Chapter 61
“She probably lost track of time,” Invia said as she and I led Queen Lace through one of the castle towers filled with apartments.
“My daughter is prone to such things. This is true. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
“We’re not bothered,” Invia assured her.
A few moments later, we stopped in front of Ashley’s door. Invia knocked.
No response.
Invia knocked again.
No response.
She tried the handle and found the room unlocked. Invia and I heard the whimpers of someone in pain coming from the living room.
Invia froze for a second and then started to laugh.
I tried to stop Queen Lace from following us into the room, but I thought to do that too late.
“By the Goddess!” the Queen gasped, before she turned to run.
Princess Lace hadn’t heard us knocking because she was in the middle of getting drilled by the two shadow Byron’s I left her as bodyguards.
She was on her knees with one shadow behind her, holding her hips.
The other shadow had a pigtail in each hand and gagged the angeli princess with thrusts that were, frankly, quite violent.
She loved it, though.
Unfortunately, the show was brief. The Princess screamed and scrambled to hide herself, which was kind of adorable because she didn’t think to tell the shadow Byron’s to stop. When she tried to get away, they held tight and kept pumping like the dutiful servants they were.
“Thopp!” she yelled through the shadow cock.
They obeyed and stepped back, awaiting their next order.
“I don’t know if anyone else has thought to do that,” I remarked.
Invia nodded. She was impressed as well.
“Your Divine Grace!” Princess Lace shouted, gesturing for me to turn around.
Right. She lived here, but I didn’t own her.
As the Princess requested, I stepped out, finding the Queen with a hand over her mouth, thinking. Probably about her daughter getting absolutely demolished.
“I am deeply sorry for my daughter’s disrespect,” Queen Lace said, bowing to me. “She did not mean to offend you. Please, I offer you my sincerest apologies.”
“I’m not offended.”
“That is most kind, your Divine Grace,” she said. “Please excuse me.”
The Queen let herself back into her daughter’s apartment and closed the door behind her.
Shouting erupted from inside as mother and daughter argued. The heated discussion raged for a little more than two minutes before Invia opened the door and motioned for me to come back inside.
“My daughter has something she’d like to say to you,” the Queen announced.
The Princess stepped in front of me and knelt. “Your Divine Grace, I offer you my hand in marriage to make the peace between our people permanent. Please, give me the honor of being your wife.”
Queen Lace was a little frustrated, but her composure gave me the sense that she wasn’t entirely unhappy about this outcome.
Ensuring peace with Sanctuary was incredibly important for her kingdom, and marrying off a Princess was a tried and true method for making that official.
The Queen’s opinion of me in general wasn’t high–I suspected she was still put off by how casually I flattened an archangeli city–but peace with a war god was better than conflict.
“No, you honor me by asking, Princess,” I replied, reaching down to guide her back to her feet. “While any being from any plane would be lucky to call you their bride, the Silk doesn’t work that way. You have to be in the Silk, and my wives have to approve.”
“I will endure their trials,” the Princess declared.
“I don’t marry for political purposes. Please understand that is no reflection on your desirability.”
Abby appeared. “Master, your attention as well as Mistress Invia’s is needed.”
“Apologies,” I said, extricating myself. “Be right there, Abby.”
The liluti bowed and vanished.
When Invia and I were outside and halfway to the stairs off of Princess Lace’s floor, Invia asked, “What do you think Abby needs?”
“She doesn’t need anything. I used our telepathy to tell her to do that. I needed to get out of there.”
Invia giggled. “Slayer of Champions. Afraid of uncomfortable moments with princesses.”
I shrugged. “I stayed in the moment for as long as I wanted to.”
“She loves you, you know.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
“The first time I had two of your dicks in me? My King, it was a religious experience, and that was before the G-spot throat upgrade. If you had left her with three shadows, she would have never let you leave that room again.”
I laughed.
“It’s funny, but I’m also serious. Someday, I want you to fuck me so hard that your dicks meet in the middle of my body. Make a girl feel like that? She’ll love you forever.”
Locking the Goddess away in our dungeon prison felt disrespectful and wasteful.
The collection of rarities that Arcturus piled in a warehouse several planes away from his home made that point all the more stark to me.
What good was it to amass millions of gold in art if those pieces were piled in a corner untouched for centuries?
For the trouble that often came with a unique piece, I couldn’t understand why anyone would do that.
Art was made to be seen. Wine was made to be consumed. Toys were made to play with.
So, the sleeping Goddess and her gilded cage lived in my Sanctuary chambers. Abby surrounded her with wards to ensure my safety, and those precautions were in addition to the hundreds of enchantments the seraphim had built into the cage. They too wanted to be certain the Goddess was contained.
With her on display, I often drifted into self-reflection while I studied her form. Her presence was magnetic that way, and I wasn’t alone. Everyone in my party was susceptible to losing themselves in her beauty, but Abby and Purity were especially interested in the Goddess.
I often returned to my room to find one of them sitting in front of the cage, pondering the Goddess.
When I escaped to my quarters to avoid another marriage proposal from Princess Lace, I found Purity doing just that. She lay on one of my couches in a long, loose dress with a glass of wine, sipping and thinking.
I leaned over the back of the couch, squeezed her shoulders, and kissed the top of her head before searching my shelves for some dreamdust.
“I spent so much of my life wondering if she ever existed,” Purity said, her eyes still on the Goddess’ radiant form.
“I thought about what it meant if she did and what it meant if she didn’t, but I never considered this middle-ground limbo.
The Goddess I worshipped was real, but she was even more of a prisoner than I was.
Did Abby tell you she doesn’t dream? She checked.
