Stretching a little bit as he topped the stairs, Raylix pushed open the door to the corridor that led to the top-floor bedrooms and offices: including Lilith's, which was his intended destination. Having just gotten back from Gnurene's HQ, attempting to convince the Stray Magicians' Guild and their leader to join Lilith's growing faction, taking out the entire guild when that proved impossible, it was definitely best to report straight to his fiancée/boss about how that went while it was still fresh in his memory.
Even though he was making a beeline for the far end of the corridor, where Lilith's office was located, something- or rather someone- else between him and the office door caught his attention.
Clad in one of her usual goth-loli dresses, which was slightly torn on one of the shoulders and stained with blood around her lower stomach area, Kurumi had made her way to the door of her own bedroom and was pushing it open, though the sound of someone entering the top-floor corridor had caught HER attention in turn.
"Hey." She called out, raising a hand in greeting as Raylix walked over, stopping a couple of paces' length away from her. "You back from your mission too? How'd it go?"
"A bit cleaner than whatever Lilith had you do." Raylix remarked, his eyes flicking from the dried blood on his pants and the bottom of his boots, to the cuts and bloodstains on Kurumi's dress. "Who'd she have you taking care of this time?"
"Some Turkish cult." Kurumi replied. "Worshipped her- or rather, their messed-up version of her that only really had the fact that she's a woman in common with how Mom ACTUALLY is- as a goddess, daily rituals, sacrifices, all in an attempt to curry favour with her, you know the drill. It was either convince them of how Mom truly is, or correct their mistake in a more... final, way."
"Yeah, like people who are that far gone can ever be convinced that their way isn't THE way." Raylix shook his head. "Still, might have been neat to have them as assets rather than corpses."
Kurumi shrugged.
"Or they'd just have ended up being more trouble than they were really worth. Either way, they're a bit too dead to really find that out for sure, now." She replied. "Works for me, though, I needed a top-up anyway. And good old Phantasmal Chronograph lets me do just that."
Raylix nodded, remembering what Hikari had told him a while ago about Kurumi's Sacred Gear. Its powers, its applications... and what it had cost her.
"Are you... okay with that?" he asked, tentatively. "I mean, I've killed, I've been killing since before I could remember. Kinda comes with being born in the middle of a pantheon-spanning great war. But you... I dunno, I just wonder if it's different for humans."
"Depends on the human." Kurumi replied. "I mean, some people aren't willing to kill, but everyone around here is ready to when the time calls for it. Including the humans, hell knows Cinder and Irene have probably claimed their fair share of lives. For me..." she leaned against her bedroom door, letting out a slow breath. "I suppose I wasn't all that comfortable with ending lives at first. But when it's either that, or suffer and die after using the wonder that your oh-so-glorious God bestowed upon you at birth more than a few times, especially after you had your life saved and given another possible purpose by... just the best woman that's ever existed? Not really a contest."
Raylix let out a half-snort from his nose, with his expression quite clearly telling Kurumi that she wouldn't find him disagreeing with her opinion on Lilith.
"I'm okay with it now, though." Kurumi continued. "Most of the people I kill are scumbags, anyway, so I don't feel too bad about it."
"Good." Raylix nodded. "Though if you end up feeling bad about it for whatever reason... I'm still here. Always will be. Whenever you need me."
Kurumi blinked a couple of times, legitimately taken aback for a couple of seconds, before her slightly-open mouth curled into a more confident, sultry smile, her visible red eye seeming to glitter with sudden mischief.
"Well, since you're offering," she remarked. "I could use a sentient dildo to bounce on tonight. Or a nice face to use as a seat. Or maybe both at the same time."
Raylix shrugged, chuckling and nodding half-committally.
"But, you know." Kurumi's smile and eye visibly softened, and she closed the distance to Raylix with a step. "Thanks. For what you said."
Shifting onto the tips of her toes for a second, Kurumi planted a soft kiss on Raylix's cheek, before turning around and pushing the door to her bedroom open.
"Gonna shower." She spoke. "Feel free to join me once you're done reporting to Mom, yeah?"
"I'll think about it." Raylix replied, watching Kurumi leave his sight, shutting the door behind her. When the sound of the door shutting faded from his ears, he made to continue down the corridor towards Lilith's office, but before he could take more than a couple of steps, the door onto the corridor behind him opened.
Like Kurumi had probably done when he turned up through that same door a few minutes ago, Raylix turned, letting out a breath as he saw his right-hand man walking through the door, and making a beeline for him.
"Malech."
"Glad I could catch you before you reported to Lady Lilith." Malech replied, by way of greeting, as he stopped in front of Raylix. Opening his hand, he summoned what looked like a folded sheet of paper into it via magic-circle, and handed it to Raylix. "Whatever we could find of use within Gnurene's base, it's on that list there. Hopefully it'll be useful going forward."
Raylix took the list from Malech when he offered it to him, unfolded it and quickly looked it over, before folding it up and slipping it into one of his pockets, nodding in appreciation and gripping Malech's shoulder gratefully.
"You've done well, Malech." He nodded in appreciation before stepping back. "Everyone make it back okay?"
Malech nodded.
"Once we got done destroying whatever wasn't worth recovering, I brought us all back home." He replied. "Gnurene are no more."
