By Ruin Redeemed

The Baron of Rot laid in swampy marshes and decayed - bones showing, mold growing, empty eyes staring off into space. The image of his skull, half exposed with the terminus between black skin, red tissue and pale white bone turned into a fuzzy line of swarming insects, struck to Cae's heart as she stood at the edge of the pond that she found him in. She had come, with so many things to tell him. The enemy forces had been turned back, and the mercenaries that Puzak had brought to bear were captured and now a future resource to be turned to the aims of the Realm of Ruin. More, she had come with questions to ask him. Ruti had been a master of transformation and transition, as he had demonstrated in one of their earliest conversations.

And now...

He was dead.

Cae stepped into the water. It sloshed and burbled around her golden greaves, the cold edge of the swamp dribbling into her boots and soaking her feet through in seconds. It was strangely quiet. Even the buzzing insects seemed to be silent. Cae dropped to her knees, water lapping around her knees as she looked down at Ruti's pathetically small body. Her wings mantled, then spread as she reached out, fingers quaking within her gauntlets - metal clicking softly.

"No," she whispered, softly.

How?

How could this have been?

Balati.

The name exploded into her mind in a flash. The Baron of Murder. A creature that had once hunted her in these very swamps, and who she had driven off in shame. Had he crept in, lurking and waiting for a chance to avenge himself upon General Caelel Silverhawk? Had he been too

cowardly

to face a proper battle with a war-angel of Heaven, and instead, sought a weaker target. Cae's fingers slipped beneath the waters and she gently lifted Ruti from where he floated in decay and death. His left arm jutted out in rigor mortis, while his right had been gnawed off by some scavenging beast. She closed her eyes, feeling a great shame and fury building within herself.

"Nooooooooooooooo!" She shouted to the heavens, trembling as she held Ruti's corpse to her chest.

Her voice echoed off the trees - a promise. An oath. She would find who had done this. Who had-

"Mmm?"

Cae blinked tears from her eyes. She looked down at the noise. Had it...

The skull-face, the ruin-face, the death-face of Baron Ruti had shifted around, peering up at her. One eye, shot through with wriggling maggots, focused. "Huh?" He asked, his voice raspy and creaking. "Sorry, I was-"

"You live!?" Cae exclaimed.

Ruti groaned. His head cocked to the side and, before her eyes, flesh grew across the skull, the eye socket. New tissue stretched, grew firm. Bugs scattered into the air, hissing and squirming into the woods around them. His left arm creaked, cracked, and then flexed like new as his right arm stretched from the ragged stump that the scavengers had left. His fingers pressed to her cuirass and he lifted his head up, blinking eyes that were once more their remarkable, living hue.

"Of course I'm alive," he said, sounding exactly like...well, like any man might, roused suddenly from sleep.

"Your skull was showing," Cae said, setting him down into the water hastily, her cheeks blushing bright silver.

"Well, yes," he said, sighing. "I was quite tired from all the energies flowing through my swamp - channeling up an entire cadre of cavalry so quickly, arming and equipping them...it took a lot out of me, even with the villages so eager to help." He smiled, wanly, his thin shoulders slumped. "I simply took a deeper rest than normal. It takes some time, even for the swamps, for rot to really set in - more than a few hours, at least. Well, there's some, I suppose, but I'm not shocked you didn't notice last time."

Cae opened her mouth in shock, then closed it. "W...Wait, are you telling me when you sleep, you begin to rot?" She asked. "Immediately?"

"Of course," Ruti said, smiling at her with a crooked amusement.

Now that he mentioned it, it did make a great deal of sense.

Cae repressed a horrid shudder.

Ruti sighed and then shifted back in the muck, leaning against a tree and rubbing his back against the bark, to itch. The water sloshed around his distended belly as he smiled at her. "So, I take it the news from the battlefield goes well?" he asked. Cae nodded, and resigned herself to being somewhat damp. She had knelt in the waters. And besides, she was fairly sure that the runic enchantment would keep out the leeches. She squared her shoulders.

"The Baron of Panic rode his troops into another one of my clever little traps," she said, her voice soft. "The next one is either going to need to be another level of magnitude more clever, or it won't work. Fortunately, I believe that we're no longer going to be quite so far on the backstep. Our army is well practiced at working together now and...well, the House of Pestilence hired mortal mercenaries." She explained about the snake women, their capture, and Ruti nodded, his lips pursing. "The end result...I think we can get them to sign on with us, if we just find the right inducement. That will give us a cadre of heavy infantry. That combined with our already existing forces and we'll have an army that can route anyone that comes for us."

