"Oh, ja mein jung, du bist...ugh, you're going to be my fountain of youth too. Not only can I make myself rich, I can also make myself look younger. Hurry up and let me wrap my lips around it again. I want it on my face this time."
"You're kidding! I already did three just now!"
"Your mouth says one thing, but your body says something else entirely. Why don't you try being like me. Mouth and body geared toward the same purpose," the demon teased.
Jack said, "Anathane, could you please break them apart and give him a little time recuperate." Without a word of question, Anathane reached out and grabbed Volna's ankle. At first, it seemed like she was just going to pull her away, until she hugged the demon to her body and her tight uniform wrapped around Volna too.
Then, she disappeared into Anathane's body. Everyone present found it hard to believe that Anathane could just so nonchalantly suck someone into her body without notice. And then suddenly, her stomach expanded to accommodate the extra baggage and she let out a content sigh.
"Volna's...Volna's still alive, isn't she?" Kadae asked as she pondered Anathane's huge stomach worriedly. Anathane, looking as if she were pregnant with quintuplets, only smiled and gave her belly a light pat.
"Of course. She's in a world of pleasure right now. She could die if she stays in there too long, but that takes weeks. I can calm her down and keep her out of Anthony's hair for a while like this. Looks fun, right?"
Anathane sat down Indian style and yawned. After Anthony caught his breath and his loins stopped aching, he was able to join the rest of the group in the battle plan. Nobody here besides Anthony had any sort of clothing on, save for Anathane's stretched uniform. But that really didn't cover anything up anymore.
The garment was pulled up over her stomach and was really pretty worthless at the moment. Anathane played with the idea of pushing it back down for a while before eventually letting it melt back into her body with a sly grin. She moaned with a satisfied look on her face.
Jack sat down behind her and wrapped his arms around her enormous stomach. She was so big in the middle that he couldn't even get his arms entirely around her. She just held his hands and acted like a pregnant mother while everything was getting calm again.
"Look Jack," she whispered. "I think they're kicking. How many do you think it is?"
"I don't know. You got so fat so fast. Maybe it's just one big one?"
"Oh, they're kicking! Feel right here!" she said excitedly. Jack rubbed the indicated spot and a hand pushed against the inner lining of Anathane's stomach. The demon smiled and looked back at Jack with a loving gaze.
The incubus was confused. "What?"
"If only we weren't joking," she said sadly. "I want to be this big. I want a lot of little you's crawling around inside me. I want everyone else to have a lot of kids too."
She gave him a wan smile.
"Are you alright?" Jack asked worriedly. She didn't look right. Her eyes were different than they usually were. Instead of a normal, mischievous luster, they held a more serious, anxious look on the surface.
"I'm fine, just a little worried is all."
"If you're sure..." Jack wasn't convinced, but he thought pressing the issue would either make her say something to freak him out, or suck him in there with Volna, who would probably fuck him. And that would look really awkward from the outside.
So, for a while at least, the group sat and talked about the plans and about personal relationships and about what they were going to do during the great battle that was to come. Volna of course, was excluded from everything as she lay dormant in Anathane's tan, bloated tummy.
"Back to business then," Nyx said as she made her entrance in another cream-colored robe that was only just able to cover her huge bust. Behind her, Hypnos and Limarei hauled a huge table into the room and a dozen or so chairs on top of it. The furniture was set up and the map moved to the table.
"Have fun?" Ekana sniggered.
"Don't I always have fun when I'm alone?" Nyx replied coolly, painting a series of short inscriptions on a corner of the map. Ekana rapped her fingernails on the tabletop and looked at Nyx slyly.
"You can stop lying. I can smell you all over him. You two fucked, didn't you?"
Nyx said, "He didn't lose himself in me, if that's what you're asking."
"Hey," Ekana growled. "That's not what I asked."
"Then sit down and listen. If you want to make trouble again, then leave. Your sister doesn't need the kind of services you're trying to offer now," Nyx snapped in a kindly manner that made the insult sound more like a mother's admonishment than anything else. Ekana glared sharply, but sat down and was quiet for the moment.
Nyx began spreading her fingers across the map after she had finished writing, and where her fingers touched, the thick, yellowed paper began to bubble like boiling water. When her hands had touched every bit of ink on the page, the paper expanded in columns and rolling bulges.
