard was so wound up one-minute into his head-on collision with cardiac combustion, that he brazenly had slapped her butt. She let it pass, and with a coy sneer at him, she toggled the strobes though and suddenly the space the assaulted with white and lavender spasmodic flashes. She switched her vision with the aid of her companion, not a sans-soul creature would notice that her iris’s had completely swallowed her scleras in an instant, the visual stimulation would take care of that. Not only could she sense Pigg’s particular heat signature now, she could now track it for quite a distance. She planned on it fleeing for she enjoyed the thrill of the chase, a racing heart bleeds out the fastest. She pulled her succubus and incubus entourage back to her with all knowing, sensual allure - that “come hither” look that only temptation knows how to furnish.
The time had arrived and she was enticed by the thrill once again, feeling so safe and confident in a completely dangerous space. She knew she was the most dangerous one though, knew it in nerve, her poise and spirit. Her companion watched the room, every periphery, with all of those eyes and the armaments were there.
Pigg’s bodyguards lurched and stood dutifully albeit slowly as she approached, they could sense that something wasn’t right because “everyone in the joint knew that girls don’t approach the boss, he enjoys the boys” . They knew this was out of bounds and not a typical pattern, they knew deep down through the many layers of thick skull, all bony protrusion in face and forehead, a threatening disfigurement that displayed station. The succubus and incubus were just too enticing though, all tongues and hands, the guards were overwhelmed before they even knew the assault began. Everything was sludgie slow-mo and luxurious pacification to them, drowning in the deep waters of lust and not knowing that suffocations was taking place when a hand or two goes down your pants.
There was also Adrestia, who was putting on a show in between the two pairs, only watching with bullseye intent on Pigg, who wasn’t paying much attention to the fact that the wards to his flanks were completely distracted. Adrestia took them slowly and let Pigg watch, she was cradling their chins in her hands and they didn’t even noticed when the spine like blade, a scorpion tail of a thing that accompanied the honied touch of a passionate lover, stabbed into their throats. The salacious devils did the rest to ease them down slowly back into their seats, no one noticed a thing not even the Pigg who was too busy trying to get his engorged member out of his pants. The devils feasted on them, not their blood, but the euphoric energy that comes in diminishing waves as one dies from the heights of pleasure.
Adrestia moved into the booth and was reaching for the Piggy when the DJ decided to change the music. It was all that was needed to break the mood enough for the Pigg to take notice, dick in his own hand. She hadn’t counted on his prowess psychicly as the invisible alarm rang out from his mind, blasting Adrestia back and calling in his reinforcements.
They reined down from the parapets and catwalks all at once it felt like, strippers and armed guards, drug dealers, laser-lighting technicians and smoke machine operators. Not the DJ, he just upped the beats per minute for the fight. They fought her with what they had long nails, wire cutters and batons. She acknowledged a few stabs that would need to be attended to in a few moments, no hemorrhaging and they certainly could get to bone, organ or other deep tissue damage. As the mass caked and piled onto her, slowly the mass pushed out creepily towards Piggy, so slow steady globular motion of a slug. The front of the mob slug presented a form, one body pulling away from the rest although the mass still clung with appendage, torso, even biting from the stripper the individual noted. When her face emerged from the depths of the writhing slug of defending delinquents, Pigg saw her horrible smile.
The mass had begun getting spikey, out from bodies and arms and legs cam skewers of black astral death. Tendrils of stalagmite darker than obsidian, reflecting no light, but moving with lethal fluidity pierced and withdrew over and over at Adrestia’s enemies. The slow pokes assured pain and pushed into and through several layers of scale, armor and sweaty flesh before emerging out of the heap. Pigg screamed in horror and this was typically when Adrestia began her own assault. It was when the enemy panicked, when they had a moment to anyway, to turn tail and run from them, her and her companion.
Her companion spoke to her all the while, giving her ongoing read outs of the situation, the room, the bodycount, providing intelligences around opportunities for next tactics - purely as observational opportunities and options. The percentage that Adrestia held back for herself, the blockade around her choice, her will stood vigil against the monsoon of the other’s will, the will of Hastur.
In his horror though, Pigg decided to pull out something else a Vector class submachine gun. Adrestia wasn’t fully prepared to be writtled with searing 9mm rounds at 1200 rounds per minute and they took most to the face neck and upper torso, fortunately her head remained in contact with her body and her natural armor would take the rest, but they’d need a moment.
The slug heap halted and collapsed on top of her, most were dead weight or critically injured on top of what they all believed was a very dead assassin, her visage was a hole-riddled wad of fleshy viscera. So the survivors began to laugh. Laugh and celebrate that they had survived her, the supposed Sanguine Huntress. She was supposed to be immeasurably powerful and able to take on many forms. She was supposed to be incapable of defeat or even threat by normal weapons. She was supposed to be dead, but she wasn’t (entirely) and that was when her other took the lead while she got her second wind. Her absence of consciousness, the psionic leash keeping her other tethered…snapped for the faceless behind mask of Hastur would not have his latest weapon marred and the enormity of an Oduum came unto them all, terribly.
