Shaping Steel (closed to Aurelianus) (Mature)

[Skie and Avery]

Not Safe For Anything

Avery had been in the village of Larkwood for three nights. It was small and quaint, with thatch-roof houses lined up along the river. The square’s fountain splashed happily in the moonlight except for the fact that the water was a deep crimson. The dark spray had stained the marble and the flagstones in the square directly around the monument. The windows were all dark, but it wasn’t for sleep. Few of the houses were still occupied, including the inn. The door was open, hanging ajar and swaying in the breeze. Now and then it slammed against the frame only to be ripped back open by the errant wind.

From within, moans and screams ebbed and flowed. They grew to a crescendo and fell silent, only for new voices to join the throng as others died into sputters or whispered sighs. On the bottom floor, a window flung open. The naked form that tumbled from it and onto the cobbles was ushered along with the smell of a strange floral mix. He paused now and again and turned back to the inn. There was movement at the window, but then it was gone.

“Oh Thayne.” Liard whispered, his voice hoarse. The stonemason’s strong form was littered with cuts and wounds, burns and bruises. He turned from the inn and started to run across the square with a limping gait. Now and then he fumbled, but never fell. Once his bare feet hit the gravel beyond the village, he grit his teeth and ran on, ignoring the pain of the stones on his heel. He had to get away.

Within Larkwood’s inn, a dark form left the window open. Dark green eyes danced with glee. He’d been sure the man had passed out from his ministrations, but the prey had been more cunning than he’d given him credit for. It was of no matter to the demon king. There were, after all, plenty of other playthings at his disposal. He’d gathered a group of girls, all of them wives but barely. The first thing he’d done was strip them of their clothes. Then he’d stripped them of their backs. It’d been almost an act of boredom. Meanwhile, they inhaled his scent, the touch of the incubi culling their minds until they begged for more. Now and again he would leave, letting the door open so that they could clear their minds. The last time he’d returned their voices were too hoarse to beg for mercy and they were dangerously close to being playthings he’d grown tired of.

The girls pawed at his body as he came to them now. They were well under his spell, the remembrance of their pain slowly dulling as they broke. Some of them had stopped bleeding. One of the girls, whose heart-shaped face was wracked with pain, clung to him, begging to please him. Her irises were red, making her blue eyes even more pretty. “Please, please,” she whispered with a rasp. With a wicked smile, Avery pulled her into his strong arms. The single glittering wing on his back quivered with anticipation before he leaned his face down to nuzzle her neck. His kisses were rough, but she moaned and arched her remnant of a back.

As she cooed with happiness, the incubus let his mouth move to her breast, his tongue circling his nipple. The splashing of the fountain outside was silenced by a shrill scream when he bit down. Avery was impressed. He hadn't thought her haggard voice had anything left.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

A week later, a dozen forms wrapped in fur and leather lurked in the shadows of looming pine trees. Some of them shifted their weight eagerly on backwards jointed legs. Others pulled their cloaks tighter around them with more hands than they had been born with. It was, if anyone had been there to witness it, a gathering of nightmares made flesh. And at the centre of them all stood something more monstrous than them, in deed if not in appearance.

"Alright, eyes peeled cutters. Nothin' gets past you, jig?"

A chorus of affirmatives met the tiefling's declaration.

Aurelius shrugged his coat higher on bladed shoulders, his horned brow shadowing serpentine eyes. He knelt on the hard-packed earth, scratching a series of eldritch runes into the damp, soft bark of a tree while muttering incantations under his breath. So far he had marked a dozen trees in this manner, and finally satisfied with this last one he climbed back to his feet and dusted off his armour. A quick glance around the area told him that he was indeed in the right place; the dense forest that gave Larkwood its name hid the small party from the sight of anyone that might be on sentry duty, but from here no-one could mark a soul.

"It will be as you say, master," one of them replied, breath misting in the crisp air. Gimmel, always close at Aurelianus' right hand, bowed his head to the one who had liberated him from the shackles of nature's template.

The half-demon sighed internally, despairing of ever making his soldiers stop using honorifics of that kind. It irked him, to be thought of as anyone's master, but they seemed set in their ways. Gimmel, while originally one of the Crimson Hand, had become something much greater in the past months. His talent for murder was matched only by his eagerness to commit it, and his work as a pain-artist was almost beyond compare - with the exception of his tiefling leader, who didn't require such mundane things as blades or tools for his excruciating art. The former-human turned his reformed face to the rest of the murderers. They didn't require orders, all of them fanning out to surround the village at a safe distance.

Only Gimmel remained with Aurelianus.

He had been born blind, his eyes milky orbs sunken in his skull. The man had adapted to his perceived "disability". But, since he had started his service at the House of Sin, he had become one of a band whisperingly referred to as 'The Faithful'. Converts to Aurelianus Drak'shal's worship of flesh. His skull now bore no eyes, no eye-sockets. Merely smooth, unblemished skin down to his slender-lipped mouth. This had been widened subtly, and a long tongue could be seen within, wet and dextrous behind pointed teeth. He wore furs normally worn to stave off the chill Salvar wrapped around its people year-round, with leather armour strapped in place underneath. No weapons hung at his hips; instead, Aurelius had granted him sickled blades of bone that emerged from his forearms with the flex of a wire-taut tendon.

They slid from their homes now, slick with blood.

"No need to get worked up, cutter," the tiefling chuckled, lighting a cigarette in a vain attempt to ward off the cold. "We don't know there's anythin'' in there worth frettin' over."

"That, master, is my concern. We don't know much. The Hands that found the witness could not tell if he was sane, much less make complete sense of what he said. They barely managed to get this location out of him. We have no idea what could be in there."

Aurelius nodded, not telling his underling that he could mark the overpowering tang of blood on the wind. He quietly smoked, letting his mind turn over, weighing up possibilities and options.

The information that had come to the warlock had been sparse at best. But, it had piqued his interest. A week's travel to indulge his curiosity, even with a little help from Agnie Lars, but that was one of the little luxuries of his position within the Order - there was only one person who could theoretically tell the half-breed what to do. And they knew better than to try.

There was a fluttering of feathered wings on the air, and a tiny creature came down from the branches overhead to perch on the tiefling's shoulder. Its malformed little face was wet with crimson stains. Absentmindedly petting the abomination's soft head, Aurelius let his gaze wander to Junior.

"'Ave a good snack, did we?" he cooed to his familiar. The animated foetus chittered, nuzzling cold, clammy flesh against its master's cheek. Ruffling its sable pinions, the familiar clambered nimbly down Aurelius' bladed armour and nestled into an inner pocket on his battered duster. It hated the cold.