"And the world is better for it." Raylix replied. "Particularly without Irene's ex running around, if what she's told me about him is to be believed. Thanks again Malech, You're dismissed for now."
Malech nodded respectfully, turned on his heel and left as swiftly as he'd arrived, leaving Raylix alone once again, and unimpeded in his original task of heading towards the door to Lilith's office. He raised his hand to knock, but before he could, the door swung open. Raylix peeked his head in at first, and upon seeing Lilith sat at her desk stretching, her humungous breasts bouncing lightly with every motion her body made, he stepped inside.
At the sound of his footfalls against her office floor, Lilith opened her eyes, and smiled at the sight of her fiancé.
"Back already?" she asked, by way of greeting.
"Yeah." Raylix nodded, pulling the folded paper that Malech had given him out of his pocket. "Tried to convince Gnurene- or their leader- to turn against the Khaos Brigade. Wasn't successful, things escalated."
"Right." Lilith didn't so much as blink as she took the information in. "Any survivors?"
"None."
Raylix unfolded the paper in his hand, and placed it down on the desk in front of Lilith, for her to lean forward slightly and pick up.
"That's everything that Malech and my group managed to salvage from the place before wiping it off the map." He continued. "Should be useful. Maybe."
Lilith hummed, leaning back in her chair as she looked down the list. A short pause followed between the two before Raylix, remembering this morning, reached into one of the other pockets on his pants (thankfully the one that WASN'T stained with blood), and pulled out a small box. Lilith's eyes immediately left the paper in her hand as Raylix tossed the box towards the desk. With quicker reflexes than Raylix had ever seen her use, but not exactly surprising given what he knew about her, she reached out from the paper and caught the box in one hand, and flicked it open with her thumb to reveal the ring inside. The band was smooth, polished silver that caught the office's ambient light, and in the centre a small pearl was nestled.
Simple? Yes. Modest? Yes. Elegant, as well as absolutely lovely? A thousand times, yes.
Lilith's mouth opened slightly as she put the paper down, and lifted the ring out of the box.
"It's overdue, I know." Raylix remarked, his hands slipping into his pockets as he shifted his eyes across the desk, before back at Lilith. "Me asking before just kinda slipped out, I know I should've gotten one before I popped the question, so… there. Sorry."
A soft laugh escaped Lilith's throat as she slid it onto her finger- appreciating the perfect fit- and rose to her feet. Making her way around the desk, she wrapped her arms around Raylix without a word, pulling him in close to her body and planting a soft kiss on the top of his head. Raylix- almost on reflex- rested his head on Lilith's shoulder for the few seconds she held him, smiling to himself.
"I remember telling you that I didn't give a shit about how you proposed, Raylix." Lilith spoke, after pulling away a bit. "I'm just happy you remembered to get me a ring at all."
She reached over to Raylix's chin, gently tilting his face up with one of her fingers so he was looking her in the eye again, and leaned forward to plant another kiss- just as soft but with all the passion in the world behind it- directly on Raylix's lips. When she pulled away, she resisted the urge to laugh again at the light pink colour that Raylix's face had gone, and the slightly sheepish way in which he shuffled his feet in response to that gesture.
"Well, I…" he began, before taking a breath in an attempt to compose himself, even slightly. "…Thanks."
Lilith smiled, running her finger from his chin down his neck, down one of his arms towards one of his hands, which she closed her hand around.
"I need a relaxing shower, before lunch." She spoke. "And you probably need one as well, after what you've been up to this morning… so how about it?"
Raylix let out a nervous chuckle, not offering any resistance when Lilith began pulling him towards the side-door that led to the bedroom. In fact, he fell into step with her as she opened the door with a flick of her hand, and led them into the bedroom directly next to the office. A bedroom that- since THAT night not long after Lilith had taken over the Underworld Reformation Faction- had ceased to just be hers and had now become theirs.
Not that Raylix had bothered moving many of his personal effects over to this room, but since that night- when Lilith had restored his memories of when she'd taken his virginity, and the two had begun 'making up for lost time' (he believed that had been how the Lilim Queen had phrased it)- the nights he'd slept in here, with her, outnumbered the times he'd slept alone. Approximately thirty nights to… uh, zero.
Once they'd made their way through their room and into the bathroom, Lilith immediately disrobed and began turning on the shower. Raylix took that as his cue to do the same, and to join her under the hot falling water once he was as naked as she was. In such close presence to his naked fiancée, Raylix felt a boner popping up almost immediately, not even bothering to resist or conceal it since... it was his fiancée and she was naked. While he ducked his head under one of the shower-heads to wet his hair, Lilith raised a hand towards a rack on the other side of the shower from where she and her fiancé were stood. After a couple of seconds, a bottle of shampoo rose from the rack, and floated slowly through the air into her waiting palm.
With his hands raised to his head to guide the wet hair out of his eyes, Raylix noticed this and narrowed them slightly as he watched Lilith begin lathering some of the shampoo into her hair.
"Isn't that Marbas' ability?"
"Hm?" Lilith turned, one hand in her hair, the other clutching the shampoo bottle, which she offered to Raylix after a second. "Isn't what what now?"
"What you did just now, with this." Raylix replied, taking the bottle and beginning to apply some of its contents to his own hair. "Floating it over here. Didn't you do something similar with that one dumb bitch when you made that whole speech to the URF?"
Lilith let out a small giggle as she took the bottle back from Raylix, and floated it back to the rack.
