Chapter 55
Purity, Podni, and Solara helped me search what was technically a warehouse, but archangeli architectural standards made it more of an overstocked museum. I didn't know enough about laws on the celestial plane, so it wasn't immediately clear to me why many items were stored here in secret.
He had all manner of art, from paintings to sculptures, squirreled away. That had to mean they were either stolen or banned because of celestial censorship.
Maybe that was the explanation for many of the items here, actually. I briefly wondered how stealing worked in a society that demanded Lawful Good alignment, but I put that puzzle aside because its answer had no real relevance to me.
Something useful had to be in here.
Weapons and armor: Most were built with the proportions of various forms of celestials, which meant they were far too large for humans.
Weapons could be an exception with enough points in strength, but dragging an oversized sword around sounded miserable.
Even a back sheath wouldn't keep it off the ground.
Jewelry: I doubted Arcturus would store his most prized enchantments this far from his home, but there were likely a few useful items here. If not, the jewelry would make great gifts. Treasure for my treasures.
Wine and other beverages: Fun to have but wouldn't win me a war.
Chairs, tables, sofas, armoires, and so on: Useless.
Bulk materials like cloth, ingots, and wood: When I got Stacey and Drae back, these could have more value, but they didn’t help me now.
Stacks of empty boxes and chests: Podni and Solara agreed that these were collectible because they had exceptionally nasty traps built into them.
One trap inflicted an unimaginable amount of pain and then forced the victim to relive their own deaths 100 times before their souls passed on, for example.
Podni and Solara would learn a lot from these.
Stuffed celestials: Yes, taxidermied celestials. Most of the major races were represented here, but it wasn't clear if these were former enemies or if Arcturus just liked buying creepy shit.
Books: Whether these were black-market rare editions or books whose contents had been banned from the heavens, we couldn’t say for certain, but we could say for sure that these were exciting finds.
“So Arcturus is afraid of being connected to something here,” Podni said, tapping her chin as she looked about the enormous chamber.
“If it requires knowledge of celestial history, like something of cultural significance, finding it could take years,” I replied.
Solara nodded. “We should probably start with the books, then.”
“I agree.”
Podni turned on her heel. “I'll get a shadow Byron and a bunch of bots moving on relocating the other items. I'll aim to go from least to most interesting. Then I'll be back to help with the reading.”
“Thank you, Podni.”
She ended up needing about an hour to coordinate the moving effort. With that finished, she joined Purity, Solara, and me in sifting through the stacks of old books, a surprising number of which were simple fictional stories. Not spells or forbidden knowledge, just plain old novels.
The difficulty for us was that celestial historical records and fictional novels were both written in the same style of prose.
Knowing very little about celestial history, it wasn’t easy to tell which was which.
We separated them as we went because Arcturus had no discernible organizational system for these books, but our pile of “I can't tell if this is fiction or not” books was troublingly high.
I worried that we might not be able to trust any of our determinations if we were still that uncertain.
After several hours of searching, I stood. “I should get back to the war.”
Podni followed my lead. “I have work I should do as well.”
“Purity and I can stay and keep looking,” Solara offered. “We’ll send word if we come across something good.”
After a dozen errands or so, I returned to Arcturus’ warehouse to check in on how Purity, Podni, and Solara fared with searching the celestial merchant’s collection for useful items and information.
Instead of diligently working, I found Purity on one of the couches, naked with her legs spread.
Solara knelt on the floor to lick the priestess.
Podni was beneath Solara, her tongue working diligently to please the sorceress.
All the while Purity’s abyssal fingers wrapped around the mass of bodies, one for every asshole, and one for every pussy, including her own.
Since Podni didn’t have anyone licking her, a bundle of five abyssal fingers–which was about the size of my wrist–pumped in and out of the saboteur.
“Have you forgotten that we’re at war?” I shouted, startling the trio. “I’m out there risking everything to protect us, and instead of doing your parts, I come back to find you having a casual afternoon fuck?”
“We’re sorry, Master,” Purity said. “We were only taking a break.”
“Our enemy can afford to rest. We can’t.”
“It’s my fault,” Podni offered. “I started it.”
“No, I should take the blame,” Solara argued.
“All of you, on your knees,” I commanded.
My three women knelt, each still naked from the romp I interrupted.
“Backs straight. Hands behind your heads.”
They obeyed, pushing three sets of exquisite breasts forward. Solara and Podni still had juice around their mouths.
“Mouths open and tongues out.”
Each woman did as instructed, their eyes shifting nervously as I paced back and forth in front of them. I was serious about us needing to focus on the task at hand, but this issue also needed to be addressed, right now.
Silkmancer sent streams of silk out, wrenching each girl’s hands behind their backs and binding them together.
“You don’t get to cum until I’m finished. You don’t get the relief of Rope Burn until then either.”
They nodded, timidly.
I sent out two tentacle dicks for each of them. They threaded between their legs and drove straight up, lifting them off the floor and suspending them six feet in the air as if they were impaled on my cocks. Three more extended, wrapping around their ribs before sliding between their breasts.
“Spit on it.”
Each leaned forward, various stages of grimaces and winces on their faces, and spit between their own breasts to lubricate the cock fucking their tits.