Exhaling a cloud of smoke into the night air, Aurelius set off for the village without another word. He wasn't tense, or nervous. For someone who had walked the many Hells, few things could ever truly elicit the fear-response in him anymore. No, it was sheer curiosity that had his heavy boots trudging through the powdery dusting of snow on the hard ground. Gimmel followed close by, tongue flicking out from behind his teeth to taste the air. He said nothing, but the tension was writ large in his every movement. His eyeless head swung at every slight sound. The reports on Larkwood had the population as somewhere in the region of thirty people, minimum. The one lunatic who had been found wandering the wilds half-dead and barely lucid notwithstanding, there was no sign of anyone else.

Aurelius could smell things now, over the cloying copper-stink of blood. Scents that were all too familiar to him, after his countless visits to brothels and pleasure dens. Sucking another lungful of bitter smoke he allowed himself a dark chuckle. Someone had had a hell of a time, and recently.

They stopped in the middle of the little burg, Aurelius stalking around the fountain and picking out the details that delighted his every sense. Flicking the end of his cigarette away into the vitae-fountain to die with a sharp hiss, he whistled low in appreciation. The village itself was a charnel house, the reek of split bodies and gore drifting in waves over the plane-touched deviant. But under that, subtle yet still pervasive, was something else. Aurelius didn't know the word 'pheromones', but he knew more than most about aphrodesiacs. Whatever the scent was, it narrowed his slit-pupils and set his forked tongue lashing over his fangs.

Ignoring the fine spray of blood misting over his alabaster skin and his coat, the tiefling turned on the spot. His mundane sight could see very little except death and ruin. Thankfully, the warlock was far from restricted to basic senses. Opening his perceptions to what he called his witch-sight, the guttersnipe was confronted with the shifting, kaleidoscopic hues of life. The forest shone with the ethereal-presence of his Faithful stalking through the twilight and with the myriad little specks of wildlife that made this country their home. Wolves, loping further out to the West. A solitary owl prowling through the night sky and below it, the unfortunate mouse that was unaware of its impending demise. A thousand tiny flickering candles of life, but these were not what Aurelius was looking for. A cursory inspection of the village yielded the results the tiefling wanted. There, in the inn, they lit up with all the vivid colours and not-colours of animae vitae.

With one last glance at Gimmel, leaning over the stone lip of the fountain to dip his fingers in the cold black-red pool, Aurelius put his fingers in his mouth and gave a long, shrill whistle, shattering the stilness of the night like a hammerblow.

He ignored Gimmel practically jumping out of his skin, a tiny grin at the man's expense. Tucking his almost numb hands into his coat pockets, Aurelianus waited to see what would answer his summons.

[Skie and Avery]

Avery sneered from the nest he’d made of limbs and love. The whistle echoed down the empty streets, a wolf dying slowly as it rushed from the square. He’d heard voices, too muffled to tell what they said. At first he was eager. The playthings still alive from his initial attack were growing boring, his mood darkening the longer he stayed unmoved to action. The whistle was a spark, an ignition of interest that had begun to elude the demon. Slowly he stretched upwards, yawning as he stepped over a draped arm, a quivering leg.

As he approached the door, he smoothed his hands down his torso, as if he were wearing a shirt he didn’t want to seem wrinkled. His hands left streaks and lines of blood and gore along the skin, a body born to be perfect. His face was the same, handsomely cut with brilliant green eyes framed in dark lashes and darker intent. His revelries had let his hair loose, the long brown strands a bridal veil that swayed and swung around his shoulders and across his back.

Before he pushed the door open, the man paused. He didn’t fear the guards, neither the few that had been so easily swayed by his scent nor the ones in Radasanth. Every once in a while a group of them would blaze through Concordia, intent on finding his flock. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to use caution. He called up magic in the air, and set the spell that would turn the light around him. When the door finally swung open, Avery emerged onto the cobbles, sure that he would be able to pass through the square without being seen.

There were a few figures around, nightmarish to be sure. Two seemed to lead the pack. One had barely a face, merely lips on a blank canvas. Avery found his eyes wanting to flick away. He was used to being surrounded by beautiful creatures, the Beauty offering all the eye candy in the world. Gimmel was quite different, but not in any way that fascinated the spoiled royal. Instead, he glanced to the tiefling, and caught his breath.

To be sure there was violence there that assaulted his eyes. The spined hair that stuck up along a row reminded Avery of a rooster, but it was the eyes that caught him. Snakes tangled through the trees in Concordia, but these eyes were even more beautiful than the flashiest viper. Avery held Aurelianus’ gaze for a moment until the hair along his spine began to stand at attention. Could this thing see him? His glittering wing pressed more tightly against his back as if he wanted to shrink down. His spell was perfect, he knew. There was no way, but still he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the fleshcrafter knew exactly where he was and saw through the illusion he’d set to keep himself safely hidden.

Finally, Avery tore his gaze away, stalking towards the men as he measured the tattoos he could see beneath the cloak and across the tiefling’s scalp. This man who had called for him – and Avery was sure it had been him who had whistled – was less like a man and more like a book. With a grin, Avery’s body sprang to attention, intent on proving that the cold had little effect on the surge of his blood. It was a tome he’d like to read, after all. The man was somehow charming despite the eccentricities of his appearance.

When Avery came to the other side of the fountain, he hopped upon the rim. He was sure that he saw those snakelike eyes follow him, and knew that he was not truly hidden away. The illusion was dropped like a robe from the teasing shoulders of a tavern girl. In all his glory, the demon stared at the intruders. When he spoke, mirth bubbled over his words. The town had been easy, a toy in front of a willful child too easily smashed. Now he might have some real entertainment.

“Who goes there?” he asked, just loud enough to carry over the splash and trickle of the blood-filled font.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

A small, dark smirk teased the corners of the tiefling's mouth as the cracked door of the inn swung open seemingly of its own accord. Gimmel's head turned at the sound of wood creaking on hinges in dire need of oil, but he couldn't see into the aether as his master could. The glamour veiling the Adonian-physique from sight could not hide the soul from Aurelius' piercing gaze.

