"I'll say it one last time before I leave," the Frenchman spat, growling as he stood to leave the small, cramped room. "Comply or we will use the Angel's Hand and you will end up a soul without a body for etern-"
"I understand how the Angel's Hand works, you fools," Lamoren snarled angrily, heaving herself to her feet against the artificial weight of chains and runic tethers that sank what seemed all the way down to Hell with demons clutching them all the way to the bottom. Damnation these things were heavy!
"Artois, bring in the Angel's Hand. She's not going to comply." The Frenchman turned and left the room, removing the machine from his head only after the door clanged shut behind his exit. Lamoren could feel the vague wandering thoughts of the human's mind, but the runes and seals and dialects of Ath'Nael prevented her from dominating any of the minds that shrank from her touch only meters away.
She growled with the fury of a true-borne succubus, having been alive for ageless years in both Hell and this realm's times. She still ran through the reasons for her latest predicament with upset, stuttering thoughts.
Why hadn't the human let go?
It was all she could think about between snarls and great tugs at the cables that bound her body and spirit to this accursed floor. Her skin peeled back and boiled where it touched anything. Only the fact that she'd fed not a day ago was keeping her sane. She could still taste the wine on the human's lips, smell his hair as they coiled against each other in the throes of passion, taste his blood, his seed, his soul.
She had tasted it and yet been unable to devour it in any form. It had been hers, but somehow he had shrunk back from her touch, like a phantom prying itself from her hand. She had closed everything around it, but been no more successful at keeping it than a child trying to capture smoke in its hands. He'd slipped through her fingers and leapt away in absolute bliss.
At first, she had attributed things to the untimely entrance of the humans that now kept her locked away in a dungeon beneath Calais, but she now realized that was not the case. Even without their interference, she had been unable to devour him. It had taken everything in her to make him cum, let alone part his body and soul as much as she had. Nine attempts had ended with his soul gliding through her fingers as she closed them around his shadowy, ethereal form.
She growled in frustration again, this time from having been denied her release with him. She'd held it and held out long enough to reach the precipice of her climax, and been rudely torn from his throbbing need for attention and chained like an animal. Now, she was very horny, very upset, and very charged from her bout with the human.
"Wallace Price," she snarled in disgust. "What a name, Wallace Price. And I suppose you humans think you're so clever, don't you, fooling me with a man like that. You can't hide that boy from me forever."
She was answered by the door unlocking from the other side and an unpleasant feeling creeping into the room.
"And I suppose this is the part where you'll tell me how I'm going to die and yadda yadda yadda, right?" she mused ruefully, tasting the tang and ozone of the Angel's Hand as it came closer.
The door swung open and in walked a man holding what looked like a claw on the end of a long steel bar wrapped in sigils and holy seals. She could smell the dust still clinging to the inky paper they used, sent all the way from Rome.
"I hope you do not suffer, succubus," the man said through his helmet, adjusting the harness that held the Angel's Hand braced against his chest.
The human pulled back on the slide handle on the side of the weapon and it made a noise not unlike that of a bubble popping, except heavier and with a much louder boom that caused the dim little chamber to reverberate.
The hair on Lamoren's entire body rose and the room charged with energy. Her eyes burst into flames and her wings struggled to free themselves from the numerous seals and runic cords that bound her. Her teeth tingled with the raw soul-rending energy that permeated the claw-like maw of the weapon.
The human extended the slide handle forward until it locked into place and a noise burst from the weapon. The light overhead burst and the room was left illuminated by the blue flames that hugged her eye sockets. The slide handle made its way back down the neck of the weapon and locked into place a second time.
The room boomed with unearthly noise that caused the very stones beneath Lamoren's knees to tremble for some time before settling to a low hum that drowned out all noise and caused the flames in her eyes to flicker wildly. She felt drained and struggled to stay on her knees, the spark of her life coming away in little wisps here and there.
She could feel it feeding on her body, all the pleasure and stimulation she had received from that boy coming off of her like the skin of a molting snake. She struggled to keep her face toward the maw of the thing that was going to kill her.
Unbelievably ancient, so powerful it could devastate races across the stars without any noticeable effort. She had never even touched something this powerful, something with the ability to part a soul and a body in an instant, an act that was reserved for only the most powerful and heinous weapons that existed.
"To think that you'll die before you see me roll over and die, it must hurt somewhere inside of you, somewhere deep," Lamoren said with a bit of clarity.
The door closed and sealed tightly behind the masked man, who extended the handle a third time forward.
This time, the room went deathly silent and Lamoren felt nothing but the tingle in her teeth and through every bone in her body that the end was nigh.
"I hope your resentment for me is short-lived, succubus," the human said, lowering the clawed muzzle of the Angel's Hand to her forehead.
Lamoren grinned. "I'm sure it will be, human."
The slide handle shifted to a vertical position and a noise like a piston releasing pressure brought the room to the edge of reality. The pressure intensified to such a degree that Lamoren thought her head would be crushed. The space between her face and the Angel's Hand leapt across the vastness of empty space, twisting as the boundaries of this realm and the two others began to circumvent their limits and bleed across the Aether against each other.
Light changed into shapes, colors bled wetly across the floor, splattering a cinnamon smell into the air that wrapped around the human's body like a shade of dark blue cream. Lamoren couldn't tell what was going on. Her eyes couldn't tell what they were seeing, her tongue tasted sour mixes of alcohol and sugary sweet lichens that tickled her toes.
She felt things that didn't make sense, hot and sharp pain blossomed from everywhere in her body, her teeth rang like bells atop a spire. Vertigo brought Lamoren across the span between her and the Angel's Hand and the point of pressure on her head increased by exponential rates. She felt like her head was crumpling into nothingness, her brain being squeezed by the immense weight of a universe that bled across itself and two others that leapt into it like dancers in the air.
Even if she had wanted to speak, she couldn't. She tasted iron and butter in her mouth, and assumed with what little cognitive sense she had left that she had bitten her own tongue in madness. The succubus couldn't stand the immaterial pain that was coursing through the room. Three realms of chaos and dividing realities were brought together inside the tiny space, and the succubus gave in to despair.
An eternity passed before her and she went limp, her body no longer willing to fight the consuming madness that forced everything that had ever existed to rend this place asunder.
------------ Outside ------------