“I didn’t tell you that you could close your mouths.”
“Sorry, Mast-”
I gagged them each with another dick before they could finish.
The strain of their body weight pressing down on the dicks inside of them sent flashes of pain across their faces, and Solara struggled to breathe.
The cock in her mouth must have messed with her breathing, and she coughed, trying to recover her composure.
“When every single one of me finishes, I’ll give you Rope Burn and let you cum. Until then, this is going to hurt.”
The tentacle around their ribs and between their breasts helped me bounce them on the dicks between their legs.
As gravity brought them down, I thrust my dicks upward.
Since they were tentacles, there was no natural hilt of my hips to limit how far they could penetrate.
As much as their bodies could take, and perhaps a few inches that they couldn’t, drove deep within them.
Every lift and fall sent their tits flopping. Their abs and their backs flexed and tensed as they attempted to keep themselves upright. When they failed, their bodies flopped forward until the cock in their throats stopped them.
I held them in the air, pumping them full of all of my anger and frustration.
After a minute, tears ran down their cheeks, sweat soaked their bodies, and their eyes seemed permanently out of focus, like their conscious minds gave up on trying to process the calamity of sensations surging in and out of their bodies.
One by one, I burst in them. When the last climax left my body, I released Abyssal Permission and triggered Rope Burn+25.
I dropped them on the floor, cum leaking out of every hole and dripping down their chests, and watched them enjoy their finish.
“Lesson learned?”
“Are you ready to get hard again?” Solara asked, grinning with sweat sticking her hair to her face.
That got me to smile. “Give me at least a minute.”
“Walk your cute ass to that table and look for the green bookmark.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Purity didn't bother lifting her head from Solara’s stomach. “You'll be happy you did.”
The book was easy enough to find, and I opened it to the marked page.
Ah, this was more of a journal, it seemed. I skimmed the text.
The author believed that the Goddess had the Holy Saint ability. Purity had Silk Saint, so I suspected Holy Saint enabled the benefits of prayers to pass through an intermediary to the true target. The more people prayed to Purity, the more they actually prayed to me without realizing.
My immediate question matched the author’s: Who did the prayers really go to if not to the Goddess?
His theory was one of the seraphim elite, but this particular page didn’t mention any suspects more specific than that.
Instead, the author’s focus shifted to where the Goddess might be.
His top theory was that the Goddess was being held prisoner by whoever benefited from her Holy Saint ability to ensure that their source of power was kept safe.
That wasn’t the first time we read about someone theorizing that the Goddess was a hostage.
The author also had “or Abaddon?” written in the margins next to the assertion that the seraphim held the Goddess.
This text didn’t say so, but I knew from previous research that they were lovers at one point.
A crazy ex kidnapping an ex-girlfriend was so pathetically human-like but also believable, especially if she was essentially a prayer battery.
“You can’t rescind Silk Saint?” I asked Purity.
“I cannot.”
Yeah, the prayer battery theory made sense for anyone connected to the Goddess by Holy Saint. No one would willingly forfeit worship from more than half of the material plane. The benefits were too significant.
Seraphim, abyssal, it didn’t matter.
A pair of arms wrapped around my waist. A glance at the dark skin told me it was Purity.
I hugged them back, appreciating how their softness calmed me.
For all of the battles we had been through together, she was still so delicate and feminine.
She never let the violence harden her, yet she grew stronger by the hour.
That seemed like a rarity in my mind. How many people had been able to acquire power without also gaining a shell, a tough exterior that shielded them from hurt.
Invia, for example, hardened in parallel with her growth in power. She let a select few people inside of that shell, but the norm for Invia was having her guard up, ready to face the next threat at all times.
“We think Arcturus was trying to locate the Goddess or liked collecting things related to locating her,” Purity explained. “We have a lot more to go through, but the idea of the Goddess being held prisoner could be helpful for us.”
“I’m intrigued. Go on.”
She squeezed slightly to thank me for the compliment and stayed glued to my back. “That would upset a lot of people across several planes if it got out. And I’m betting it’s a seraphim, not our enemy, who has her.”
“Why is that?”
“He started this conflict after your class change, but we had been working against the Church of the Goddess for a good while by that point. If she were a source of power for him, I don’t think he would have let us get as far as we did.”
That was interesting and also a good point.
Purity released her grip and came around me to flip the journal ahead a few more pages. “He starts talking about seraphim hunting him for investigating the Goddess. Look at this.”
I read the section she pointed to. The author alleged that the seraphim halted ascensions because they feared him revealing the truth about the Goddess, whatever that ended up being.
“So the author was cherubim?” I asked. That was the plane directly below seraphim.
“Mmhmm.”
Solara joined us. “Juicy stuff, right? I bet this page by itself would create all sorts of problems for the seraphim. People are already pissed they can’t ascend. How many more shoves do they need to act on it?”
At this point, it couldn’t be many if someone like Queen Lace was so willing to side with us over other celestials. For an angeli, a human alliance was slumming it, big time, but she was that desperate to ascend.
“Good work on finding this,” I praised both of my wives. “Truly excellent.”
“May we have another?” Purity said coyly, leaning forward to rest her arms on a table. She swayed her ass side to side with a hypnotic slowness.