The warlock stayed where he was, hands still tucked nonchalantly into his pockets as he watched whatever it was emerging. He maintained his position, only his eyes moving to follow the entity as it stalked past him and circled the fountain. The odd scent that he had marked on the wind was almost over-powering as it passed, and Aurelianus tumbled to the fact it was coming from whatever was circling him and Gimmel. He could feel its effects, trying to worm their way into his head, but the warlock's mind was a veritable fortress - his willpower was indomitable. He shook it off and focused his mind on the task at hand - namely finding out what kind of delightful little horrorshow had made its abode in the village. The half-demon trusted in his preternatural reflexes to keep him safe should it prove hostile, but as the thing perched itself comfortably on the stone lip of the fountain, the tiefling guessed they were safe. For the moment. The gaping eye-sockets of broken window-frames and scarlet tears of blood running across most of the surfaces of the village promised that was not always going to be the case.

He dropped his witch-sight the moment he saw the magicks cloaking the body dissipate, letting his normal vision take in what lay before him. His grin grew wider. The rings piercing his tapered ears chimed melodically as they perked up, picking out what the breath-taking creature had said.

"Evenin' cutter," he replied, ignoring the question and nodding at the gore-streaked hu-- no, he caught himself mentally. Whatever this man was, he wasn't human. There was something about his soul that was vaguely familiar to the tiefling planewalker. He couldn't put his finger on it yet. That, an' 'e 'as a pikin' wing. Bit of a give-away, that, he thought with a soft chuckle.

Gimmel moved closer to Aurelianus' side, clearly trying to guard his master from the thing that had butchered an entire village, apparently single-handedly. The half-demon showed no such concern, holding the man's eye with his own golden-yellow irises. The other's were like chips of malachite, stunning in their clarity. Aurelius didn't deign to point out to Gimmel his slim chances of doing anything against the one seated languorously before them, if he had in fact done all of this on his own. Gimmel, the leather-clad sadist, took a deep breath, his shoulders quivering slightly. Aurelius chalked it up to adrenaline. Aurelius was wrong.

"Love what you've done with the place," he chuckled, spreading his arms to gesture at the havoc wreaked upon Larkwood. The razored blades and hooks adorning his armour tore through the leather of the coat as he moved, but the material reknit itself a moment later, leaving no trace of the lacerations.

"Got that lovely abbatoir-chic goin'." His eyes darted momentarily to the thick blood still cascading from the stone font.

Gimmel, licking his lips as if dry-mouthed, took a half-step towards the marble-skinned high-born. His sickle-blades slid home with the sound of wet meat being dragged along stone. Aurelius marked the former-human breathing heavily again, breath misting in the chilly air, almost staggering as he moved closer to the fountain. The warlock was about to say more when his eyes caught a flicker of movement out of his peripheral. The rest of his coterie were emerging from the forest, moving in on the blood-stained bastard, still sitting calmly with eyes only for Aurelianus. They danced and scarpered along the frosty ground, all of them closing in like wolves around a wounded deer.

"S'alright, 'e's not a threat.." Aurelius started, before realising none of the pack had their weapons drawn. None looked even remotely aware of Aurelianus' presence anymore. The obsidian rings in his eyebrow caught the errant flickers of moonlight as he raised it quizzically.

Samya scurried forward on her four slender legs, letting out a low, throaty growl; Baru was pawing at himself mindlessly, the barbs emerging from his palms slicing neat little gashes along his chest; Natalia's iridescent scales were shimmering deep-reds and dusky oranges - the colours of her lust. The rest were all behaving similarly, all of them lost in their own little haze. He was used to seeing them like this, back at the House. Normally though, it was when they were dosed on the aphrode--

A sharp bark of laughter broke the stillness of the night again, the half-breed scratching idly at his jaw as realisation finally dawned on him. Bringing his silver cigarette-case from an inner pocket of his battered coat, the tiefling clamped one between his lips as his frame rattled and jingled with delight. Took you bloody long enough, he chastised himself mentally. Gettin' slow on the uptake. He summoned up a flicker of Hellfire between his cupped palms to light the end of the roll-up, sucking on it until the tip glowed cherry-red.

Finally, exhaling a prodigious stream of acrid smoke from his nostrils, the tiefling turned his attention back to Larkwood's new lord.

"Name's Aurelius, cutter. Pleasure's all mine," he nodded amicably to the man reclining languidly, running his fingers through the crimson pool. Aurelius took the cigarette between two slender fingers and folded his arms over his barbed and bladed chest. He barely registered the small beads of black blood that welled up around where-ever they pierced his flesh. He cocked his horned head, forked tongue dancing over his pearly-white fangs, clearly looking at the figure before him with renewed curiosity.

"So, what brings a pikin' incubus, of all things, to this little backwater?"

[Skie and Avery]

“A brunette,” Avery muttered, watching carefully as the tiefling’s throng slid from the edges of the hamlet. He watched them, each stranger and more fantastic than the one before. Where had they come from? The demon king’s experience didn’t move far from Concordia, where the boughs of his birthplace were a comforting shield against the rest of the world. If his dhampir wife had been exotic, these beings were downright extraterrestrial.

His eyes strayed to the sunset scales of one of the group, momentarily letting memories of Elena and his reasoning for picking the village slide away as he eyed Natalia hungrily. A small noise pulled his attention back to Aurelianus and Avery hopped from the fountain. The man before him was no stranger to blood, judging from the way he so casually cut himself. It unnerved the demon, just a little. The company he kept usually detested violence, one reason he’d struck out into the countryside to relieve the anger that bubbled so easily to the surface.

Barefoot, he padded backwards towards the inn, grinning while he let the warmth of his scent taper off from where it had poured defensively off his skin. In childhood, he’d heard a story about a piper who led rats out of a town with a song, and now he beckoned for his new friends to follow his seduction. Sure that Aurelius’ living weapons were subdued by the work he’d put in creating a web of pheromones to distract, he really only needed to worry about the warlock. After all, no one had ever seen through his illusions before, nor had they stood in a cloud of pheromones and remained unmoved.

“I’m Averymiel,” he called, beckoning. “I’d be a rude host if I didn’t invite you to join me for drinks and a show.” The tiefling made a motion, and he began to follow. From their fevered trances, some of the others did as well. The nearly-faceless man was the first, always by the planeswalker’s side. Next, the girl whose skin Avery had thought to skin with his tongue came forward. As they entered the inn, something with as many limbs as blinking eyes came skittering around the doorframe and slithered along the ceiling. They might have been horrifying if they didn’t appear to be so at home in the tavern’s spacious common room.

A mass of unrecognizable, uncountable bodies spilled from the hearth, all dead. The chairs and the tables, once oak but now stained a dark cherry, were shoved against the bar and the walls. The middle of the room was a nest, a bowl made of what once had been people. The tangle of limbs, the soft rise and fall of chests were all living, warm and wet, but the eyes of faces that stared from the pile were fading. One of the thrall quivered and shook, and Avery leaned down and patted his head as he passed.