"I think I did do that, yes." She replied. "And I guess you're right, this-" she reached out towards Raylix, using the same power as she'd used a moment ago to take hold of a lock of his suds-laden hair, and play about with it a bit before letting go "was the ability of the Marbas Clan. I decided it was better suited in the hands of someone more enduring than the last of their line."
"Oh, really?" Raylix's gaze shifted from the lock of hair Lilith had telekinetically played with, to the bottle that she'd sent back to the rack seconds ago, then back to her. "You take it, somehow?"
"I somehow did." Lilith replied. "Just as I, somehow, took Shalba and Creuserey's Clan abilities from them."
Raylix blinked, recalling how she had- indeed- done exactly that after he, Katerea and Hikari (mostly him and Hikari) had wrecked Beelzebub and Asmodeus' grandsons, that fateful day.
"How?" he asked, before letting out a breath a second later. "Wait, shit, I'm walking into another of your long-ass explanations of something I had no idea of prior to today, aren't I?"
Lilith let out a giggle.
"It's not my fault that there's a lot you needed to be brought up to speed on, if this partnership was going to work out how it's working right now." She replied. "Don't worry though, I don't think there'll be many more of these before we get married, and I'll try to make this one entertaining. Now, where to begin…"
Flashback
"I have it on good authority that Lucifer was seen here, at these co-ordinates. I cannot say why, as that's beyond my knowledge, but... I suppose I thought you should know."
An unremarkable stretch of demonic wasteland, no different than any other area in Hell that had been scorched by the fighting between the Devils, Lilim, Angels and Fallen Angels. Though right now, with the war... not exactly over but on pause, it wasn't like there was going to be anymore fighting or scorching of the area for the time being.
Lilith almost laughed as she looked around the remains of the battlefield, where the co-ordinates that Yahweh had given her before his final battle with her now-deceased abuser and his three cronies-in-chief. It was damn clear from the second she'd turned up why Yahweh had said he didn't know why Lucifer had been seen here- of all places- there was absolutely NOTHING remarkable about it.
With that being the case, just as why Lucifer had been here was beyond Yahweh's knowledge, why he'd handed the co-ordinates to her initially appeared beyond Lilith's.
But on the other hand, what was it that his human-world worshippers, and even some of the Angels, said about how Lilith's father (in a sense) worked? Something about his ways being mysterious?
Lilith let out a 'tch' as she cast the usual spells to conceal her presence from any potential prying eyes- not that many were likely to come this far, but better safe than sorry- and gave the area a quick scan over with her eyes. Mysterious ways, indeed.
At first blush, there was nothing. Quite literally nothing of note. Not even any sound beyond the shifting wind, and ABSOLUTELY no life to speak of, as any trees still standing in the immediate vicinity were all stripped bare and charred nearly beyond recognition, looking more like monoliths of death than bringers of life.
One even crumbled to fragments and dust when Lilith stepped over, and lightly flicked it with her finger. She had to cast a quick barrier around herself to avoid any of the soot and burned splinters from getting on her dress. But just as the sound of the crumbling tree faded from her ears... she felt it.
A low thrum of infernal energy, with a resonance as unfortunately familiar to her as her own breath. But it felt muffled... buried, somehow.
...Ahh.
Lilith hummed as she looked down at her feet, slowly bent down, extending her hand out towards the ground. And just as she'd suspected, she felt the energy- his muffled, buried energy- growing slightly stronger. Ever-so-slightly, unnoticeably stronger for most beings... but Lilith had proven time and again that she wasn't most beings.
She rested her hand against the scorched earth, and after a couple of seconds, it cracked, crumbled to dust and opening a hole in the ground that the Lilim Queen immediately dropped through, casting another barrier a nanosecond later to prevent any of the dust and dirt kicked up by her action from getting on her clothes again.
Halting her descent a second later, Lilith slowly floated down into the hollow ground, lightly touching down in what looked like... a break room?
She had to blink a couple of times in surprise as she scanned the area: nothing seemed visually amiss so far, but the thrum of energy she felt six feet above where she presently was had definitely become stronger, more pronounced.
Whatever Yahweh had directed her towards with those co-ordinates, she was closer. Though a part of her wasn't exactly certain she wanted to see whatever it was she was heading towards, not when this- all of this- just FELT like Lucifer, a feeling she'd rather have slit her own throat than be stuck with ever again. When she'd looked over everything that she could in the room she'd landed in, she slowly moved over to its only door, and upon attempting to physically open it- blasting it apart with a pulse of magic when that failed- moved into a larger chamber.
The sight that greeted her was something like that was a bit closer to what she was expecting to drop in on when she blasted her way through the ground… but that didn't mean she didn't stop cold as soon as she'd begun to take in the specifics of what was in here.
On a clean-looking operating table-like piece of furniture, lay a body stitched together with sinew and spellwork. The top half of a body that, upon slightly closer inspection, bore a resemblance to…
Lilith's throat ran dry, and she felt like her blood had turned to ice in her veins as she realised who it was… or rather, who it ALMOST was. It wasn't quite him: the jawline wasn't quite as angular or defined as he'd been in life, and his eyes hadn't quite been that far apart when he was still alive, but the resemblance was certainly there.
Like she'd thought, it wasn't QUITE Lucifer, but it was close… too close for her liking.