She frowned. The temptation tingled on her tongue to bring up the real reason why she had come here.

Instead, she continued: "The issue is, well, I'm not entirely sure how we

win

these wars. We can drive back the Barons, we can route armies, but the House of Destruction and Pestilence can both recover and send back. Unless we destroy either or both House, the war will go on forever. And I don't know about you, but I want to do more than to just be the...the General of House Ruin."

Ruti nodded. "You do have to get back to Heaven. To win the war against all the Hells, right?"

Cae opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked aside. "I don't know. I don't know what I want to do anymore." She smiled, sadly. "But it's not just this."

"Is it?" Ruti asked.

Cae flushed silver. She probed her own soul, like a tongue questing a shattered tooth. And yet...despite her fears...she felt it. A solid certainty. There was no doubt that she cared greatly for the demons she had met here, despite her nature as an angel. But there was also no doubt that she knew that she was

needed

elsewhere. But the truth of that lurked in why she had come here. She couldn't evade it anymore, not so long as the questions hung unasked. She breathed in, her wings lifting and then settling.

"You are a master of transformation," she said, quietly.

"I am," Ruti said, at ease with the sudden change in conversation.

Cae looked him square in the eyes.

"I...learned the truth," Cae said, her voice halting. "About you. And Arral. And Citri and Degi. All of you. I know how you and Arral are part and parcel of the same thing - you are all of Ruin in the same way my errant thoughts are a part of my mind, given flesh and form."

"Oh," Ruti said. He shifted in his seat of muck and black water. "Does...it upset you?"

He sounded so nervous. How could he? How could he think she would see the amazing truth of demonic selfhood and turn away from it? But...well, as Degi was a part of Arral, Degi was also a part of Ruti. And Degi, the Baron of Despair, could surely imagine all the twisted ways someone might see truth and turn it into disgust. That was part of the purpose of despair. That poison now surely flowed between Ruti's ears. Cae could already picture the words:

Unnatural. Grotesque. Wrong.

But she shifted in the water, letting it slosh around her, moving to his side. Her metal clad hand cupped his hand, squeezing gently as she sat next to him, looking down into his eyes.

"It's the most remarkable thing in the realms," she murmured, quietly. "It's why I can't stay."

"It is?" Ruti asked.

"Angels..." She sighed. "We are trying to complete the great work of the Creator - to bring the universe into alignment with her plan. And yet...I...I can't

believe

that something like you and Arral, Citri and Degi, Shale, all the other demons here...I refuse to believe that it is anything but what the Creator intended. She can't have wished to shatter such beauty. It would be like casting a stone through stained glass. Like toppling a temple, out of spite. Like burning a forest, to curse the thorns." She squeezed him and could not feel his hand through her gauntlet. She wished she had taken it off before trying to comfort him.

Ruti smiled, a bit lopsidedly. "But we demons are made by defiance. The Creator made us to be one thing. We're another. We're many things."

Cae flushed. "No, I don't believe that," she said.

"It's the truth," Ruti said, shrugging his narrow shoulders. "We don't just...say this, Caelel, we know it, we act it, we have it...here." He tapped his chest, gently. "Defiance is a part of being demonic. If we ever stopped, we'd become mortals again."

Cae blushed even harder. Her wings mantled. She bit her lip. "But..." She shook her head. "You're wrong."

Ruti shrugged once more. "Maybe. Maybe not."

Cae slipped back onto her haunches. She frowned and then lifted her head up. "The Creator can't be

wrong

, though," she said, quietly. "She made everything."

"Mm. Maybe." Ruti sighed. "So, you wanted to ask me about defiance?"

"Um. Not quite." Cae felt unsettled. She had not expected the questions to go so quickly against the grain. She sighed and leaned back against her own tree. It creaked against her weight. "I...realizing this...I..." She paused. "I split into two. A me and a me who hesitated. It was a tiny difference, a fraction of a difference. Because the me that hesitated still wished, very badly, to kiss Arral. And...we both did." She blushed hard, as Ruti nodded contemplatively. "But then we...we somehow came once more into true. We were together again, and...and...Creator above, Ruti, it was the most spectacular thing and the most frustrating thing - I can remember

knowing

and understanding, being something greater than I had ever been and and and..." She reached up, dark swamp water dripping from her golden fingers. "And I cannot

explain

it. Even to myself."