His feet squelched in the muck around his makeshift bed as he drug seats out from where he’d stashed them. Whiskey and rum were already lined up on the bar. The bodies stuffed into the fireplace smelled more like alcohol than they did like the dead anymore. In the room caked with russet gore, one item stood out more than the terrifying collection.

A woman sat nude on the bar, her legs and arms bound up so that she stay on her knees, hunched over. A cascade of dark hair covered her face, and from behind the dark locks an even darker liquid dribbled, dripping onto the oak plank. Her skin was pale as moonlight, the soft, supple body surprisingly untouched. When the Moontae king approached, she shrunk away as much as she could, shaking. The congenial smile on his face wavered for a moment, melting away as quickly as the last snowfall in March.

“I’ve been saving this one for last,” he said as he swept her hair from her face. Gashes marred whatever features she once had but for a pair of wide brown eyes.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Aurelius followed Averymiel, puffing away on his roll-up as they made their way back to the inn.

The menagerie followed, all of them clearly under the influence of whatever power the winged beauty possessed. Natalia fell in step beside the tiefling, one hand idly drifting between her thighs even as she walked. The scales shimmering down the backs of her arms, her thighs, her supple breasts.. all of them shifted from the deep-red of blood to the almost-glowing orange of embers smouldering in the hearth.

The warlock made no attempt to stop her attentions, always content to let his Faithful indulge their pleasures when and where the urge took them. Gimmel was at his right hand as always, but even he was infatuated with the tall, slender man. The pain-artist's tongue ran continuously around his lips, the barely noticeable slits he called nostrils quivering as they inhaled more of the intoxicating scent.

The warlock strolled through the door of the building, allowing Natalia and Gimmel to accompany him. He marked the briefest glimpse of sallow skin sliding around the door-frame and smirked around his cigarette despite himself. Averymiel glanced at the horror now clinging to the ceiling.

"Don't mind Luc," he chuckled, smoke slithering from the corners of his grin, "'e likes to watch."

The creature hanging from the ceiling heard his name, and opened a pair of blinking eyes - one deep brown, the other the clear blue of glacial ice - on his shoulder blades. Four densely-muscled arms emerged from each shoulder, matched by the four arms that replaced his legs. The hands themselves were widened, packed with tendons as strong as steel, and surrounded by a multitude of powerful fingers to grip the surface of the inn's ceiling. He served as a perfect spy for Aurelianus, his freakish climbing abilities and plethora of eyes allowing him to bear witness to things despite the tightest of security. When not in the field, Luc was a voyeur through and through; he was always clinging to a wall somewhere in the House of Sin, his many eyes etching the debaucheries below into his mind.

The rest of the pack made to follow, but Aurelius was not going to leave his little party unguarded. Summoning the power within himself was as easy as breathing at this point, and a roaring curtain of Hellfire burst into life across the entrance. The void-black flames climbed higher, lashing at the gathered faithful like the whips they so often employed at home. The agonising welts left by Shahab's Lash snapped them out of their reverie and they fell back to their positions nearer the forest, chastised.

Banishing the Hellfire with a thought, the blade-clad half-breed finally turned his attention to the interior of the inn.. and what he saw set his own lust smouldering in his chest. A feral growl burbled liquidly in the back of his throat, fangs bared in delight as he let his gaze roam over the common room.

"Oh cutter, you 'ave been a busy boy," he purred, the tip of his cigarette glowing as he inhaled again, savouring the burn in his lungs.

Natalia cooed, moving closer to the incubus, soft pinks tinging the edges of her scales. Gimmel, even without eyes, somehow managed to perceive everything before him. His sickle-blades snkked from their sheaths in his arms, and he took to wandering the room, occasionally leaning down to press the razored tips against soft, yielding flesh. Some of them groaned in ecstatic agony, while others were quite clearly deaders. Slit pupils narrowing, Aurelius slid his coat free of his lean frame, tossing it into a corner by the door. His body was encased in form-fitting leather, each asymmetrical plate strapped and buckled in place, gleaming with barbs and blades. The only exception was his right arm, bare to the incubus' hungry gaze. The black tattoos scrolling across the tiefling's alabaster skin were a mis-matched mix of demonic sigils, Infernal runes and kill-markings from his days as a Hive-ganger back home. They spoke of a life lived trafficking with the very worst creatures life could offer.

There was a rustling in the discarded duster as Junior extricated himself from the coat with a hissing shriek. The animated foetus, though, instantly forgot its anger at the rude awakening, when its other-sense picked out the devastation and horror in the room. Its sutured eye-sockets flicked this way and that, and the tiny abomination flapped across the room to land on one of the women strewn across the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. Minuscule needle-teeth latched on to the broken woman's shoulder, and a soft suckling was added to the chorus of pain and misery.

Aurelius followed Avery, ignoring the moans as his steel-capped boots crunched down on fingers and ribs.

The chit propped up on the top of the bar was just divine. Her flesh was flawless, save the gashes adorning her face. But, Aurelianus leaned in close, letting his practiced eye appreciate the contrast each cut and gouge offered. Rather than destroying her beauty, they enhanced it. Flicking away his cigarette, for once not even smoked all the way down, and reaching out with a slender hand, the half-demon tilted her face up towards his. Even without the witch-sight he could see her spirit was broken.

Too bad, he thought with something almost like regret. A soul as pure as her's must have been would have been a valuable commodity to the warlock. He understood the risks involved in trading in souls, yet the rich rewards were more than worth it. But, whatever atrocities the incubus had heaped upon her family and friends had shattered the last vestiges of what made her human.

Still, no use cryin' over spilled bub.

His fingers trailed down the girl's neck, watching the goosebumps crawl along the ivory skin. It slid down further, and once he was sure Averymiel was watching, Aurelianus let his fingers travel inside her flesh. It took little real effort for the fleshcrafter, as practiced as he now was. All it took was the knowledge - not the mere belief, but the complete and utter acknowledgement of it as indisputable fact - that his design, his will, was superior to that of whatever force had created the girl to begin with. Her tender flesh parted around his questing fingers like wax, and the tiefling plucked his fingertips along her ribs like the strings of some macabre harp.

The girl screamed.

Writhing against her bonds, she almost pitched off of the bar, but Aurelius' other hand supported her. He shivered, closing his eyes to savour the sensation of dominating her flesh as easily as others sculpted clay. Her screams continued unabated, until finally, slowly, the quilled nightmare removed his hand from within her - there was not a single blemish to mark his violations. The girl was finally allowed to fall, slumping on to her side and weeping, face mashed against the stained wood of the bar.

