Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

"Oh no no. NOOO! SKYLA!!!" Corazón flew across the distance. She sped for the unmoving wolf in the dim courts, gradually shifting back to human. Her naked milk skin soiled by beefy finger marks, and a trail of wet red leaking out the crack in her temples. "No.

Not my baby." Cora sobbed. Seeing another advancing adversary, the 20ft stitched-up giant sent out its great left arm to club Cora at the head.

The silvery girl was too grief-torn to notice.

It was only by Rafel's sudden move that she was saved. He pulled on his [Red Mercury] ability, running swift as lightning across the courts to catch Cora and move her out of the way, just as the severe arm swept for her face.

SWOOSH!

The black arm went over. Rafel passed by as a scarlet blur. He flashed back with Cora on the benches. He chastised her thoroughly. "What are you doing? Trying to get yourself killed?

AGAIN?! I am not losing you!" He barked. "The fucker almost got you. Look at those dead people, Corazón. Look at them. That decomposing cunt took them out in seconds.

Seconds, Cora! We need to think. We need to act wisely, or else we'll be one of those sorry piles."

He grinded his teeth. "Emotions are bad in fights like this. Not with your enemy twenty feet and bearing a fucking Kraken for a head. I need you here, with me, Corazón! Can you do that?"

She was sobbing.

"Oh my god. Skyla...he k-killed her."

Rafel at this point noticed he was being a little harsh. Maybe a lot. Cora had just watched her girlfriend's head cracked open—and she couldn't even touch her lest the fucker get her too. He forced his need to keep her safe down. Way down. And calmed himself to speak to her in a soft voice.

"I'm sorry about her." He touched her cheek and raised her face so her eyes met his. The blues were teary and deep. "—but we need to finish this. For Skyla. For those poor girls. And for our freaking umpire.

THAT ROTTING SHIT," he pointed back to the growling monster; it turned up its ugly head as if knowing it was being insulted, "took her away from you. What are you gonna do about that?"

Rafel watched as the agony in Cora's cerulean eyes turned to rage. Rage unleashed.

She growled out. "I'm gonna send the fucker to the fucking grave it crawled out from."

"Good," said Rafel.

This was the Cora he knew. Hard Cora. Dangerous Cora. The fierce blonde with whom he'd obliterate whatever the hell it was standing behind them. In all his many seasons under the red moons of Hel, never had he seen such a creature made of the union of plenty beast parts. After this was over, he'd have quite the legend Bards could write songs about.

And this had to be over. . .

He swore by the fucking Helflame of his birth.

No one fucked with his Corazón. Not with her bitch either.

"What do I do? Distract it so you can get a shot in?" Cora asked.

Rafel read the need for vengeance in her eyes. He agreed with that need. He replied, "no. I'll distract it. The killing blow is for you."

Cora nodded, in her eyes a silent gratitude.

At once, he turned around from his crouch at the benches. He forced his eyes past the bloodied bodies strewn like ribbons across the badminton court and met the Persuada's red eyes. He didn't give the creature a chance to attack again. He was now the offense. Pulling directly into his [Mana Core], he roared in hellish thunder: a command to his infernal system.

To Peitho, to link her virtual mind with his, his Kaiju, to become his avatar for chaos.

"Bathed in the blood of Caligula, the blood Adam. Gone, gone is the form of man. Rise the demon, Abaddon. I summon to this mortal coil, the fury of the Nosferatu!"

The whole area immediately charged with a visible dark energy. It swamped the smoke, almost quenching the lights. It rolled as frightening mist over the dead bodies, over blood, over white. In it, the waning light of the luminous shuttlecock was extinguished. The courts dropped thirty Celsius degrees in a second. Cora tasted the coppery, leathery tang of blood on her tongue.

She felt her lips go numb. But she ignored the urge to rub her arms.

The court was the terrifying image of inside a Hellhouse.

There was something in the mist.

A face?

A skull face. Laughing. Looking out. Satanic.

'It must be the helping demon, Abaddon which His Eminence had summoned,' Cora reasoned in her mind. She watched as the smoky skull dove through that dense smoke for Rafel. It slammed into his face. And his handsome visage was covered by a mask of bones. It was no longer his face. Gone were those golden eyes of his, now obscured in obsidian like he wore aviators over his face.

Gone was the form of man.

Israfel was possessed. And his auxiliary devil was a [Fourth Infernal Ring] horror. There was a reason Abaddon's name wasn't mentioned in conversations. Never. Abaddon was one of the few Tormentors Rafel had in his eternal debt. And the same bloodlust consumed both host and possessor.

Rafel had smoke pouring out from his mouth, his ears, and his nostrils when he said,

"Peitho, equip the Halberd."

[Ding!]

[Mind Link with Lord Apollyon completed!]

[Calculating efficiency. . .]

[100%]

[The HALBERD equipped!]

[Rank: LEGENDARY.]

[Force: HEL UNIVERSE.]