Ruti tugged on his lower lip with his thumb and forefinger. His brows furrowed and he harrumphed softly. "That is quite a transformation," he said, quietly. "Caterpillars become butterflies - and they remember what they learned. But I suppose, a butterfly that becomes a caterpillar cannot remember the lessons it learned while flying." He shifted and then stood. Water sloshed around his calves as he paced in the swamp, fireflies dancing around his shoulders and his scalp like a halo. "We must see if we can get you to pupate again."

Cae blushed. "Oh. Well, I...how?"

Ruti turned and gave her a wry little smile. "I...could..." his hand dipped down to the soaked loincloth he wore. For a moment, the twinkle in his eyes was downright Citri. Then he withdrew his hand, and his shy reserve once more returned. "N-No that wouldn't work. No hesitation there."

Cae bit her lip, hard. She whispered. "You are quite right."

His shoulders hunched.

"But..." She stood. Water splashed around her as she got to her feet. Her gauntlet clad hand settled on his shoulder. She squeezed, ever so gently. "But not for the reason you think. I would not hesitate to be with you, my sweet Ruti."

"B-But I'm...I'm not..." He stammered, turning to face her. "Look at me."

"I'm an angel?" Cae asked, then chuckled. "Do you think I'd be as shallow as this puddle? And as soulless?"

Ruti actually

blushed

. It was subtle, hard to spot on his ebony black skin, but when he looked down - down at his emaciated thin arms, at his greyhound frame, at his distended skin - he looked even more unsure. "W-Well, a lack of hesitation from disgust or a lack of hesitation from open mindedness still nets us the same issue."

"Well, um," Cae said, considering. "You are the master of transformation. You could take on another form?"

Ruti blinked.

"You...that...is a very good idea," he whispered.

Cae smiled and crossed her arms over her chest. She wondered, for a moment, what form Ruti might take. There were many possibilities - he had a mastery over all things of rot, decay and putrescence. But it would need to thread a very thin needle. Yes, he could become, if he wished, a rotting corpse, with mold and mildew and maggots. But that wouldn't produce the

hesitance

that he was looking for, now would it? He could become a-

Ruti began to change. The back of his neck peeled, rippling slightly as the skin was tugged back, as if by invisible hooks on tiny threads. The bone glistened with a thin dusting of red droplets, blood that wicked away before her eyes. He groaned huskily as the skin tore with the moist sound of lovemaking. His spine wrenched itself free from his skull and he let out the sharp, harsh sigh of a man stretching before the dawn. Now, the transformation took two different shapes, and both drew Cae's horrified fascination: the skin peeling up towards his skull started to

smoke

. No, not smoke. Thick lines of spores were dusting off his skin as it transformed into the cleft of shelf fungi. His skull was growing beneath the mushroom, moving to form the same shape as it. The skin peeling down towards his lower back and buttocks was tearing more fiercely, pulling apart muscle as well, revealing hard white bone and glistening gore. With a quiet, happy grunt, his leg bones were pulled free and sloshed into the water. He fell forward into the brackish water, the mushroom shelf of his head bubbling beneath the waves, leaving a thick musk in the air: Pungent and tingling in the back of Cae's nose.

She blinked several times, her jaw hanging open. The water was too thick to show anything - but still, signs of transformation continued. Water sloshed, burbled. Bubbles popped and something caressed along her ankle - the bony protrusion of it feeling like vertebra. Or a tail. The edges caught against the thin seam between boot and greave, teasing her through the thinnest part of her armor. She jerked backwards, heart in her throat, lumping like war drums.

Cae wished that she could speak to Ruti, right then - to croak out a single word:

Please stop.

This was too much. It was too frightening. Too...

Demonic.

But the word choked in her throat. She couldn't move her lips to form the sounds - her tongue felt heavy and her mouth felt utterly dry. She gulped again, her wings spreading. Her hand dropped, then jerked up, before her fingers could quite touch the hilt of her flaming sword. The bubbling ceased as the waters grew still. Quiet. Cae's heart felt as if it was the only thing that moved in the entire swamp. She could not even draw breath.

The water surged and a clawed hand emerged, grabbing onto the shore. Water dripped from hardened chitin, rivuleted along an armor-plated bicep and shoulder. The flesh between chitin was ropy and black and faceted with complex whorls of almost fungal shapes and patterns. But the claws were the claws of a predator, black razors that dug into tree bark and moss, wrenching through it as if the thick trees that surrounded the brackish pools were kindling. The arm pulled and a figure stood. It was taller than she, but more slender. A creature of bladed darkness and edges, with an elegant curve to the spine and hips, which flared bonelike around narrow legs. It had a long, segmented tail, tipped with barbs and razor sharpness, and its head was the triangular crest of some terrible insect monarch, eyeless and pitiless. But as it turned, she saw that whatever Ruti had become...it had terribly human features.