Shivering- not from cold, as the room was pleasantly warm- Lilith turned and looked around the room, her eyes settling on an arrangement of crystals on a smaller table, just beside the larger table that the half-made body of her former husband lay on. She counted fifty-two in all, two larger than the others: the two larger ones were a dull silver colour, and hummed lightly with the same familiar energy that she'd sensed above ground. The other, smaller ones were arranged in a circle around it, white, faintly glowing and… pulsing, in rhythm with each other, as if they were synced-up heartbeats.
The next thing her eyes were drawn to, on the same table as the crystals, was an ancient-looking book. And by ancient, she fully MEANT it: the cover- hard leather or some other creature's hide by the looks of it, seemed so old and weathered to her eyes that she half-thought it'd crumble to dust if she so much as looked at it funny. The pages- or at least the edges of them that she could see, as the book was closed- didn't look much better. They'd gone all the way past yellow from such age, and were well on their way to turning brown.
But before she could even think about picking up the book to have a look through it, Lilith detected slight movement out of the corner of her eye. She span around- doing her best not to look at the half-constructed body of her former husband and abuser- and then she saw the… things that lined the walls.
Four at each wall that didn't also hold the door, all sealed and floating in containment pods. She looked over at the one who had caught her eye and walked over, looking through the translucent glass at it for a couple of seconds before raising her hand, resting it on the glass. Her breath quickened as she looked it up and down: it was a creature, certainly a demonic creature, she could sense that alright.
But its physical form… not even in the deepest pits of Malebolge, where the vilest creatures and souls were sealed away for the safety of all the other worlds that called Earth their physical home, had she seen anything like the thing she was looking at now. NONE of the things in the room even halfway resembled anything she'd ever seen before, in her millennia of existence on Earth and in Hell.
"What… are you?" she whispered, more to herself than anything else as she stepped away from the creature, a lump forming in her throat as she looked around at all the others, sensed their demonic energy. Both in their forms, and the lines of energy that moved out from their bodies, out of the pods, across the floor, towards the centre of the room, into…
There was a flash of light, from the break room she'd just come through. She turned, recognised the transportation-circle before its caster materialized at its centre, narrowed her eyes as said caster appeared. A tall man, rail-thin, with skin stretched tight over angular bones, jet-black hair slicked back so tightly that he almost looked bald, clad in robes stitched from the hides of demonic beasts that clung to him like a parasite, and with gold-amber eyes.
Zaorama Nebiros, as she lived and breathed. Him, his family and the closely-related descendants of Naberius were researchers in all things infernal, of COURSE someone like him would be in charge of something like this. So maybe he could provide some answers as to what she'd just stumbled in upon.
The Devil in question barely had time to widen his eyes in recognition as he saw who had trespassed into his secret facility, before Lilith formed her tails and horns. One of her tails flicked out, wrapped tightly around his ankles and dragged him forwards before he had a chance to raise a hand or open his mouth. He was brought down to the hard ground in two seconds flat, with his head smacking upon it with enough force to knock him out instantly.
Damn it, Lilith thought as Zaorama's head lolled over to one side, giving her a lovely sight of a VERY nasty bruise forming at the point that head had met floor. That wasn't meant to happen.
Unwrapping her tail from around his ankles, and spying a chair next to one of the containment pods, she bent down and grabbed a chunk of Zaorama's hair, dragging him over to the seat and depositing the unconscious Devil into it. A couple of spells later, he was physically sealed there, leaving Lilith open to raise her hand, place it against his forehead and dive into his open mind.
This wasn't going to be as smooth a process as simply entering his dreams, as was her initial plan. Pull him close to her, put him to sleep with a spell, and then go from there: but he was knocked out now, and people didn't dream when they were knocked out. But still, with the power and skill gap between Lilith and Zaorama, it was unlikely to be much of a challenge for her either way.
What she SAW, though, in Zaorama's mind as she closed her eyes and saw the images within his mind flood hers… she could scarcely believe it. Her stomach twisted as the revelations reached her, each one worse than the last. It took a couple of moments for everything she was looking through to fully sink in, but once she was done- when she pulled her hand away from his forehead- she didn't waste any time in waking her victim up in both the easiest and quickest way she knew how.
By kicking him in the balls.
The chamber was then immediately filled with loud, shrill waking screams as Lilith's heeled shoe met- and crushed- whatever there was left between his legs with enough force to almost send the chair- as well as him- over onto the ground. Wheezing breaths were what escaped him next, tears beginning to stream from his eyes as Lilith looked over at him, barely-contained disgust all over her face.
"Oh, man up." The Succubus Queen sneered as Zaorama finally focused on his assailant. "You want to have a chance of living to see outside this room, Nebiros? You're going to tell me about that plan of Lucifer's you're clearly in on, as well as… all of this." She gestured to everything else within the room apart from her husband's half-reconstructed body. "I suggest. You start. TALKING."
Zaorama's eyes narrowed, partly from the pain of getting his cock and balls kicked in by Lilith, partly from the sheer force of her voice hitting him. His mouth hung open, with an expression over his face that looked like he was trying to resist the urge to speak, but it was too great.
"Your hus- AGH!"