[DEITY: Kaos.]

Rafel's eyes were pitch-black and heavy on the unsightly beast at the other end of the court. The splotches of devoured flesh marking the tiles spiked his anger. One second, his right hand was empty. And the next, a red glow permeated his palm. A solid pole appeared and his fingers clutched. This pole had a sharp point sickle attached to one end.

On the other was a deadly looking axe. The Halberd: one of Charon's finest.

Rafel raised the long weapon and spun it in the air a few times.

The shiny sickle was so sharp it made slicing sounds with the wind.

Rafel used his [Red Mercury] ability again, running as a blue through the distance. He sped for the creature across the courts. As he passed, he aimed directly for its left arm—the heaviest gnarled one. A second ticked, and before the beastly giant could blink, Rafel was behind it.

SKRAT!

The Persuada wondered what made the sound; it looked down, just as that left arm peeled apart from the shoulder by the sinews. Black blood oozed and tendons full of maggots ripped away from bone. The ugly arm fell to the floor, looking much uglier and out of place against the whiteness of the courts. The Persuada now had a wound left unchecked.

Cora moved in, taking her chance. She rose in the air, illuminated head-to-toe by a dark blue aura. It made her fly.

She hovered in the air and joined both her hands. Energy crackled and mana rippled to life in the hollows of her palm. The blue light grew and grew, eventually into a large enough cosmic ball. Radiant. Radioactive. She flew in the air for the monster, before it could recover from the pain of losing an arm.

And while its tentacled head was lowered, Cora tossed the energy ball into the caved shoulder.

The sizzling ball exploded in the bloody arm socket.

It burned up fresh injury, peeled deeply into more layers of grime, and licked at the creature's black blood.

The Persuada helped, howling in pain.

And then the tentacled face made a gurgling sound neither she or Rafel could understand. Briefly encumbered by lancing pain, Rafel flashed in again, this time taking the creature's leg with his halberd. The sickle-head sliced right at the knee.

"Aaatgggghggruld!" The gruesome giant hopped on one knee.

And Cora sent blue cosmic fire to the bleeding spot again. The Persuada now struggled to keep standing. "Oh no you don't, fucker!" Rafel growled. His voice was not his, Cora noticed. It was many souls speaking at once. Abaddon and he, and Peitho.

All of the chaos avatars inside him.

Rafel sped in the third time. He took out the second leg.

The beast dropped to its patellas. It leaked out a lot of blood through the soiled kneecaps. It was brought down to half its height, and it still had a good head over Rafel. With blackened pupils, Rafel moved for it. "Eye of Horus, show forth the weak point on this abomination."

In Rafel's night vision, the Kraken head of the Persuada began to glow.

And Rafel knew: to decapitate was to kill.

"Corazón!" He called for his girl. "Here." He handed her the halberd once she flew close and dropped again to the court. The Persuada had both legs cut right out from under it, and black blood was in a pool around it. It stayed upright in amputated pain—that'll teach it.

"—behead this motherfucker." Rafel finished.

Cora raised the halberd high in the air; she took the advantage of gravity on her side. But she wouldn't mind if it took two slices to get the damn ugly head off.

SWOOSH! SLASH! THUNK!

The axe corner of the halberd cut through the air, cleaving in the Persuada's thick neck. Blood sprayed more on their clothes. Dirty smelly blood. Cora took the monster's head, in one swipe. It was fucking nice to see: that huge head with the mangled lips and octopus' beard, falling off its neck to land with a dull thud; the neck, sprouting great arcs of blood like a fountain.

The putrid, black flesh steaming from where Cora had burned it with her blue fire.

The body of the Persuada hit the floors heavily, next to the grotesque head.

Rafel walked to the irritating face, stamping the twisting tentacles into bone and muck.

"Yuck." He pulled his boot away, and spat on the massive corpse. Now that the animated life had left the Persuada, the conjoined body parts fell away, and seconds later, the beast was just a steaming pile of limbs and gore in the midst of the other dead.

Rafel pulled Cora into his arms. She stopped glowing in her ghost form, and the lights in the courts came back on as the eerie fog cleared out the place. Cora held hard onto Rafel and cried. Her face nestled into his chest. She refused to look at the corpse of her girlfriend just feet away. She embraced Rafel until she heard the sirens that signalled the school's Sentinel Corps and patrol.

She kept embracing even when the patter of running feet let her know the undertakers had come in with their black felt hats and hearths, to take the cadavers away. And the reapers, the souls.

Because she wouldn't move, Rafel had to lift her out of the arena.

Cora didn't stop him—for once. He was glad. He carried her silently in his arms all the way to Brightburn Hall and her dorm room. She could still smell Skyla's shampoo as Rafel put her in bed. He slid in next to her. Covered her body with his.

And then his, with the covers. They stayed like that for a long, long time.

Neither gave a fuck that they were drowned in black blood and bits of octopus brain.