Once the pain subsided, Oriel took her place in the center of the magic circle. As she did so, black flames began to burn around her, coating her body. These were not true flame, but illusory embers of the ritual’s magic made manifest.

With a predatory tenderness, Oriel descended upon the female archon, pushing her to the ground. The archon resisted as Oriel tried to slip her tongue into the woman’s mouth, but Oriel was not going to be denied. Her fingers slid between the archon’s thighs, and began to play. When the archon gasped, despite herself, that was all the opening Oriel needed.

Her tongue slipped past the archon’s defenses, and the black flame spread to engulf the archon as she squirmed under Oriel’s ministrations. It became clear that, while the flames did not harm Oriel, they were far from pleasant to the archon. She tried to writhe and thrash her way out of the flames, but the bindings thwarted her escape. And still, Oriel sealed the archon’s lips with her own, muffling her cries.

And then I noticed that the archon’s luster had begun to fade. Her beauty, once transcendent, was now merely normal. Her wings, once pure white, were now a mottled grey, while her golden hair was turning as white as her wings formerly were. Her strong muscles began to atrophy, looking more like a helpless maiden than an archon.

At the same time, the flames around Oriel grew blacker, larger. Her ebony skin glistened like polished obsidian, and her hair began to glow. Everything about her seemed… more than it had been.

Finally, the archon cried out in pain and pleasure. And her climax brought with it her doom. She had been diminished by the ritual, but now the archon withered away beneath Oriel, and turned to dust.

Her uncle struggled more as she put him on his back, but his protests were cut short as Oriel sat upon his face. Leaning over his heavenly body, she began licking and stroking her uncle’s shaft. Already at half-staff due to the show she had put on with her aunt, it did not take long for Oriel to raise her uncle’s flag.

She turned, and then impaled herself upon his length. As she did so, she couldn’t help but smirk at the archon beneath her, as the black flames spread across his body. “What is the matter, Uncle? Didn’t you want this? After all, you came to me all those times, offering to shield and ‘protect’ me, if I helped you. Aren’t you happy I finally agreed to give you the ride you wanted?”

Her uncle said nothing, moaning in helpless pleasure. She smiled down at him. “Don’t worry, Uncle. You might be a sacrifice to fuel my growth, but I promise you a better send off than my mother got. You get to die in pleasure, because when you unload yourself inside of me, I will take everything you have, and make it part of me. Even your soul will be consumed, to further my transformation!”

I saw the archon grit his teeth, and try to resist. But he couldn’t push her off, not with his hands bound as they were. And bucking his hips to try and throw her off would only make the sensations harder to resist, and would only hasten his demise. He was doomed, and we all knew it.

But Oriel was not content to simply wait, and draw this out longer than it needed to be. Her hips slammed down, and then she twisted, turning around while never once getting off her uncle’s rod. The sight of his niece’s perfect ass bouncing upon him was too much, it seemed, because the archon cried out in pleasure, and met the same fate as his sister.

“Torm damn your soul, you faithless heathen!” The grandfather had finally had enough, and spit a curse at his granddaughter. “We should have killed your mother when we found out that she was tainted! And we would have, if her mother hadn’t begged me to let her go. And now, look what you have done with my mercy! May your soul endure ten thousand years of tortures worse than any you can possibly imagine! I swear to you, you will not get away with this!”

Oriel turned upon him, with fire in her eyes. “Oh yes, Grandfather, I heard so much about your ‘mercy’, when I was a child. Throwing out your daughter, calling her a wretched whore for something that she had no control over? Mercy would have been to help her, support her, and me. But, no. All you cared about was how this would look to the other families. YOU ONLY CARED ABOUT YOUR DAMNED REPUTATION!”

Her heel struck the elder archon’s face, and I saw a tooth fly from the circle. The archon fell back on his back with curse, blood flowing from his mouth. Oriel stood over him, the fires of hatred in her eyes. But when she spoke, there was mockery in her voice.

“Oh, what is this, Grandfather?” Her toes stroked up and down the archon’s shaft. “It looks like watching your granddaughter pleasure your son and daughter got you all excited. Why, you’re already fully erect! Or perhaps you usually explode too soon?”

That got a wrath-filled denial from the archon, but Oriel simply smiled, and began lowering herself towards him. “Oh, is that true? Are you telling me that you can resist it when I slide my tight, warm, wet folds over your old man cock, that you will be able to keep from popping off like a teenage boy on his first time?”

She lined herself up, never breaking eye contact with her grandfather, and then thrust down, hard enough that we could hear the smack of flesh meeting flesh. And then she began to bounce up and down upon her grandfather’s staff, while the black flames spread across his body. As before, the flames ate at his vitality and essence, transferring them to her, even as pleasure began to overwhelm his resistance.

“No, you can’t do this! I won’t allow it!”

Oriel laughed as she bounced upon her grandfather’s lap. “Oh, there’s nothing you can do to stop it, Grandfather. I can feel you already slipping away. Soon, you won’t be able to help yourself. But here, let me show you a trick I learned with my muscles, when I went to visit the material plane. Anaforn always loved it!”