"I can see why you're savin' 'er, cutter," he hissed, another surge of arousal spearing through his senses.

A glance over his shoulder told Aurelius that his three Faithful were all alert now, chests hiking and mouths watering. They knew well the protean caress of his fleshcrafting and no matter the indescribable agony it brought.. no, because of it, they longed to once more know their master's Art. Natalia removed her cloak to display her brazen nudity. Kneeling before one of the dying men heaped in the middle of the room, she leaned down, letting her tongue probe a deep incision in the human's chest. She lapped the blood pooling within with all the enthusiasm of a kitten with cream, her glittering violet eyes locked with those of the winged incubus.

Aurelius leaned in close behind the full-blooded demon, his voice a sibilant whisper in the other man's ear.

"Looks like you've made a new friend, cutter."

He stepped around the gore-streaked devil, making his way to squat on his haunches by Natalia's side. His nails raked down her back as she mounted the dying man, seeking to sate her burning desire in a frantic burst.

Gimmel was next to the hearth, striking flint and steel until the alcohol-soaked deaders finally went up. The smell of searing fat filled the room, accompanied by the crack and hiss as whatever blood was left in their veins turned to red steam. He prodded a few of them with his bone-blades, shoving them into a more orderly pile as the flames caught. If not for the unspeakably grisly tableau it shone upon, the light would have seemed warm and comforting.

Natalia continued grinding against the man underneath her, the slender stiletto-nails puncturing his chest as her motions became more frenzied. Luc circled on the ceiling above, the eyes on his shoulders locked on the scene below.

Still crouched beside them, Aurelianus turned his lambent eyes back to their host with a wicked grin, running a ruby-spattered hand through his quills.

"I like your work, Avermymiel, me old son," he smirked, chewing idly on his thumbnail, "but I'd say there's still a bit more fun to be 'ad 'ere."

[Skie and Avery]

Avery was enchanted. The warlock’s fingers had danced over perfect flesh and then parted through them like a knife slicing through warm butter. It wasn’t merely an illusion. The girl wailed and bucked, and when Aurelius left her weeping into the wooden bar Avery found himself no longer focused on the woman who had captured his interest. Gone from his mind were the visions of Elena and her siren song. The suffering he endured from her departure were as vanished into the void as she was. Now, there was only a different breed of demon standing before him, one far more sinister and alluring than the dhampir had been.

The warmth from the fire was lapping at his back, slowly fighting off the cold, but the demon hardly noticed. Instead, he was staring down Natalia, watching the light play along her scales. When he first began to break the town down, mutilating and mesmerizing as he worked, he’d been exercising his anger. Malice and power were his motivators. These new friends, as Aurelius had put it, were something else entirely. The pleasure they displayed at his work was foreign to him, but it still created a rise in him displayed by his nudity for all to see.

Underneath the rampant excitement, a lingering of doubt tickled at his mind. What could he be worth to the planeswalker when Aurelius could cleave flesh with a thought and a touch? His skills were more manipulative, his physical abilities nothing but brute force and a consuming need for control. His tongue danced along the sharp teeth in his mouth, thinking. He still had gifts to give the tiefling, he was sure of it.

“I would pay any price to know how to do that.” He said, grinning as he nodded towards their captive prey bound on the bar. Other kings had given life and kingdoms for less. “My imagination only manages to brush against the physical realms.”

He channeled the magic within, silent incantations whirling in his mind. He cast his spells in the voice of his mother, clinging to fading memories of what she sounded like. From beneath the drake-skinned girl, the bleeding corpse she rode began to change, but only slightly. The wounds from flayed and ripped flesh appeared to gape open and the sticky cruor began to bead at the surface. Avery’s eyes, bright green with lust and power, flicked upwards towards Luc. Inspiration was brewing. The droplets sprouted ruby legs, and the blood insects began to spew from the wounds.

They flowed in waves, dancing up thighs and across the belly of the girl. Now the magic got fun. Avery poured more of himself into the illusion, wanting the girl to feel something of his work. The illusion would now have the tickling of thousands of legs born of gore, whisper quiet against skin, and here and there on thigh and breast, the sharply soft pain of carefully placed bites – not unlike the suckling and nibble of a rough lover.

The warlock had promised the one-winged demon more fun to be had, and as the fire behind him crackled and sparked, Avery believed no one had ever been more truthful to him in his life.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Natalia melted under this new barrage of sensory delights, bouncing harder on the poor sod bleeding out under her. A feral growl bubbled up in her throat as she reached out for Avery to join her. Her violet eyes spoke a thousand promises of pleasure. Below her, the human undergoing her fevered lusts choked, coughing blood-flecked saliva over himself as he tried in vain to get the nightmare off of him. He froze in mute horror as Luc crawled into his field of vision, shoulder-mounted eyes blinking asymmetrically.

Aurelius pushed himself back to his feet with the creak of leather and the jingle of the countless buckles and adornments on his attire. Allowing himself a small smirk as he watched events unfold, the tiefling stalked around a few of the deaders, nudging one here and there with the steel toe-cap of his boot. Most of them could groan in protest, at the very most. There was no fight left in any of them.

"You know what I see when I look at you, cutter?" he asked, walking behind Avery now and idly running his fingers through the hair of the brunette still weeping on the bar.

"I see," he said quietly, running his forked tongue over his shark-like teeth, "potential."

He gestured to the small gore-spiders still wandering Natalia's skin, the illusory magicks evidently feeling real enough to excite the vixen more. The girl, scratching her sharp nails down her exposed breasts, only had eyes for Averymiel though. Aurelius could smell the musky hint of unbridled lust smouldering away beneath her usual scent. He savoured it for a moment, like a connoisseur with a fine wine, before returning to his soft oration.

"You 'ave the imagination to do some truly pikin' wonderful things, chief, lemme tell you. This little 'orrorshow 'ere? Perfect example. You've got the talents. Just need.. a guidin' 'and," he finished, flicking an ophidian glance at the incubus.

"All you 'ave to do, cutter, is learn the basics. First rule? Reality's all a matter of perception. That's all it is, see? If you perceive it, it's as real to you as it needs to be, jig?"

Gimmel stood from warming his hands by the impromptu pyre, smiling a little as he recognised the master's tone - he was slipping into his pedagogue mindset again. The half-demon, Gimmel had noticed, took more than a little joy from opening other peoples' eyes to his views of life.

