Theo Sequel: Otep's Last Case

Chapter 7, Dunes and Mysteries, A Monster unveiled:

Reikshold.

The capital city of the Monstergirl Empire, hewn from the shiniest marble and adorned with cross-species artwork exalting the fragile peace and mutual needs between monstergirls ("mamono") and humans, lit by the golden rays of the sun, was stained grey. Hammers fell by the thousands on anvils, hands turned gears and ratchets, and the air of possessive sexuality and easy love vanished into grim determination. The beauty of the city was marred: once a hell-hole due to Maou's tyranny, a nightmarish, obsidian town of spiked spires, slave pits, and sacrificial ziggurats, and was converted to a replica of Ermorean and Human Frankish architecture.

The peace lasted barely a century. Now, Agrat wept at what the city had become, though the humans inside were almost equal now. Even now, only human men were capable of bringing the new generation into the world, since all monster males died out, never to come back... Except in rumors... Men were running around her as well, engineers, craftsmen, artillery operators, and weapon porters, having shaken off the heady sexual atmosphere of the Monstergirl Empire.

Now it was a grim, gray, granite stronghold of metal forges, training arenas, and blocky, human-built prefabricated steel-and-pressed wood composite(a new human-goblin product) weapons factories and barracks. Agrat wept blood at the sight of the once idyllic Reikshold, of flowing beauty, pink-and-silver marble palaces, beautiful residences, and lazy, chaotic farmland where human serfs and monstergirls made love for fertility. The capital of luxuries, sex, and erotic captivity was converted over time to a militarized city, much like Paris when her human half was reeling and terrified, as Parisian citizens waited for the inevitable German invasion.

Agrat's human vessel, Wallenstein, had been plagued by nightmares for weeks...

*-*-*-*

A MONTH AGO:

"Judenhure!"

She was the little French Jewess, screaming as blows landed on her face. Her bloodied tongue felt the iron taste of the Maschinenpistole-40's rugged, slightly rusty metal cartridge as the man clad in a dark grey uniform slammed her across the room against the wall.

Paris had fallen, German armored vehicles trampling the city of her dreams into dust. Her kind was being hunted like animals. Red demons with Japanese appearances were devouring children. The world was burning. Hope was lost. Germany and Japan had conquered the world together. Newspapers had bloody runes with demonic language declaring the subjugation of humanity, rape, and suicide legalized. Russia was being ruled by a robed High Priest of Lucifer named Abaddon, who donated a thousand Russian virgin girls every month to the Third Reich. The United States of Hell's new president declared the nuclear destruction of Jew York, as the newspapers jokingly referred to the city.

"She looks tasty..." Growled an abomination in Wehrmacht clothes.

The Germans had horns, red skin, with a bulbous, tentacled penis reaching outside of their...

SHE WAS HELPLESS

Agrat had screamed loud enough to wake everyone in the palace.

*-*-*-*

It took her days before she could stop screaming and throwing whiskey bottles at the approaching help. She was a prisoner in her palace, and every monster girl and human was puzzled about what to do next.

She had tossed and turned every day, given up on drinking spirits and sex, and ate in a depressed, worn-out bathrobe with nary a moment of self-care: her concubines, doctors, and even visitors had been worried about the big blue succubus. It took another week of meditation, drugs, and magical communique from Lescatian wizards to rouse her into action, and only then did she have the strength to get out of bed and rain a flurry of militaristic edicts and orders that roused the Reik into war.

*-*-*-*

A WEEK AGO:

Agrat tried her best to relax on her sapphire throne, her hair wild, her eyes with black rings around them. She looked like a blue, homeless, crazy cat lady. The runes around her throne glowed as the Magical Council of Lescatie established its most recent communique with her, ethereal, robed shapes materializing before her.

It was time for the long-awaited contact with the East Ermorean Empire, the Empire of Lescatie. The human-only empire once opposed her dead husband due to the horrid slavery and painful genocides inflicted by the late Maou and wanted to contact her via a magical conference. Usually the Monstergirl Empire of "Mamono Reik" and the human empire of "Lescatie" were in a perpetual cold war, a secret agreement between both ruling classes to spend their aggressive tendencies. Agrat reined in her dark elven slavers and tamed them with her empathic magic, and always kept open communique for ransoming the captives of her aggressive monstergirl subjects in return for withholding lethality and non-combatant damages inflicted by both sides. This allowed her unruly, dominant dark-elven subjects to play out their domination fantasies while sharpening the border guards and keeping both countries' militaries fresh and ready for an eventual return of Maou cultists.