Lips. Black on black, they were the lips of a mortal, made to laugh and smirk, to kiss and caress. They were utter incongruity, on that eyeless horror-face. They did not belong to those claws and that chitin. The creature turned to face her, and she saw the second human feature: A pair of heavy, swaying balls, contained in a sleek, rubbery black scrotum that gleamed and dripped with the brackish water they had been soaking in. When her eyes swept back up to the eyeless face, she saw the third. The curved chitin supported and presented a pair of quite feminine breasts, giving the strange narrow waisted, sharp hipped creature a strong feminine

curve

to her.

The details shook her from her numb horror.

And she recognized it.

"A...a death angel," she whispered, quietly.

Those human lips parted in a smile that was neither knowing or deadly. It was the sheer, joyous shock that dear Ruti always had when she knew something that surprised him. "You know them?" he asked, his voice still his, even if it reverberated and buzzed like it was being spoken through some stringed instrument.

"I...uh...read a lot..." Cae said, taking a half step back as Ruti took a half a step forward elegant legs drawing through the water. "T-They're...they're named, uh, despite not being angels or demons, for...for the...the fact they're..." She gulped as the death angel took another step closer. "They are to humans as bleed wasps are to the humble honey beetle, y-yes?" She asked, her wings brushing against tree. "They mimic human voices from the dark, to lure the careless to death, so they can use their corpses to make more eggs for their larvae..."

"Mmmhmm." Ruti's lips had shifted from joy to dark amusement. "But the truth is, death angels can use anything that walks and breathes for their young. They kill to live, and live to kill. They live in rot. They are beings of terrible transformation...they are...not my creation. But they do enjoy my swamps." His claw pressed to her throat. It was so sharp that even this gentle touch beaded a thin, bright red droplet. "Do you hesitate now?"

"I, uh..." Cae whispered, quivering slightly.

She did not split in twain. There were not two Cae's. Instead, she stood there...and blushed. Hard.

"...oh my..." Ruti whispered, his resonant voice sounding surprised.

"N-Now, listen here!" Cae stammered. "It cannot help that I know it's still you! If you were a real death angel, then, I would...uh...shut up!" She glowered. Somehow, despite having no human features save black on black lips, Ruti looked as if he was trying his best to not burst into laughter. Cae never felt more humiliated. She put her gauntlets over her face, covering her bright silver cheeks. Through armor and palm alike, she muttered. "I am learning new and most unfortunate things about myself every day."

"For instance, you want to make love to an ambulatory wasp that breeds in human corpses," Ruti said, his voice buzzing with delight.

"Only when it's you!" She almost wailed.

"Mmm, sure," he said, quietly. "Only when it's me."

"You're letting some Citri into you..." she grumbled, then gasped, feeling cold edges of sharp, sharp talons rasping against the seams of her armor. He was finding the connection ports and tugging at them, as if he knew precisely how to...to...strip her. Which of course he did. He was Citri, as much as Citri was him. The implications was still unfolding inside of Cae's mind as her cuirass hissed, then fell forward, revealing her sweat soaked underclothing and her achingly hard nipples - silver jutting against white. She slid her gauntlets away from her eyes, just enough to see those dark lips, looming above her. He looked down into her face, eyeless and yet still meeting hers.

"Do you complain?"

"I don't know..." she said, then shivered as his head tilted lower. Lower.

"I am sorry you didn't, ahem,

split

," he murmured.

"We'll find out if-" Cae let out a soft mewl as his mouth smothered hers. A death angel, it turned out, tasted of copper and blood. His tongue, a cool black tentacle, swept into her mouth with a strength and urgency that felt as if she should be fighting it. She struggled, squirmed, her hands scrabbling against his shoulders - but his fingers wrapped around hers, claws long and sharp and oh so very deadly. He yanked and her gauntlets came free. His hands were then all over her. Sometimes, he pulled armor off. Sometimes, he simply slit leather, cut fabric, peeled. Moist, warm air blew against her sensitive breasts, and then she was pressed against the wall harder as Ruti's death angel body mashed against her. His breasts...her breasts? The gender question confounded her - and Cae knew that every female demon in the Realm of Ruin was

also

Citri, Ruti, Degi, and Arral.