He hadn't even gotten the second word out before Lilith swung, slapping him across the face with enough force to instantly leave a bright-red welt where she'd made contact, and for the chair he was restrained to lift up onto two legs for a second, before it came back down onto four with a hard thud. A sharp yelp left the Devil, and more pained tears left his eyes, but Lilith's command still rang in the air.
"Lucifer… always knew that there was… a chance he wouldn't live to see the end of the War." Zaorama murmured, writhing in pain within his restraints. "When it became clear that he and that scum Yahweh were going to be fighting for dominion over the pantheon… he approached me and asked about potential ways to revive himself… in the event that he were to fall."
Lilith scoffed, stepping away from Zaorama for a second and casting her eyes around the chamber. She'd never heard of any such plan from her abuser, but was she surprised?
About as much as Zeus was faithful to Hera.
"He anchored his soul to… that unfinished work, over there." Zaorama continued, catching Lilith's attention again as he attempted to stop himself from spilling everything… but it was useless. "So it wouldn't fade away when he fell in battle." He flicked his head in the direction of the crystals, specifically the two larger ones. "Nor would his abilities, that allowed the Pillar Devils and their families to exist as they did."
He let out a chuckle amidst the doubtless pain, that sounded distinctly disturbing to Lilith's ears.
"I'm so… so close to bringing our rightful King back to us!" he shouted at Lilith, through his tears and pain. "No… bolstering him! Improving him, enhancing him, making him greater than before!"
Lilith resisted the urge to openly snarl at Zaorama as she stalked back towards him and lifted him- chair and all- off the ground by his robes.
"Greater, how?" she asked, crimson eyes boring into crazed amber.
Zaorama wheezed a little bit, tears escaping his eyes again as he met hers, his resolve unflinching but it still being damn clear that he was deranged.
"Our meagre lifespans… ten thousand years… would've been a blip compared to how long he would've been alive to rule us- rule the world- for! A million years, Lilith, imagine it! With that much- agh!"
Lilith let out a scoff, tossing Zaorama- who was still sealed in the chair and unable to really move- back down onto the ground as she gestured to the containment pods, or more specifically the creatures within.
"And these?" she asked. "What the hell ARE these things anyway?"
"You mean…" Zaorama spat blood in Lilith's direction, cackling as he rolled himself into a half-formed sitting position. "he never told you about the Malebranche? Some wife you must've been, if he didn't trust you with- OWWWOWOW!"
At the mention of her having been Lucifer's wife, Lilith strode over to Zaorama again and drove her heeled shoe into his crotch once again, cutting off his babbling and drawing out a shriek in its place. One much, MUCH higher in pitch than one would expect to come out of him.
"Why. Are. They. Here?" Lilith asked, her voice a low growl as she loomed over Zaorama, who rolled and writhed in his magical bonds on the floor, whimpering slightly as the pain of his cock and balls being mercilessly kicked and stomped on twice in as many minutes coursed through him. "SPEAK."
Zaorama whimpered again, his mouth trembling as he tried his damndest to resist the urge to spill the truth that Lilith had spoken into him. But just as she'd done a couple of minutes ago, it was just too much for him to resist. Especially with the excrutiating, balls-less state he was in now.
"To... to be linked to... Lucifer." He half-whispered half-moaned. "We devised a... a ritual that could... bind them to him, in theory. With such powerful living weapons at his side... he, and only he, would be invin-"
Lilith raised a hand and, with barely-contained rage clear in every line on her face, sent out a wave of demonic energy that crashed onto Lucifer's half-formed body. It convulsed for precisely one second before slumping, collapsing to dust. As soon as the body started collapsing, the Malebranche all visibly shook within their containment pods before seeming to crack apart, such was the backlash of the half-resurrected First Devil being put down for good.
"NO!" Zaorama screamed, attempting to hurl himself at the table that the dusty remains of Lucifer's second body had dropped onto. But- with him still bound to the chair as he was, he looked more like an oddly-shaped worm attempting to wriggle in the direction of the table.
When attempting to reach the table didn't work, he twisted his body to face Lilith as best he could, despair and hatred joining the pain and devotion lining his face. But all he could do was snarl up at her as she stepped over his wriggling form.
"TRAITOR! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING?!" he howled up at her. "I'M THIS CLOSE- SO CLOSE TO BRINGING BACK THE ONE THAT GAVE ALL OF US LIFE! INCLUDING YOUR FILTHY RACE OF SUBDEMONIC WHORES!"
"It's a shame I didn't find this sooner and stop you earlier, then." Lilith replied coldly, not even sparing Zaorama a second glance.
Her gaze moved to the arrangement of crystals, specifically the fifty small pulsing ones that- upon closer inspection- she could feel demonic lifeforce emanating from. A million years' worth, meaning even ONE of these would be worth 20,000 years of extra life, twice as long as the average Devil. And as deep as her hatred for the progenitor of all Devil and Lilim-kind ran, and as… ambivalent, at best, as her feelings on Devils and Lilim were in general, she couldn't help but feel a small stab of sorrow, deep in the pit of her stomach.
"You've damned us all, Lilith!" Zaorama shrieked, still attempting to wriggle and writhe his way towards her. "You-!"
"I prefer the term 'saved'." Lilith cut across him, silencing him with a look that could split mountains. "And as long as I draw breath, that man- that MONSTER- will never walk this world, or any other world, again."
She turned from the pulsing crystals, finally turning to face Zaorama. One of her tails shot out again, wrapping tightly around his neck and lifting his bound form from the ground.
