Cashing in on Nightmare...

“Wake up.”

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“Here’s the deal.”

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“I want a Blessing from you.”

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“You have the right to refuse me.”

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“I’ll give you thirty seconds to think it over.

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“You have that long to stop trying to suck my soul before I remove your head.”

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“If you think about it, having a Blessing naturally requires the giver to be alive.”

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“You have twenty seconds left to begin.”

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I had Mercied this lilithi Esrizea, just like the other eight succubi, so she was still alive, and jerked back to consciousness when I swatted her.

Her lazy, sensual eyes snapped open, burning yellow and tensing when she saw me above her. She opened her mouth just in time for me to stick my hand across it, grab her jaw, and then smash her mouth closed against my knee, her overlong canines punching into both sides of my palm.

“I know you’re from outside Dream.” She and her team of eight succubi had given me quite a time, leading their demon horde around and having great fun commanding their servants in butchering the denizens of this dream city. Probably the equivalent of a night on the town. Nightmare on the town?

As she was their leader, I changed up my routine a bit for her.

Her eyes remained locked on mine, and I felt a vague pressure on my Null. “Your stingers are all on the ground over there, so don’t bother trying to lash them at me. Likewise, I hacked off your wings.” Her outrage was quite visible, but she couldn’t say anything, and her attempts to suck at my soul were not bearing fruit. “Please, keep attempting to use all your magic for the next minute. After that, I’m going to remove your head.”

The look in her eyes swiftly changed, and the attempts to Charm and Dominate me ceased forthwith.

“You’ve got one chance to live. Don’t bother with the telepathy, I can’t hear you. Your Blessing, on my hand, in your mouth, use your tongue. The Blessing I want is Desire. You have one minute to begin. Get that tongue to work, or I remove your head.”

Tremble rose up in front of her, in full Evilborn-Bane Mode, vivic fire blazing, and she tried to shrink back, finding she simply could not move. The steely fingernails that were clasping my arm and leg should have been biting into me, yet couldn’t penetrate my skin. I was effectively ignoring her attempts to struggle, despite her being almost twice my size. In my grasp, her head simply could not move, and Tremble was very, very distracting in that ominous time-to-burn-your-soul kind of way.

I probably felt like I was made of solid bronze to her, of course, and I caught her staring at my dual canines. Enlightenment… she glanced down, where she could just see my black toenails.

“Fifty seconds,” I droned, keeping her eyes without the slightest trace of fear. “If you’re worried about the logic, kindly recall that your Blessing fades if you die, so you’re going to live through this, and I’ve no desire to imprison you here. Forty seconds.”

I felt her tongue drive into the skin of my palm, and I let it. The forked thing was like an acidic razor, carving the Blessing quickly and surely onto my skin, and filling it with demonic energy to empower it.

I felt the surge of it feeding into my Aura, basically a +2 Profane bonus to Charisma checks against potential sexual partners. It was demonic energy, very obvious, quite aligned to Chaos and Evil, and definitely not something a Good person should be doing.

“Well done,” I nodded to her, lifting my other hand from the top of her head. Tremble slapped into my palm, and then I punched it down through her skull and into the Mark on my hand, which was still grasping her lower jaw inside her mouth.

She could only quiver in shock, and then began to be consumed by the vivic fire, whatever telepathic screams, pleas, and promises she might be putting out completely lost on me. The vivus poured down into the Mark on my hand, naturally having perfect resonance with her power as it was Consumed. As the Mark’s power stemmed from the succubus granting it, naturally pouring the lump sum of her energy into it via vivic fire was enough to keep it going after her death.

This was not something that would work for a Powered person, only a Null Forsaken. Because our souls were hard, they could be carved, something just not possible for a Powered, Primos, Source, or Void, and that’s what I’d had this succubus priestess do; carve her Mark onto my soul. Then I empowered it, just like pumping magic into a Glyph or Rune, only I was doing it with all of her.

Ectoplasmic bodies vivify very quickly, and she went up like jellied gasoline, flowing down the point of Tremble into the Mark. I watched her beautiful face, flawless skin, flowing black hair, cutely spiraling horns, cloven-hoof feet, the stumps of her four scorpion stingers and bat-like wings, and her general lack of clothing burn away without regret, finally falling away into the Mark and leaving nothing behind, save some jewelry Tremble snapped up.