Aurelius, wrists laden with charms and minor talismans, reached up to lay a hand on the supple skin of the incubus beauty's wing. It was warm, and even through the thin membranous curtain, the tiefling could feel the blood flowing through his new companion's veins. He allowed himself another casual glance at Avery through the auspex of his witch-sight. Yes, the man knew pain; he knew suffering. He had inflicted it and received it. He had seen both sides of the coin.

Aurelianus' mouth opened wider, like a knife-wound lined with serrated ivory.

"You've already started edgin' into that territory, I can tell. Startin' to impose your will on the world 'round you. I can relate to that, cutter," he nodded, still letting his alabaster hand roam the sculpted form of the lust-demon. He felt each bunched muscle and taut tendon flexing underneath the surface, felt the power in that frame, just waiting to be unleashed.

"Brush, you said. S'a good choice of words, that. Because at the end of the day, you're an artist. Take a look around you. All of this," Aurelius leaned in consiprationally, as if sharing a great secret, "this is your design, forced on the world simply 'cause you rejected what the masses deem 'moral' or 'normal'. It's a nice little vision you 'ad 'ere. Unrefined, a bit raw, but...""

All 'e needs is a push in the right direction, an' a mate to show 'im the way, he mused, wiping an errant droplet of blood from Avery's cheek with his thumb before tasting the already congealing vitae.

"But don't you worry, Avery mate. Aurelius'll see you right. We'll talk more later, but for now, go 'ave some fun," he smirked, nodding to Natalia as she finally brought her plaything to an unwanted climax. Her lithe body shuddered as she felt the life leave him, almost at the exact same time as it entered her. She rose gracefully to her feet and reached out for the alluring individual. She ached to know what he tasted like, what he would feel like inside her. And after her tenure at the House of Sin, waiting to satiate her hungers did not come easily to the red-haired temptress. The half-demon, his crest of quills catching the dim fire-light bathing the room, gently pushed Avery towards her with a surreptitious wink.

"I'd wager she knows more about the old in-out than you, cutter," he added, strolling back towards the bar.

Gimmel joined him, failing to hide his jealousy as he heard Natalia pawing at the incubus. This, Aurelius admitted, was a curious development. The eyeless chief of his flock was rarely one for indulging in base piking. The pain-artist usually derived all of his satisfaction from the infliction of his craft on others; but, with the tight leather ensemble he wore not leaving anything to the imagination, Aurelius could mark that Gimmel was definitely willing to make an exception for Avery.

"Why not, mate?" the tiefling whispered to his most loyal guard-dog.

"Go on, get stuck in. Might do you some good to dip your wick once in a blue moon," he teased with a chuckle.

Gimmel turned his unseeing face to the tattooed fleshcrafter, clearly not used to feeling arousal of this nature. He seemed.. conflicted. But Aurelius was curious to see how much of an influence the incubus could have. It was, the schemer admitted to himself, as good a test of Avery's potential usefulness as any. And from what the manipulative half-breed had already seen, there were countless applications already tumbling through his brain-box. Oh, there were half-a-hundred little notions he could use Avery to realise. His mouth watered slightly at the prospect.

The serpentine eyes roamed the room, dancing over every mutilated scrap of flesh; every single twisted, mangled limb. A buffet of carnage tantalised his preternatural senses, and all it did was leave the warlock craving more. He wanted to see what would happen if he helped the incubus expand his gifts.

A predatory gleam lit the plane-touched fleshcrafter's eyes.

If he was going to secure Averymiel's curiosity, he would only need to offer up a suitable gift.

Patting Gimmel on the back, he left the Faithful to debate sating his desires the good old-fashioned way. Aurelius turned back, slowly, to the broken girl lying on the counter-top. Every boot-step on the blood-caked floorboards made her flinch slightly as he approached. He loomed over her, his shadow cast across her by the burning bodies rammed into the hearth behind him. Slowly, almost affectionately, he wiped away her tears.

"Shhh... now, now, luv. No need to be cryin'. No, no, settle down now," he cooed soothingly, perching himself on the bar beside her.

Junior, finally sated, flapped across the room and alighted on its master's bladed shoulder. The abomination's tiny belly was full, a rosy colour spreading across the not-living flesh. The familiar nuzzled against Aurelius cheek, sutured eye-sockets regarding the pitiful specimen before it.

"She's a wee bit afraid, Junior, that's all. Poor lamb thinks she's gonna wind up in the dead-book," he told the foetus, his tone like that of a parent with his child.

"I'm not goin' to kill you, sweet'eart," he promised, again trying to calm her by stroking her lustrous dark locks.

He let his gaze wander to the abundance of corpses again, hiding the excitement from his voice.

"No, I'm goin' to give your life purpose. See, my new friend over there," he jerked his thumb towards Averymiel, "'e probably would've killed you. In fact, I doubt there's even a 'probably' in there. But I won't let that 'appen."

He shifted a little closer on the bar, his bladed armour gouging the cherry-stained wood.

"All you 'ave to do is tell me you don't want to die. Just say the word, make a choice, and I'll let you live."

He waited, seeing the slightest glimmer of hope start to penetrate the fog of her current state of mind. Now he just had to add that little bit of bait to the hook..

"I can make you beautiful again," he whispered.

That got her. He could see the words rake across her thoughts, like hot irons, bringing back the pain and humiliation of what Avery had done to her face. Her tears came anew, washing away some of the gore caked on her once-pristine features. The salt stung each laceration. Aurelius could mark all of this, could practically taste her misery and that bitter-sweet little dusting of hope that was taking root.

"pl--"

The girl swallowed back another sob, but couldn't bring herself to look into the reptilian bastard's eyes.

"Please," she choked out, utter defeat writ large across her body.

Aurelianus Drak'shal hopped nimbly down from the bar again, giving the poor girl a peck on the cheek before he sauntered off. He was going to need more raw materials. Luckily, the incubus' blood-lust had provided him with ample amounts of what he needed.

Inspiration, he thought, was a dangerous thing for him to have.

[Skie and Avery]

Potential, he’d said. The word ran through Avery like an electric current. Just the thought of what the tiefling was promising was almost as enticing as the beckoning hand of the serpentine seductress before him. He hadn’t needed Aurelius’ nudge, wishing to wrap the viper around his fingers letting the scarlet scales that graced her body be like the red thread of fate twisted and tied and leading him to something reeking of greatness and glory. He went to her and made sure to grab what was left of the rope he’d used to tie up his offering from the bar top. There wasn’t much of the hemp hewn length still, but it would be enough for his purposes.