“Bloody ‘lil bitch thought she would claim da Pigg Pen, eh?”, belched the mass call Pigg the Gent in between riotous chuckles. His wang was still hanging out like a proud third horn when the tendril shot out from beneath the dead pile and grabbed him by his big, thick septum. Somewhere, while Adrestia recovered within, from beneath the wreckage of bodies poured out the other, most of it seeping forth like tar through cheese cloth. It held Piggy aloft and he sprayed and sprayed the remaining magazine all over his club, praying and praying to hit the astral ooze that was coming for him, his head was filled with eyes, his vision blurred and his mind was being pummeled (engulfed actually) with the abominations eminent will and anger.
Whips and tentacles, tendrils as thick as support cables sprang out relievieving club members, seraphim and nephalim, of limbs and wings - scaled or feathered, dismembering and decapitating. Two covert Choir agents that had concealed themselves as barmasters, threw back cloaks and revealed their gilded armors. The light o’ the divine and righteous seared and shone in penetrating rays of holy judgement, scalding indifferently and rebounding off of chalice and ruddy pints finding eye socket and other accessible vulnerability. Adrestia’s other was liquid abyss and did not feel judged, for it was the fabric of indifference, just as the universe was. The light only exposed the horror more, the mass of havoc tearing limbs in every direction. The agents quickly reidentified that they were the pedestrian and needed to urgently report this post haste!
Prey that ran, regardless of station, were only lasso’d back towards the swarming cloud of liquid movement as it hovered over the dance floor. Garrotes as fine as razor wire severed lean neck from horned and haloed head, if they took to battle the branches from the thing, they would be bludgeoned and bashed into one another, stunned from the impact and crushed from the entwining snares. It hated them all for hurting her and it’s rage had been pent-up behind her control, in her unconscious convalescence, the mantle of Hastur was allowed to be off of its leash. All were mangled, pushed, consumed and split from various vital body parts. All accept Piggy, he and little Piggy just dangled there to watch it all happen.
Meanwhile, within the protective womb of Hastur’s mass, Adrestia on minuscule levels was having encapsulated 9mm slugs pulled from her. Not one penetrated skull or brain, all were held within the reinforced jellies commingling her tissues. Within her vessel, the other dwelt and sustained her, she had assumed as much when bodily functions ceased. Her blood and organs all had tiny elements of the same parasite that protected her on the outside and now these were all working very quickly to to spit our foreign material. The bullets were slowly passed out of the membrane and landed inert beneath the hovering nightmare. When that was finished all that was left was facial reformation and wake her back up from the black out. This trauma at least, she would be saved from.
When her eyes opened she was staring into the Pig’s. He had been screaming the entire time being tortured relentlessly by the tentacled cloud with too many eyes. It didn’t speak, but he begged it to answer him for the hours that passed. When it did, it was her voice that he heard and the last fine thing he would ever hear. As smooth and clear as virgin viewing glass her voice from within the writhing abyss inquired, “Where do I find Ob Nixilus?”
They could have been lovers in that scene, in some ways that’s what her method was like. The incubus, succubus, the afflicted nospheratu and moon-beastial lyncanthropes all employ a filthy little venom, a nasty little secret in their saliva, Adrestia took it to the next level - why not all the secretions and pheromones? Her mass, astral guise and the bit of self burrowed within, all of those pores and tendrils and micro Scilla all erect little pricks that vaporized or injected a bit of them into their victims. The effect overrode the senses, inhibition, pain receptors and released the repressed frontal lobes. It dazzled the slumbering pineal gland and coerced that acorn-shaped familiar a tale of a returning mother, come swaddle your hunger within mother’s cradle for a bit, find rest and nurture.
Pig’s scream blended horrifically with maniacal wails and hysteria of agonizing release. His hips pumped spasmodically in reflex of the white lightening shooting throughout his synapses simultaneously, his mind was torn finger nail too close to the bed, a stubbed toe now broken, a gash that tears across the eye - with the sensory delight of enrapture from a pinnacle-talented professional lover. He released as the hangman dances their last jig and gave the last of his rotted seed from his pickle-looking penis as she sank the tendrils into eye sockets and writhing an ascent up all of his nostrils. The convulsions were violent and lengthy, but Pig wasn’t there at all. Pig swam with all of the other taddy-poles, little mites of cellular essence and continuum captured in the astral netting that protected her and was it. Hastur’s avatar acquired a new scent trial and something unexpected……
As the tendrils drowned his facial orifices, she saw sand, she saw the death’s head rider’s within the sandstorm, the Plateau of Leng where Ammon and the Charlatan danced, she saw the death blow, she saw Ammon cross the gate and disappear from the material plane, …..she saw his canine of shade cleaning up the remains. She didn’t understand all of these mental fragments because they came as memories of disturbing dreams and faded so fast. She had difficulty clamoring the fraying rope of memory, she couldn’t hold onto her own life line to the past, let alone someone else’s cut free, no tension, spilling free into nothingness and death.
She did see several of his actions and wondered if he would survive his desperate choice. Had the fool gone to Hastur’s realm? If so, her work was done, he willingly bowed and inserted his head into the alligator’s maw! For all she suspected and dreaded about her patron, for everything obfuscate about the dark intelligence behind the mask and robes, the writhing embrace of his aspect that flew from her flesh to protect her vessel in his name - there was something certain about Hastur - he was entropy and faceless was hungry.
She would miss pursuing this mark, that was a certainty.