Ever conscientious and well-trained about cleaning up, Tremble burned her tails and wings and fed them to the Mark, too.

I turned over my palm, the puncture wounds from her canines already healed, and studied the Rune there.

It was demonic in origin, and anyone who knew Demonic could recognize it as the symbol for ‘Desire’.

However, there was no demonic energy to it anymore. It glowed very faintly with a hard white light that had no bias whatsoever.

Still had the power, however. A Typeless bonus, perhaps?…

There were nine known Succubi Blessings. There might be more, but those were what I knew about. +2 to one of the six Stats, each; +2 to Natural Armor, toughening up the skin while also making it smoother, since calluses were unnecessary; +10’ to base movement rate; and this one, +2 to Charisma checks, largely against members of the opposite sex, but really to anything that might be sexually attracted to the recipient. It made minor alterations to appearance, voice, posture, and mannerisms, and heightened sexual awareness, making the recipient more attractive to others.

The Blessings naturally came with a stick. The granting demoness could easily work mind control magic on the recipient through the Mark, and had basically unlimited telepathic contact through it with them to do so. The things radiated Chaos and Evil, if you were able to sense such things, and removing them involved horrific damage to the soul they were anchored to without using very specific magic.

That beat-stick had been burned in vivic fire. Mine were now Tattooed Marks, not Blessings. No aural radiance, and no demoness on the other end. Nine less succubi for the multiverse to worry about, and me with a suite of minor Buffs.

Profit!

This lilithi was the last of them, I’d given her subordinates the same treatment, one by one. The demon slaughter had died down, and with Renewal so close, the Curse was contenting itself with rampaging in the distance with the ones I hadn’t caught yet, rather than generating something new.

Some of those demons had been real, Summoned in by the succubi as reinforcements once they realized how dangerous I was. I didn’t mind, as more real Karma was a damn good thing for me. None of the others had managed to bring in a gallu, or anything close to that status, but I’d been pleasantly surprised by a couple of their amours, just before I butchered them in Wrathfire.

I considered this kind of stuff Important. There had to be a difference between the Karma I was leeching off the Curse, and the Real Karma of killing things that had existences outside of Dream. Killing them should net me Karma that should accompany me out into reality itself, whenever I got out of here. Curse Karma just made me powerful within the expanse of the Dream itself.

A gallu demon should net me a LOT of real Karma, easing that load out in reality so I could make it to Ten out there.

Ergo, I wanted more of these outside forces to come in here and die, especially powerful ones. Stronger ones meant more Karma sticking to me when it was finally time.

I knew that I’d still be restricted to a Level a day if and when I got out of here. But if these things worked out right, I wouldn’t have to slaughter a small country to make it to Ten…

Which was coming up rapidly now. Only so many Mastery/5’s to take, after all…

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The whip-rope lashed out in a blur of motion. It was made from her hair, and so magically controlled, sinuous as a snake and burning with hellfire.

It crossed Tremble’s edge, and, djavva wire woven through it or no, was cut clear through and went whirling away, already burning vivic. Really, who brings a whip to a death duel?

She beat her great feathery black wings backwards, but that didn’t outdistance me, nor get her airborne again. I rammed full into her, Stand swatting away her burning sword, and Tremble inserting itself into her heart.

She crashed down, and I grabbed her head as I flipped over her, ignoring the mess of her wings and feathers, slapped her head against my Strength Mark, and drove Tremble through her skull.

Her final nail-scraping at me ripped some cloth, but didn’t do any damage… and I didn’t have much cloth left, given the fondness of diabolic armies for spiked armor and weapons. I politely burned her spirit and body to vivus, and stuck it into my Strength Mark, while Tremble hummed and Mended my attire with Cantrip-class magic.

Why? Because erinyes, the enforcers and collectors of contracts with Hell, were twice as strong as succubi, and the diabolic course of evolution took a different course than the demonic. No need for me to restrict myself to just one course of potential evolution, after all.

When she was all burned up, the Strength Mark on the ‘belt’ of them I’d made around my waist was red-edged black with a white glow, instead of the yellow-edged black with a white glow. Within that glow was sealed the entire basic foundation of an erinyes devil to help further evolution along the scale.

Sealed Binder used Dream-style!

Now, here was hoping the Curse would draft in a lilitu or mantissari…