The girl was obedient, her brows arching and her eyes filled with interest as he brought the rope and lashed it around her head like a crown, though the strands fell down her brow and covered her eyes. Again, he reached out with magic, using it as another appendage. The illusion this time was an arctic wind, the barest of icy breezes that would dance down her spine and across her breasts. Her body shuddered, her back arched, and the demon grinned.

With her eyes bound, Avery ducked around her, stroking and leaning in to nibble and kiss as he moved. His circling was that of a predator, finding the perfect spot to strike, though his hunger was quite different. Finally, his eyes locked onto the side of her neck. She’d been shivering, moving her head back and forth to try and track him, and now her heart was pounding. He could see the beat throbbing in her neck, a living ruby tempting him just beneath the surface. Oh yes, he knew exactly how he wanted to plumb this treasure.

Avery moved behind her, letting his hands slide up her back and into her hair as he pushed her forward until she was bent over one of the chairs he’d shoved aside. Even as he slid into her, already dripping with anticipation and previous delights, he placed the most chaste of kisses on her shoulderblades. A happy sigh drifted from beneath him, before the shuffling of clothes, zipping of leather, and warm movement let him know that someone was behind him as well. A rough hand encircled the upper crest of his wing, The appendage was littered with nibbles that grew more and more rough and finally, he felt it – the gentle probing of quite a different appendage between his thighs.

It had been quite some time since he had indulged in more masculine company and even as he watched Aurelius move and pick through the treats that Avery had discarded, he didn’t have to ask which of the warlock’s minions was seeking permission to enter the Temple of Beauty. Of course it was Gimmel, the eyeless, nearly faceless, one. Surprise bubbled up, bringing along amusement. When he’d first seen the man, he’d assumed he was a dog kept on a tight leash, but from what he saw all of the planeswalker’s wolves were free to roam as they pleased.

Speaking of pleasure, Avery allowed himself to relax to the probing ministrations of the fleshcrafter’s minions. As he did, he once more filled the air with the scent of the Soema flower, so readily available in his own heightened state of arousal. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been this wanton with his pheromones, but it only added to his own pleasure. Every leap and bound of control and power they gave him made him feel more powerful. He truly felt like a king now, even if a soft snik and the press of a blade against his rib made him keenly aware that his new friends did not delight in pleasure in the same soft and languid way his previous lovers had done.

Avery had one hand before him, his fingers gripping the girl’s jaw as he held her neck within reach of his teeth and tongue. His other was behind, claws snaking out from beneath the soft humanoid nails that hid them to dig into Gimmel’s hip. The feel of scale beneath his lips, the way his sharp teeth tugged against them was mesmerizing. Oh what would this lot ever do if he took them deep into Concordia, beyond the veil that hid the Moontae city from mortal eyes and laid the hundreds of Beauty at his disposal as an offering before them. Come to think of it, what wouldn’t they do?

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

The fleshcrafter watched them for a while, vicariously savouring the delights each felt. He let his gaze wander after a few minutes, though, sizing up the deaders strewn haphazardly around the room in various states of mutilation.

The fire still crackled but the flames had died down lower now, struggling to get through the thick layers of fat and the fluids oozing from each torn body. The smell of cooking meat permeated the air. Aurelius stoked the grim hearth with a steel poker, before turning his attention to the task at hand. Junior, sickly white body bloated with the fed-upon blood of the flesh-feast, flapped lazily over and perched on its master's shoulder again, chittering away softly.

Petting him affectionately, Aurelianus knelt down by one deader - the town blacksmith, if his muscular back and shoulders were any indication - and started dragging the no-longer-alive human across the rough, sticky floorboards. He muttered to himself as he did so, a dark little smile touching the corners of his scarred mouth. Behind him the festivities continued, a chorus of ecstasy that caressed his senses. Natalia groaned, a wild, animalistic sound that he knew all too well from their many late nights at the House of Sin. Even Gimmel, despite his original misgivings, was losing himself in the sensory-delights.

The charms around the half-breed's wrists and neck chimed melodically as he finally dropped the heavy deader on the floor beside his soon-to-be work of art. The girl, almost comatose and completely unresponsive, shivered on the bar. A normal person might have felt empathy in this situation; some deep sympathy for her abhorrent treatment and suffering. But Aurelius didn't see her as most so-called normal people would. In his eyes, she was going to have died horribly at Avery's hand if he hadn't come along, and now she would serve a purpose and continue living. The warlock was, in his eyes, doing her a favour. He was allowing her to transcend the restrictions of nature. To become something.. more.

Another few minutes saw him cherry-pick a few more body parts from the smorgasbord of violence, removing them easily with his protean Art. Flesh came apart like heated wax, bone parting with next to no effort. The spares were discarded in a pile next to the bar. In his many, many experiments with the limits of his powers, the warlock had found he could stretch and expand upon what the average body already had - a tendon strengthened here, a slab of muscle spread out there - but eventually he needed to take what he required from other sources. Finally, Aurelianus was ready to begin.

Moving over to the coat he had dropped next to the door, the tiefling extracted a gauntlet of sadistic design. With another grin he slid the leather and metal contraption over his right hand and flexed his fingers experimentally, adjusting a buckle to tighten its grip on him. The leather straps secured the gauntlet to his slender hand and each finger was topped with a subtly curved blade of titanium. The razored edges of the talons glinted menacingly in the fire-light as the fiend turned them this way and that. This little device was a recent addition to his armoury, but the enchantments he had contained within were older than most worlds he had visited. Archaic magicks were bound within, and as his steel-shod tread brought him past the trio of debauched lovers he reached out and ran the blades down Avery's arm.

The blades parted his flesh, a light stroke splitting the skin, but there was no pain.

The enchantments within the gauntlet transmuted what was commonly seen as something unpleasant, and turned it into pleasure. Forced masochism. It was, the warlock knew, one of the more elegant forms of magic he had come across - transference of sensation. Equivalent exchange. It had, so far, made his surgeries much easier to carry out. If the patient was in the grips of such sensual gratification before Aurelius started his fleshcrafting, their minds were unable to separate the pain and pleasure warring across their forms from moment to moment.

Another graceful pass of his hand slid down Natalia's spine, making her arch her back and press back against Averymiel as small ruby beads welled up and spilled down her shimmering scales.

Aurelius, though, had already moved back to his own little party. The girl finally reacted to his presence when he pricked one bladed fingertip under her chin, and tilted her wounded face up to look at him.

"Remember, luv," he said softly, the bone-white slash of his smile filling her sight, "this was your choice."