"He… will never… control anyone ever again." Lilith whispered, as her tail tightened around Zaorama's neck. "He… will never control… me."
Zaorama struggled and wriggled around in Lilith's tightening tail-grip, his face slowly turning blue as his gargled breaths and struggles became steadily less and less frequent.
"I won't…" Lilith's eyes bored into Zaorama's as they began to roll back in his head. "be controlled… by… anyone!"
Zaorama's breaths stopped. His struggles stopped. His body hung limply in the grasp of Lilith's tail as she- still holding onto his body- took a couple of breaths to compose herself. It had been a while since she'd gotten that worked up over… anything, really. She hadn't remembered her body shaking like it was now under ANY circumstances… except when she'd gotten the news that Lucifer had fallen. And that time, it had taken her a lot longer to get herself under control than she managed to do this time around, for mostly-obvious reasons.
Once she'd recomposed herself, she tightened her grip on Zaorama's neck with her tail still further, crushing his neck and popping his head clean off his shoulders. Swiftly turning and stepping away so none of the blood that spurted from his exposed inner neck got on her dress, her shoes or her person as she dropped his now-headless corpse to the ground, she returned her attention to the fifty-two crystals.
Her eyes passed over the fifty smaller, pulsing, lifespan-filled ones, and focused on the two larger crystals that- by process of elimination of what Zaroama had mentioned in his babbling under her verbal command, she supposed contained Lucifer's two TRUE signature abilities, that he had indeed used to create and give the original 72 Pillar Devils their signature abilities in the first place. From Bael's Power of Destruction, to Shax's Anthropomorphia to Balam's Rock Strength, and all the others, including the Extra Demons and other Old Satans. Both a dull silver in colour, both humming with energy- HIS energy- both completely identical. No way to tell which one contained which ability.
Abilities that would, she thought to herself, be better in her hands than gathering dust in this now-useless facility. MUCH better hands, at the very least, than Lucifer's ever would. And some personal, petty part of her knew that the very abilities that her former owner- her abuser- used to such great effect being under HER control would be a brilliant final 'screw you' to Lucifer after she'd crushed- literally- his plans to return to life.
"Eenie… meenie…" Lilth murmured under her breath, the same tail that she'd used to behead Zaorama pointing at each of the two identical crystals as she decided between them. "Miney… you."
Settling on the one to her right, she picked it up carefully. She took a moment to look at the crystal more closely, before tentatively pushing her energy against it, testing its surface, trying to figure out that way which of his former abilities it contained. Creation, or distribution?
The reaction was immediate.
The silver crystal surged in her hand, seizing onto her like a giant claw and sinking into her. Lilith let out her own shriek of pain as the fragment of her husband's essence tried to graft itself into her soul. The pain was such that it almost immediately drew hot tears from her eyes, trailing down her face. Her vision blurred for a moment as she looked up and caught a glimpse of herself in the dark reflection of the nearest containment pod, with what she saw almost making her stop cold. For a fraction of a second, she'd seen herself, but in a way that almost made her heart stop.
The crimson-red eyes and jet-black hair that she'd grown used to having had been replaced, in a flash, with hazel eyes- HIS hazel eyes- and silvery white hair- HIS silvery white hair.
'No… no!' she thought, her teeth gritting as hazel and silver were replaced- as quickly as they'd come- by red and black. 'I won't… you belong… to ME!'
Even after the crystal was fully subsumed into her body, she could still feel it, feel HIM attempting to subvert her. But with every time she saw her own reflection flashing between red and black, and hazel and silver, she felt her will to subvert the subversion in turn doubling. It took a full minute- maybe longer, it became hard to tell in the midst of the agony of it all- but eventually, the agony ceased, and she felt the power- whichever one she'd just taken- course through her veins. She certainly felt different to before she'd taken the power into her a minute or so ago, but she still felt like… her.
And just as importantly, her eyes and hair were still HER colours, rather than his.
Her body trembling again, for the second time in as many minutes, and with hair clinging to her tear-stained cheeks, she looked over at the other of the two crystals, reached out for it… before shaking her head and pulling back.
No, she thought. Not now, not yet. Not after she'd barely managed to take in one of her husband's abilities. Pointing at the crystal instead, and sealing it into a pocket-dimension for later inspection, she cast her eyes around at the Malebranche in their containment pods. They would definitely need moving as well, at some point soon, but that could wait for now.
She needed a bath. And a drink.
Flashback end
"Don't get mad at me for this…" Raylix murmured, pulling his head out from under one of the shower jets, having washed the shampoo-suds out of his hair. "But I think you'd rock silver hair pretty good. Totally get why you'd hate it, but I can just picture you with hair like Hikari's, and… I dunno, it's almost as hot as you are now."
"Almost?" Lilith turned, rubbing some shower gel over her breasts, which- wet as they were- shone under the shower's lights. For a fraction of a second, a sharp look entered her eyes, but knowing that her now-fiancé didn't mean anything malicious by his words, she merely settled for forming her tails and using one of them to lightly swat at his twitching boner, prompting a light squeal from Raylix that drew a laugh out of her.
"Hey, I said almost!" Raylix replied, a grin forming on his face even when he recoiled from Lilith, moving his hands over his crotch to protect it from any further attempts at swatting. "But… sorry."