The Goddess doesn’t even get to live freely on her fantasies. ”
“She hadn’t told me that,” I replied. “I don’t know that I’d want to dream if I were in that position. Maybe that’s a mercy.”
“Part of me wants to wake her and ask how much of her teachings the Church shared were really hers. How much of my idea of her is based on lies and how much is based on truth?”
As I sat on the couch, Purity leaned back so I could use her chest for my line. I didn’t need to ask. She just tugged the front of her chest lower and waited.
“What do the other parts of you want?” I asked.
“One part thinks the world is better if those questions are never answered. Leave the good image alone for the sake of the people who found hope in it. Another part of me wants to sit on her chest and break every bone in my hands giving her a taste of the pain her absence caused us.”
“It’s okay to be selfish,” I said, borrowing a sip of wine to wet my throat. Dreamdust always made it feel dry for some reason.
“I don’t think it’s right to be selfish in this case. Do you remember my final Divine Quest?”
I nodded.
When Purity finished her 10th Divine Quest, the system gave her one final objective:
Aid your sovereign in defeating Abaddon. Reward: Ascend to be your sovereign's only equal.
“We’ve called me the Silk Goddess,” she continued, “but I’ve fallen well short of godhood.
When this war ends, though… The heavens have acknowledged you as a god, and if the system makes me your equal, I won’t be able to deny my role.
The Goddess of Silk. The Goddess of Debauchery.
How many little girls will suffer because their parents demand that their children follow me?
How many people will use my teachings to ignore those in need and instead enrich themselves? ”
“Regardless of what the system says, you’re already my equal and have been from the moment that silk around your neck turned gold.”
“I know you believe that. Sitting here in front of the real Goddess? I can see that I’m inferior.”
“Which one of you is in the cage?”
“But still, her power is obvious.”
“And none of that power belongs to her. There’s a seraphim out there who benefits from the prayers of the Goddess. She’s a helpless figurehead. She doesn’t even get to make choices in her dreams.”
Purity didn’t reply right away, so I let her enjoy her wine while I savored the growing tingle of dreamdust blooming inside of me.
“I’m curious to know the true story,” I said after a time.
“Once the King of the Abyss is dead, though, I think more of me just wants to put an end to that epic tale forever. If we wake her for any reason other than to ask her help in killing her once-husband, the risks are too great for what we stand to gain. I’d rather she be dead than have a chance to become a new enemy. ”
“Once you’ve asked a question, leaving it unanswered is hard to do.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“That’s also the nature of living, right?
We ask so many questions in our lives, and very few of them ever get answered, so we leave them hanging and act shocked when we get tangled in their vines.
Perhaps true wisdom is not the ability to find new truths but rather having the inner strength to move on from unanswered questions.
“Could I have done something differently to be happier with my family? Did all of the effort I put into serving the Goddess actually matter?”
“Could I have saved my father if I worked harder?” I added. “If I save him now, will he spend the rest of his life ashamed of what his son has become?”
Purity set her wine glass on the floor and adjusted her position so she could lay her head on my lap. Her legs hung over the arm rest, kicking gently. She did that without realizing, and I found it endearing, like she couldn’t hide the whimsy and childlike wonder that still burned inside of her.
“Hearing your questions makes me think leaving them behind is better for us all. Is that because I’m hearing them from the outside? Do my questions sound like that to you?”
I nodded. “Yeah, they do. I know why they matter to you, but I also know you’ll never answer them.”
“So they’ll always be a source of pointless suffering.”
“Yes.”
“How do I let the questions go?”
I offered my wife a sad smile and stroked her hair. “That’s another answer I’m still looking for. When you find it, please share it with me.”
Abby appeared in my room as I sifted through stacks of notes I took in my exploration of the angeli library collection. She told me that I had a client in the Borja dungeon, and suddenly, I felt dizzy. Could this be the moment? Was this the day I defeated Abaddon?
I thanked her and took a moment to center myself, walking to the window to look down on Sanctuary. The most important fuck of my life was minutes away, and I had to remember what it was all for.
Deep breath.
I cast Plague Bearer to release the disease I created, Abaddon's Bane, and warped to the boss room with a bag of toys, lots of extra silk, and a focused determination to do this right.
“Byron of Zaglis, what a treat,” a hauntingly distant chittering said. “Your cock is the only thing on the minds of every woman in the hells, and they all wish it was on their lips. I, Guzell, the Queen of Drowned Souls, the seventh wife of the King of the Abyss, will get to taste it myself.”
For the first time in a long while, I didn't know what to say.
“Aww, the God of Debauchery is shy?”
“Your beauty is beyond words.”
Her laughter was like 10 children wheezing at once. “I am used to this reaction from males in heat. Come, my bull, speak with your desire to impregnate something so beautiful.”
So, I went for it.
I wrote a draft of how this encounter played out, every sloppy floppy detail with vivid descriptions.
When it came time to ink it officially, I couldn't bring myself to read it again, let alone put you through what I endured.
Even with the distance of narrative, you would feel the stickiness of her mucus through my words.
Guzell had 8 pairs of arms and 16 pairs of breasts that dragged along the floor as she caterpillared around. Her head was like a drowning victim found a day later, and no single tooth pointed in the same direction as any other.
I might ultimately slay Abaddon, but I have to admit he beat me in breadth of taste.
How did Abaddon go from banging the Goddess to creatures like Guzell? I had an open mind, but fuck. Staying hard that day was an epic feat of heroism.
All that matters is I fucked her.
She came. I grunted a bit and made some exclamations about how good I felt.
-5 Progress to Your Fall.
Progress to Your Fall: 5 / 100 (Abaddon, King of the Abyss)
Now, I had to wait for the war to end.