The time had come: Maou had been resurrected for the last time and was plowing westward from his birthplace in Zipangu, across Zhong, Khitai steppes, and eventually Ermorea, Hellas, and now about to reach her all the way in West Ermorea. Undying monsters, ghouls, zombies, and maddened cultists were ripping the world asunder, mercifully thinning out as they started to smash across the world. Yet the spearhead was cleaving Ermorea apart in its mad rampage, aiming for Maou's last place of death to unite him with his old remains to become a Demon God. Agrat shook her head: the conference had started, the ghostly figures transmitted across etheric waves were a medley of wizards.

"Greetings, Empress of the Monster Kind," spoke a kind, old man, their leader, Archmage Erasmus, with a greyed beard and rich mane of hair, clad in blue robes one size too small for his legs, and he wore pink bunny slippers. His welcoming message was anything but:

"With all due respect, your Eminence, you look like three-day dried cat shit."

The other wizards stared wild-eyed at Erasmus. He was surely eccentric, but this was WAY out of the line...

Agrat snorted. Then, a moment later, she started to laugh.

She laughed, laughed, and laughed until tears came from her eyes, bloody tears, as the figures recoiled in horror. But her laughter turned happy and friendly, and she cried and laughed simultaneously.

"Yes..." Agrat sobbed. "I look like shit..." Then she laughed, and Erasmus started to laugh. Their laughter, first self-pitying and self-deprecating, now became a genuine laugh, of relaxed happiness between two old people who understood each other. They laughed, louder and louder, until tears of joy ran down their cheeks. The rest of the council did not dare laugh, but relaxed once both sides stopped laughing.

"My once husband, the Monster Lord, is rampaging across the Eastern Steppes, and now is pushing through the lands of Hellas, apparently the Centaurs' homeland. The Ulytau Mountain repelled him, I suspect, magical purity repelling his undying body. He will come to claim his heart, which I had buried inside the Ruby Seal if you all remember what happened 60 years ago. We must stop him, man or monster. If he claims the Seal and eats his heart buried inside the World Seal, he will become a True Demon God. No entity in the world will be able to harm him." She spoke, having gotten her bearings.

"Were it that easy, Your Eminence, if I may..." A young woman in a red robe, her head adorned with the brass crown of the Pyromancy School, spoke. "Every Magic Aspect is united behind your decision. Yet we cannot even scry his location. Our Astral Observers from the School of Clairvoyance have gone insane, needing to be put into a drugged coma lest they tear themselves apart. Even if we manage to look into the location of Maou, our observation spells go haywire, and the ritual's casters lose their minds. How can we even cast spells at something we cannot even aim at?"

The mages nodded along, murmuring.

"I know what to do, humans. Dearest humans..." Agrat murmured, taking a bottle of whiskey and chugging it to the dismay of those present. Her lips quivering, the beautiful succubus empress sighed, her hands stopping their shaking. "You are by now aware of who exactly I am, right?"

The mages blinked. "The letter you sent was very cryptic. Can you explain in detail?"

Agrat gulped and nodded.

"You see..."

*-*-*-*

Half an hour later, every mage present at the conference had more questions than before.

"My succubus half is the first of its kind. Agrat Bat Mahlat, the Queen of all Feminine Demons, who once walked with your kin, who married King Solomon of the Jews in another world. The Jews, you see, are a group of humans following an insular religious order. In their world, they never fit in. Whether this was because their beliefs were wrong, or supremacist to other humans, is irrelevant. They never had peace. Exiled, killed, accused of things they didn't do. Some of my people over time became less religious, and of a very sexually libertine kind. This would have been welcomed in a world where prosperity was set. But they were in a country whose pride was injured, whose people were impoverished, while my people always stuck out and were wealthy. You can see where I am going with this."

The magicians had some ideas, none of them pleasant.

"The Jews became the targets of scorn. Rich, corrupting people around them with sexual liberation and materialism...Maybe some were evil, maybe not. But now, in that world, an insane, tormented man who was a member of this country had done the unthinkable. We were being exterminated worldwide, merely because we had the blood of Solomon. Like Maou exterminating all humans."