Lilith smirked, using the tail in question to lightly wrap around Raylix's back and draw him back towards her, with an arm stretching out to hug his naked body to hers when he got close enough.
"Don't worry about it." She remarked. "I can't get too mad at you for just voicing your opinion about my appearance now. Just so long as you recognise that I'm- in- control- now." she lightly reached out and touched Raylix's nose with a finger to punctuate each of the last four words, before letting him go. Raylix nodded, accepting the bottle of body-wash from Lilith and squirting some over himself, before beginning to rub himself down.
"Yeah, I get it." He replied. "Honestly, the shit you've been through, I totally get it. And if that's what you're asking…"
Lilith's brow furrowed slightly, as she leaned against one of the walls, under one of the shower jets.
"Ray, if I wanted a doormat for a husband, I'd have put a ring and a cock-cage on Adam." She remarked, before he could finish whatever he was about to say. "Just because I wear the pants now doesn't mean you don't get any say in anything we do… but we can talk about that later."
"Ahh." Raylix blinked a couple of times, before nodding. "Right. Okay."
Lilith smiled as she watched Raylix finishing rubbing himself all over.
"I suppose I owe you a thanks or million." He remarked. "I don't want to imagine how the Civil War would've gone had a resurrected Lucifer shown up. If it would've started at all."
Lilith looked down at herself for a second.
"I think you're giving me more credit than I'm really due." She spoke, her voice a touch softer than a moment ago. "I didn't break into that facility with the motivation to stop a foreign faction to my own from tearing themselves apart. I was there to see what the hell Lucifer was doing at the spot Yahweh mentioned, and then make sure he couldn't come back to hurt me again."
She let out a sigh.
"Probably a bit more selfish than you'd have guessed, given what I know you think of me."
"Meh." Raylix shrugged, moving behind Lilith under the same jet she was standing under, letting the water run the rubbed-in body wash off himself before lightly wrapping his arms around Lilith's front. He resisted the urge to smirk at her softly gasping at his touch, though somehow he figured a part of that was how he didn't immediately go for her tits or pussy, from the position he was in. "Selfish or not, it still worked out. I'd almost definitely not be here right now if you didn't, so… thanks for that too. Make that a million and one thanks, I guess."
Lilith let out a breath, feeling herself going slightly pink in the face as she felt Raylix lean forward slightly, resting his head against her shoulders and upper back. Though that might have come from how long they'd been in the shower together. Had to have been around 20 minutes, by this point.
"No problem." She replied, closing her eyes for a second, enjoying her fiancé's non-sexual touch. "But anyway, that day took its toll, as I'm sure you can imagine. Nearly dying from taking in one of Lucifer's abilities, I wasn't about to take in the other in a hurry. Not until at least I knew which one I'd taken in."
Gently pulling herself away from Raylix, she turned around to face him again.
"Because, believe it or not, Lucifer didn't bother labelling the powers that he'd planned to go to… him, and him alone." She added.
Raylix let out a chuckle.
"Yeah, I doubt it." He replied. "So, when did you find out which one you'd picked up? And when you did take the other one?"
Lilith smiled, turning off the shower with a hand-wave and opening the door, gesturing to Raylix to follow her.
"I'm coming to that." She murmured. "Young people and their impatience, I swear."
Flashback
"And where… might you be going?"
It was about a year after the end of the Devil Civil War, and two after Lilith and the other monarchs had declared independence from the Devils- and gotten it too, without much resistance on their side. Things were still relatively raw on both sides, with the Lilim barely beginning to truly adjust to having to govern themselves, rather than having minimal- if any- representation among the Old Satans-led Devil government; and the Devils redrawing up the borders of their Clans' territories to adjust for the fact that the number of families of Pillar-descendants had been cut down by more than half.
Lilith herself had been visiting a town near the newly-drawn border between the Devils and Lilim's side of Hell, simply wanting to visit some of the people that she now directly ruled over on a whim, when she'd felt it: a faint demonic presence crossing the border, coming closer and closer to the town at a pace that one could only call erratic.
So when she'd gotten the chance, she'd excused herself from her visit and left for the border to investigate. She'd half-expected to find one of those Stray Devils- she believed that was what the guys on the other side were calling them now? Those turned into Devils by those chess-like 'Evil Pieces' that the newly-ascended Ajuka Beelzebub had created to replenish their numbers, that ran away from their 'Kings'.
But then she'd found the source of the demonic aura she'd felt back in that border town, and it wasn't one of those Stray Devils at all… because she actually recognised the Devil that was standing before her now. She couldn't put a name to the face, but she knew the face as a descendant of the Extra Demon Fleurety. Slicked-back black hair, similarly dark eyes akin to polished coal, clad in combat gear that… surely USED to look sleek and fine, but it had definitely seen better days than today. Like certain battles within the Devil Civil War, most likely. Probably the final battle of the Civil War at Lucifaad, what was now the capital city of Devil territory.
She'd remembered hearing that a descendant of Gremory had been the one to bring down this particular Devil, and deliver him to the relevant authorities… what was his name again, Rey-something? Meh, not important.
The Fleurety Devil's eyes widened slightly as he saw not his pursuers standing before him, but the former Queen of the Devils herself, now Queen of the Lilim.