As the blades punctured and lacerated the skin around her hip, her eyes opened wide and her mouth formed a silent scream.

When the half-demon's hand followed the blades in and his mutating magicks took hold of her exposed musculature, it became less silent.

***

It took hours.

Aurelianus worked tirelessly the entire time, his every sense focused with laser-like precision on the work, on the art he was creating. Sweat poured down the tiefling's face, carving runnels through the accumulated blood smeared across his exposed skin. The work itself took severe amounts of physical effort, let alone the toll it took in mental fortitude. Each tendon was pulled, stretched, held in place and fused to the ends of whatever it moved; bones were split, re-shaped, and manoeuvred into new niches; muscles were lifted in whole slabs and grafted on under layers of fat and flesh. And throughout it all Aurelius had to force his will through his hands and into the form he was crafting - without his inhuman efforts of will the craftings would fail and revert. Sometimes it took minutes; sometimes it took hours.

Without his power channelled through the blood spilled, though, eventually the work would fall apart. Binding was an essential part of his fleshcrafting, and the sadistic half-breed had spent countless hours trying to fine-tune this process so it could be done quicker.

The girl, her mind thoroughly knocked off of its foundation, could find no single sensation to focus on throughout the session. For every sharp stab of pain stinging through her mental fugue there was an almost immediate wave of rapture to follow. Her mouth opened to scream in horror, and it turned into a cry of depraved satisfaction. Her moans of ecstasy became sobs. The opposing ends of the spectrum flowed over one another, softly becoming one indistinguishable wave of tactile madness. Any vestiges of self-awareness remaining in her psyche were left jarred and shaken loose by the end.

Finally, they were destroyed entirely.

It was nearly impossible to tell exactly when she ceased to be who she had been when she woke up this morning, but it happened.

The girl - Aurelius realised he had never found out her name, and realised instantly it was irrelevant - had been reborn.

What had been had now become what was and as it took its first shuddering breath of a new life, Aurelianus Drak'shal drank in the beauty of the new creature. The centaur-like beast raised itself from the floor, heavily muscled arms pushing its weight upright; a man's torso knelt on the floor, knees and hands already bloody from scraping against the rough wood, elevating the divine form emerging from where nature had once declared a head would sit. Thick, tanned shoulders blended almost seamlessly into the soft curve of a woman's hips, becoming milky-white skin. A faint chuckle bubbled up from Aurelius' throat as he spared a glance at what had once been the delicate opening between the girl's thighs - now, quivering with new tendons and musculature, a maw lined with slender, needle-like fangs snarled back at the world.

His eyes drifted higher.

The delicate curve of her breasts had been accentuated, fatty tissue from her now discarded legs put to good use. Sitting upon the body of the horrific amalgamation, they would have stood out as contrasting too much with the new aesthetic. But even as the creator watched, one of the nipples split open and a curved shard of bone emerged. The other was perforated from within by a dozen stiletto-needles, taken from the artist's satchel. Her shoulders, asymmetrical now, clicked and popped as she moved, getting used to the new body. One of her arms waved jerkily as it tried to support the new weight of the nightmare, but it drew back at the unfamiliar sensation of bone claws gouging into blood-soaked wood. A third arm had been added on a whim, pierced through with a series of delicate looking gold rings, and it curled in around the horror's waist as if it was hugging itself. Some residual memory of human disgust and shame? Did it understand what it had become? The honour Aurelianus had done its flesh?

A hundred little atrocities greeted the eye as it looked over the manic creation of an unstable imagination.

With a light step, Aurelius moved closer, running a hand through his quills to clear the unpleasant stickiness of cooling sweat and congealing blood. Though it had no eyes it knew he was there. Turning clumsily, the raw (and in some parts, still un-fleshed) base-body staggered back - the creature only had one brain, but trying to wire it into another body was far from an exact science. Aurelianus knew he would have to tweak the work many times over the coming weeks to perfect it. He moved closer, one scarlet hand outstretched, and caressed the abomination's cheek.

There was no face to speak of, not anymore. Instead, folds of delicate muscle slithered back, slick with saliva. A hideous mouth, like that of some deep-sea beast, uncoiled - it took up the entirety of where once a pretty girl's face had sat, and now, circular rows of teeth were unveiled. Deep within, behind bone shards that had been painstakingly reshaped one by one, a sphincter whispered open and a perversely long tongue waved into the air with all the grace of a charmed serpent. It wrapped around the warlock's hand, tasting blood for the first time. With a proud smile the fleshcrafter admired his handiwork, noting how the grotesque growths of muscle worked exactly as he had envisaged.

Serpentine eyes locked on his gift, the warlock turned his horned head back to the incubus.

The three pleasure-seekers had finally taken a break from their piking after numerous mutual climaxes, and as the warlock stepped back to stand next to them, his lips peeled back into a smile that supposedly haunted the nightmares of more than a few. He wanted to drink in Avery's reaction to what he had made, wanted to savour this demonstration of what power could be unleashed if he stood with the tiefling.

With a chuckle, he tossed something soft and white to the one-winged beauty.

"Souvenir for you, cutter," Aurelius smirked.

Avery looked down at what was in his hands, puzzled for a moment before he realised what he held. It was hard to recognise at first without the skeletal structure beneath. Still, it quickly became unmistakable. The girl's face, that had so captivated the demon of temptation.

The half-devil gestured theatrically back to his work with the razor-gauntlet, his other hand trying in vain to wipe the sweat from his brow again - it only succeeded in smearing gore and filth across his alabaster skin.

He was about to introduce the gift, when a sharp, shrill sound split the night air like a scalpel.

Everyone inside the inn froze, looking between themselves.

Aurelianus swore under his breath and the spell of stillness was broken. Natalia and Gimmel started dressing themselves in haste, the debaucheries from a moment ago forgotten.

"Luc, rooftops," he snapped, gesturing to the voyeur. Luc obeyed without hesitation, scurrying across the ceiling and up the narrow staircase to the upstairs rooms in a flurry of limbs.

"Junior, eyes in the sky, son. Gimmel, Natalia, get our new mate clear of the village. Gather up the lads, and meet me back at the camp. Take the new plaything with you," he added, jerking a thumb at the manifest insanity staggering behind him.

"What is it?" Avery asked, looking at his new-found allies.

Aurelianus, masking his irriation by lighting a roll-up, flicked a glance at the incubus. Quicker than I'd 'oped, he thought.

"We 'ave company," he said, exhaling smoke and throwing on his coat.

Avery wasn't sure, but he was almost certain he detected a hint of relish in the tiefling's tone.