Erasmus sipped his tea, his face grim. "I heard of your description of weapons of this universe. Most unpleasant, like the goblin devices of today, yet infinitely faster and more powerful."

"Industrialized evil," nodded Agrat. "Machinery designed to kill millions. Weapons your world can only dream of. My refuge city of love, Paris, was overrun by the "German" people, whose regular, everyday people were in hysteria to kill off as many of my kind as possible.

"You must have hated them," A brown-robed, starry-eyed youth spoke, a young man barely 20 years old.

"No." Agrat shook her head. "Some of those who joined his party were entranced by the madman's hatred. But most were happy that he fixed their impoverished lives. The mass hysteria of panicking, desperate people is nothing to be joked about. Most didn't even know what was going on, many were just in it to be richer or safer. Humans trade freedoms for security easily when threatened. But I had to defend myself. So I ran a cabaret, my human half did, until she cast a forbidden blood magic spell that destroyed every invader in the city, but exiled her from the universe in return, bound to my soul, which was almost gone...Agrat was forgotten by the world, and Zuzanna Von Wallenstein was just as well. Her kindred soul called to me. I followed his desperate plea. And now Agrat and Zuzanna are the same." Agrat sighed, relaxed at having her tales and worries explained before people who could understand.

"I am the Empress of the Monsterkin, their Mother, Whore, Lover, and Protector, like Agrat was once in history, known as Inanna to the Sumeri, an even older people..." She sighed, finishing her drink. "I swore to keep humans from being tortured and killed, yet I barely persuaded the dark elves to keep them as slaves. I wish I could have done more for your kind, beloved humans."

The mages nodded with sorrow. "We have heard reports that human slaves in your lands are content at least, kept happy with plenty of sex and empathy magic."

"I do what I can, human..." Agrat smiled sadly. "My monster daughters are too lazy and undisciplined for real civilization. Even if we had males... Humans keep our civilization running, aside from goblins and what little dark elves can be bothered with honest work. Don't worry, I protect my own, and all humans' pleasures are fulfilled at the very least. I outlawed torture and excessive abuse, and my Anubis handmaidens inspect humans in captivity for good health."

"So do we hear, we will discuss more about this...issue..." Erasmus nodded, eager to leave the unpleasant truth of human slaves in their ally's lands. "Now, to the business of killing an unkillable god, you can't look at...What do you propose?"

Agrat lit a cigarette, taking a drag. "Do you know the Americans of my world? They were masters of artillery and killing from extreme heights with flying machines...I have an idea that stayed with me when my daemon soul left the world, learning what I could before the world was sealed to me forever."

*-*-*-*

"It is insane." The Pyromancer Archmage shook her head. "This could destroy our world."

"The world will be destroyed, slowly over the centuries, if Maou becomes a Daemon God, human..." Agrat's voice rose. "Silver from a stellar object that was never touched by Maou's madness, blessed and hurled across the heavens, can literally kill a god once it is superheated and strikes from the heavens. We will bomb Maou with moon silver, and he will-"

"-be obliterated, yes..." Erasmus interrupted uneasily, grumbling. "As well as half of the continent, I fear, and many areas may be unlivable due to the effects of such a massive weapon. But will it work? What else will we rain on the rampaging Maou?"

"Everything." Agrat's face was set in stone. "My girls are excavating a fragment of the Ruby Seal to bring an old acquaintance of us back to life. Or what's left of him."

The humans' eyes were wide, and they stared at each other.

"But you said he is half-divine already. This had never been tried in existence. Don't you think we need to weaken the monster before we unleash such a desperate move?" Erasmus spoke carefully, his pet rat on his lap, his blue robes hanging around him as he floated on his magical chair as befitting an old, crazy wizard.

"You see..." Agrat smiled grimly, her demeanor becoming more lively, and her depressed pallor fading, replaced with the relaxed, confident smile of an Empress. "Every Divine Creature has a true name...and my most trusted advisor combs Northern Ermorea for the name, and she will not fail me."

The mages nodded along.

Agrat had lied, for a good reason--a lie within a lie. Spies existed everywhere, even in Kemet. Otep had sent her older family to the First Pyramid, but even there was danger.