"Apologies, L-lady Lilith…" he stammered, falling to one knee from what looked more like fatigue than reverence. "I… I was…"
"Running across my border." Lilith cut the Fleurety Devil off before he could even begin to justify himself. "I assume you've got Devils at your back, but you needn't worry about them now."
"You- you've got to help me! Please!" Desperation entered the Fleurety Devil's eyes as he raised himself back onto two feet. "I throw myself on your mercy, my Queen! I didn't choose the Royals' side in the Civil War, they had my family- forced me into it! But the-"
Lilith snapped her fingers, barely even listening as a magic-circle formed on the ground directly under the Fleurety Devil's feet, causing him to begin floating aimlessly in the air. Surprised by this, he attempted to spread his eight Devil wings to fly away: but the Lilim Queen was faster, waving a hand to wrap magical ropes- formed from her own demonic reserves, around the Devil's wings, cutting off his attempt at flight and leaving him floating aimlessly in the air, within her spell. He thrashed around, attempting to spread his bound wings and break the bonds on them, but to no avail.
"Tell it to the Devils you foolishly ran away from." Lilith remarked. "I am no longer your Queen, so save your breath."
It had barely taken her five seconds to have the Devil trussed up like a sacrificial lamb, ready to deliver back across the line… but desperation could make even a doomed creature reckless.
As she began converting the floating-spell she'd captured the Fleurety Devil in to a transportation-circle, she felt his aura spiking violently before she saw what he was doing. Reaching around to his own back, aiming his hands at the bindings on his wings, Lilith suddenly felt a crushing pressure coming from them, not aimed at her but at the bindings themselves- and his wings within.
Before Lilim could even let out a soft "Oh?" at the audacity of it all, she heard the sound of audible cracking as her bindings, and the Fleurety Devil's wings, broke under the pressure of his own power. Said cracking noises were joined by shrieks of pain from the Fleurety Devil, loud enough that even he didn't have Devilish pursuers hot on his heels, anyone even a medium distance away would probably have been alerted to his presence from the noise alone. The Devil dropped to the ground, Lilith's magical bindings dissipating after being crushed, but his wings all bent at odd angles from the same treatment.
Pained tears visibly pricking at his eyes from the pain, he dashed forward- clumsily- to Lilith's right, simply trying to get past her rather than directly face the strongest creature in Hell.
…well, that was debatable. With the ascension (power-level wise) of newly-ascended (title-wise) Sirzechs Lucifer and Ajuka Beelzebub, Lilith DID have competition in that regard. But even if she wasn't top dog in Hell, she was in the top 3, at the very least. And even then, she still dwarfed this desperate animal's power a thousandfold.
While floating into the Fleurety Devil's path fast enough that her body temporarily became a blur to the naked eye, she'd cancelled the transportation-circle she was in the middle of forming with one hand, and simply grabbed him by the face with the other. She made to re-bind the Devil, his entire body this time, with her free hand, but then… she felt it.
Something pulling, from the Devil whose face she'd grabbed, entering her palm and assimilating into her core. She felt the Devil's eyes going wide, his hands flailing wildly, his crushing force firing off against her, but… weaker than she'd felt not a minute ago. And getting weaker. As it happened, dense grey smoke billowed from her hand, curling and billowing around the Fleurety Devil's body, enveloping him within seconds before changing colour from grey to… a slightly lighter grey. And as soon as THAT was done, it looked to flow- like water in reverse- back into Lilith's own body.
By reflex, she released the Fleurety Devil, who dropped limply to the ground in front of her, and looked down at the hand she'd grabbed him with. That was… new.
"Wh-what?" the Fleurety Devil moaned, rolling pathetically away from Lilith before attempting to drag himself to his feet, his wings still mutilated beyond immediate repair. "What did you DO?!"
"I…" Lilith was still wrapping her head around what had just happened, and almost didn't notice the Devil thrusting out one hand towards her, attempting to use his family's signature crushing force on the being that he'd attempted to 'throw his mercy' on a couple of minutes ago… attempting being the operative word, as Lilith felt absolutely no force whatsoever coming from the Devil in question. And by reflex, again, she thrust out her own hand to counter the attempt at an attack. And from her, there came an INCREDIBLY strong force that she could only describe as 'crushing', judging by how the Fleurety Devil's body slammed into the dirt with enough force to crater it.
Well, at least she seemed to have an answer, now, to the question she'd been looking to answer for the last couple of years, but never had the time to try to.
Looking over at the Fleurety Devil's unmoving body in the crater she'd unintentionally formed, she closed the distance between her and him within a couple of steps, and kneeled beside him. A quick visual check over his body told her the most important thing she needed to know… that he was dead.
At that moment, the sound of movement behind her. Of multiple people moving towards her. Drawing herself back up to her full height, she turned to face the quartet of Devils- all wielding weapons- that looked ready for a fight, but immediately stopped at the sight of her standing next to their target's corpse.
"My apologies." She gently inclined her head to them. "It looks like I got to your target before you did. He intended to enter the border town a couple of miles west of here and take it over for himself, and I was forced to stop him. In a more… permanent manner, than you'd probably have liked."
The Devilish pursuers bowed as a group, immediately accepting the lie without even knowing it as one. One of them- their leader, a blonde female- stepped away and raised a hand to her ear, forming a comms-circle and speaking into it as the other three moved over to collect the Fleurety Devil's corpse.
Flashback end