She stopped bouncing, and impaled herself fully upon the archon’s staff. And then she just held herself there. I couldn’t tell, but she must have been doing something with the muscles down there, because her grandfather groaned in pleasure. And, in that moment, his resistance was broken. A sudden thrust of Oriel’s hips, and he cried out, cursing her name as he climaxed for the final time.

No sooner had her grandfather gone the way of his children, and turned to dust, the black flames erupted, filling the circle from floor to ceiling. The black flames changed color, becoming a reddish green that spoke of abyssal flames, taken from the deepest layers of the Abyss itself. In an instant, before she could even try and scream, her body was consumed by the flames, and utterly destroyed.

The flames burned with such an intensity that they would have melted the stones of this room, had it not been warded so heavily. As the flames began to recede, they started coalescing, taking a humanoid shape. And then, they snapped out, banished back to the Abyss where they belonged, and in their place was Oriel, though much transformed from who she had once been.

Her face was the same as it had been, though her eyes now were now wholly white, and her skin was no longer the black of a drow’s skin, but was now a reddish pink hue. The brand that had scarred her chest was now a tattoo, in a red usually seen in makeup, cast against the subtle glow of her red-pink skin. Her wings were burnt and broken, a mere shadow of what they once were. Her fingernails had sharpened into talons, and her feet were now cloven hooves. Oh, and four writhing, ten-foot long, sting-tipped tails extended from the small of her back, making it perfectly clear that she was no longer a half-celestial drowess. And yet, everything about her was perfect, to the smallest detail, like she was an artist’s masterpiece given form.

“By the Queen!”

I looked over to Vestele, and asked, “What is it? Do you know what she’s become?”

“Yes,” Vestele nodded, “She has become a Lilitu, an ascended form of Succubus. Their prey are all those servants of good gods and goddesses, for they delight in corrupting and defiling the worship of others, and turning it to the worship of their patron goddess.”

Oriel stretched, and I could almost hear the sound of joints cracking. “You are correct, Vestele, but there is more to it than that. With the power of the ritual, I was able to enhance my flesh, my soul, and make it more than I once was. I am a Paragon, now, as well as everything I had before. I am stronger now than I ever believed possible!”

I nodded slowly. “So, this was your idea for the revolution? Infiltrating and swaying the denizens of Torm’s own plane against him, weakening his seat of power?”

“Well, yes,” Oriel nodded. “But the opening of the portal, pushed forward my timeline, and made it obvious that I needed far more power than I had. Anaforn’s execution only hardened my resolve. So, when you arrived, I knew that I could not keep in hiding any more. Now is the time.”

“Then we should talk more about our next target, the paragon werewolf, so we can make our introductions and have a way into the heart of the city, and force the portal shut.”

“Yes, you’re right,” the demoness nodded. As she did so, an illusion fell over her, hiding her demonic features behind her original guise. “Let us discuss how to find the pack, without them swooping down upon you in an ambush.”

“Yes, swooping is bad,” I said, drolly. “We want to try and control how many of the creatures we fight at once. Otherwise, even with our increased power, we could find ourselves overwhelmed.”

“Indeed.” Oriel grinned. “Sidrial and his wolves inhabit the Timeless Woods, to the west of the city. It is a four-day ride, on horse, but the Blackmane Wolves can make it in a day, if they take a straight line, and run through the air, instead of on the ground. I would suggest not rushing in, for that is a sure way to be spotted.”

“Why are they called the Timeless Woods?”

“Time works differently on the planes than it does in the material realm. For every day that passes in this city, two pass upon the material plane. But that is not how it normally is. The portal that the archons keep open is not natural, and so time is bleeding through. In both Geburatiel and Magika, time flows at the same pace, now, with the Thedran capitol slowing and Geburatiel speeding up.

“In the lands outside Geburatiel? A day’s time would be a tenday on the Material plane. The only place in all the realm that time moves at the same rate as the material plane is in the sanctum of Torm itself, so that the god can properly listen to and ignore the prayers given him. It is also why any attempts at rebellion have been unsuccessful, so far, since it gives Torm more time to prepare and react to any moves the rebels make.”

Vestele nodded slowly. “So, by the time we get out to the woods and return, a good deal of time will have passed upon the Material Plane.”

“Yes, there is no helping it, I’m afraid. At any rate, the Blackmane Wolves are rumored to number somewhere between ten and twenty. However, with the news that some new strain of lycanthropy is involved, we can’t discount the possibility that Sidrial has ‘recruited’ others to his side. Even if they were commoners before, the transformation would make them deadly combatants, especially in groups.”

Siora grinned. “Nothing we haven’t faced before. Though both the wolves and we were weaker then.”

“Then take this map,” Oriel said, pulling a folded map from her pile of belongings. “I’ve marked the location where diviners suggest the Blackmane pack makes its den upon it. And I pray you return with good news, as soon as possible.”