*-*-*-*

"MOVE!" The crowd dispersed by a strong voice, uttered by a large woman with the lower body of a horse. Grim-faced, dirt-caked, the centauride matron bellowed, shooing slower monsters and humans aside, sweating as she pulled a wheeled cart with an oversized, monstrous-looking bow with cranks and a steel magazine full of bolts on it. The device was pulled aside by muscular minotaur women and hoisted with great grunts on top of a massive barge resting on an artificial river, to be sent downstream into Illyricus, where it would be shipped to bolster human ramparts against monstrous legions of half-dead, rotting, grey monster-and-human hybrids.

In another world, a similar empire called "Rome" would have called it a "cheiroballistra". Thousands of outlandish weapons, magically-infused siege equipment, shining mithril weapons, and tired-looking, grey-faced human men and women were being shipped eastwards to stop Maou's last rampage. Most were freedmen and women who begged Agrat to be sent east to fight for their kin, even though the empress would die for them. She wanted her monster daughters to take the brunt of Maou as penance for past evils. Yet the humans *wanted* to fight alongside her monsters, because it was a war for survival or extinction.

On top of her pink-and-white marble castle, nestled on a terrace with magical observation instruments, stood the Succubus Empress, holding a flag in her hands and behind her prostrated humans and monstergirls, observing her every move. Clad in blue-and-gold finery topping her monstrously large armor reminiscent of a French knight in another world, the empress stood silent, staring at the heavens. In her hands was the flag of blue, with lilies emblazoned on it, a sigil of a long-lost world, a long-lost kingdom, sewn together with another flag of a golden sun. She had commissioned a silver pole to stick it on: the dwarf smith-woman would be bringing it soon. The human wizards of Lescatie would be contacting her in another meditative conference soon. Erasmus had found a way to proceed with the Moon Project.

Fleur De Lis and Oriflamme, both flags, were sewn together. Not one of the beastly-featured Agrat loved the dramatic display, a remnant from her human host's French origin.

Agrat Bat Mahlat knew this day was coming.

All good things come to an end.

Once from another world, hosting the oldest monster in the multiverse that cavorted with Solomon the Wise, Agrat was fused with Zuzanna von Wallenstein, a French Jewess, an escapee from the Second World War. She had disclosed this information to her closest advisors after usurping her husband's monstrous reign, freeing the humans under his genocidal slavery and softening their position from genocidal cattle to indentured servitude, and eventual freedom (though the Dark Elven holdings would need another lesson one day)

Now he had come back, again. This time, he wanted no conquest, but genocidal destruction; he would drain the world dry and make a dead rock floating in space.

She had commissioned a massive, magically infused armor coated with lead lining inside and the mightiest mithril-and-adamantine interlocking plates that gave her the appearance of a monstrous, upright-walking shark. She had a massive sword on her back, even taller than herself, which only she could wield.

Zuzanna was never a woman of violence. A French Jew, she used to sing and dance for people. Yet the burden she took after sacrificing her soul to free herself and her people in her own world was beyond consideration. She was now a giant, blue-skinned succubus queen who caught the eye of the Lord of Monsters in this world and was wed to him (forcefully), and usurped his reign with her charm and sweet promises, assassinating him using a human slave boy.

And here they were: a feudal empire with varying treatments of humans, making peace with the Human Empire, and marching against Maou for one last time.

"Empress?" A tall, white-clad bovine monstergirl with three eyes and a gentle demeanor spoke in her soft voice. Agrat turned her head, looking at the gentle Hakutaku:

"Assemble every mamono and human capable of holding a weapon, and leave a skeleton guard. Triple the shifts, and let every craftswoman and man build only weapons. Free any indentured slave who wants to fight for their people, and seize every privately owned ship. Spend every coin in the treasury, order everyone that will listen to march east, and stick a sword into any grey-red half-dead monstrosity."

The crowd behind her murmured.

She turned her head again and looked at the sky.

"We leave to confront my husband."

Why did the empress address the undead Maou like that? No one knew.

"This has to end now."

*-*-*-*

This was supposed to be a world of free sex and love, where the individual would find their niche station in life and be merry amongst a million races.

We were in battlefield trenches, as spells, unearthly incantations, and giant siege weapons killed people by the thousands. On the horizon, our eyes bled as a gigantic mountain of bones and gore quivered our sight, an entity that was too painful to look at marching on us.