They shaped and condensed after a few moments of indecision, and suddenly, there was a large picture formed out of it all. Clear-cut, precise angles turned into crenellated walls, and great cylinders turned into guard towers. Inky splotches made a grand portcullis and open gateway lined with spikes that wore skulls as decorations.
The map wasn't so much a map anymore as if was a large replica of a medieval castle, dark and grim. Nyx wrote something more and then the paper ruffled around the edge Jack was sitting by. Along a raised pathway came small figures, each about the size of a paperclip. Jack realized they were miniature caricatures of everyone present in the room, and then a large conglomerate of the rest of those who would be present in the Sanctuary of the Underworld once this was all started.
Particularly, Anthony's, Nyx's, and Anathane's stood out because of their special features. Anthony's bore a great flame in front of his face, Nyx's a long robe and great black wings, and Anathane's a number of tentacles emerging from its back.
"What is all this?" the incubus questioned.
Nyx sighed. "It's a map. It shows us, over there, and those who will be trying to stop us, up here." She pointed to the castle, noting with her fingers the many little soldiers performing imaginary guard duties. "This is how the plan runs so far..."
She wrote something else with a small paintbrush and the figures made a rush for the gate all at once. Without warning, Anathane's separated into dozens of copies and three of them moved to circle one of the others. The original one went to the gate and grounded tentacles in the causeway before launching a barrage of them at the gateway.
After a big of a struggle to get it open, the mass of paper entities found their path clear and rushed inside. A tide of them formed as more continued to surface from the edge of the map. He guessed that was Grymir's 'Army of Darkness'.
Everyone stood up to get a better view of the courtyard inside the castle walls. There, the Army of Darkness did its job and swarmed all over the place, gobbling up everything in their way like the high tide rolling into a shallow cove. The few defenders were decimated easily and devoured by the swarm.
After a short stop and a gathering of the leaders, Thanatos stayed back in the courtyard with Volna and her troops, taking a very small portion of Grymir's swarm to finish off the last of the courtyard's defenders.
The rest of the party went into the castle. When they entered the structure, the paper ceiling parted and allowed the onlookers to see how the battle went inside. It wasn't a pretty sight. Hundreds of guards were quickly surrounded and beaten down by the sheer mass of Grymir's army. The large castle was swept through without too much effort being used, so it seemed, and Hypnos left with a few guards and another portion of the army to go take control of another room.
Once that was over, a massive gate opened before the army and they began to pour through it, Grymir and Kadae at the fore. Then, the entire scene before them shrank back into its two dimensional form and the ink swirled about for a while before settling in its original position.
Nyx looked around. "Any questions?"
"Um, why do we need such a big army?" Jack asked. "That seemed to go pretty well without much effort."
Everyone stared at him like he'd grown another head, save for Anathane, and Grymir, who still looked as bored as ever.
Anathane rubbed his shoulder."Jack, that was the skeleton crew. Those few hundred were all asleep when the little us's broke in. Helena is so important because if she wasn't keeping the larger bulk of the guards distracted, then we'd take enormous casualties. It would be like a charge through no man's land, World War One style."
"Oh, uh, sorry then," Jack apologized embarrassedly.
"The plan is good enough, right?" Nyx continued.
"If we can keep up the rate at which we replenish troops, and if there are no more variables added to the battle," said the short, ancient demon from across the table. "And this is all assuming that we make it through the Penitence Gate without arousing the suspicion of Dalaria's allies there."
"Oh, don't worry about them," Ekana said with a malicious grin spreading across her wicked, aristocratic face. "I'll be handling them just as nicely as I would him." Her eyes darted to Jack, who paled in fear at even the slightest notion that she still had interest in torturing him.
"What about ins- oops. Looks like we woke the baby; hold on a moment." Anathane stood up and stepped to the side to put room between her body and the table. She closed her eyes and Volna clawed her way out of Anathane's stomach, phasing through without making a scratch on the larger demon's skin.
She flopped out in a puddle of blue slime and ichor, moaning softly. Once she regained most of her basic motor functions, she stood up and the gooey mess all over her began to leave her person, returning to its source.
Volna plopped herself down in an empty chair and waited, as if nothing had ever happened to make the situation even the slightest bit awkward. Jack looked around and found that he and Anthony were the only two that seemed even the least bit shaken by the strange ordeal.
"You were saying...?" said Nyx to get the ball rolling again.
"Oh, yes, what about once we're inside the Sanctuary of the Underworld proper? What can we expect to find once we get past the first gate?"
