~~Mia~~
"Bitch?" Mia said, and did her best righteous indignation expression.
Acelina laughed, a mean and sinister sound.
"The queen hasn't visited today. Her mind is preoccupied, with you."
Frowning, Mia tilted her head as she looked between the three super tall demon ladies. The two in the back continued to click and chirp at each other, while the one in front of her grinned a big, scary grin.
This was a new species of demon Mia hadn't seen before. Nine feet tall, taller than Kas -- since he never stood up straight -- with very wide hips and an unusually tiny waist, topped with breasts so massive they were ridiculous. Her legs and arms were both long, too, giving her a shape similar to a tall runway fashion model, times a million. Even the hooves, when combined with her very upright posture, gave her the catwalk cat walk. Her tail was long but thin, no weight to it, and didn't affect her movement at all, and her wings, while huge, seemed really thin and bony, with webbing that seemed awfully fragile. No chance she or the two other girls could glide with them.
It was the face and head that had Mia struggling to keep looking at her. She had no eyes, with a black forehead just like Kas and the satyr demons Mia had seen, which Mia had to assume were all bone hard like Kas's head. But this woman's face, her whole head, was completely black, scarily completely black. If Mia put a few white dots on it, it'd have looked like the night sky back on Earth. The four huge horns that came up from it were also very regal, very crown-like, not for fighting, all for posturing and showing off.
The scariest part was her mouth. Her mouth, somehow able to move the black skin, was really wide, and filled with really big scary sharp white teeth. Like Kas's teeth, except hidden inside lips that, when closed, made it look like the woman had no facial features at all. Just a flat, featureless black mask, until she exposed her horror smile.
Then there was the fashion. All three tall demon ladies wore red silk, big scarf things that hung over their bodies, loose and carefree, just like Zel. They held their wings snug to their backs, with thumb claw hooked over their shoulders and around their necks, so they looked like big cloaks. All of them were bald, but considering the shape and size of the crown-like horns, bald worked well.
It was the jewelry that caught Mia's eye. They had all sorts of jewelry, more than Zel, necklaces and belly chains and bracelets and anklets and nipple chains. Lots of nipple chains. Lots of skulls. All of it was a beautiful arrangement of black metal chains, with skulls hanging off their metal links. Small bones pierced their nipples, along with other piercings along their skin made of black metal. Piercings along their stomach. Piercings along their arms and legs. Piercings along their neck. All subtle, hidden things, tiny black dots in certain places, tiny loops in others. Beautiful, and terrifying, even more so than other demons.
It did get kind of annoying that every demon was so massive. Even the succubi and incubi were all tall. Only the imps and grems were actually shorter than Mia. This bitch was as tall as Diogo, meaning Mia's head was literally at her waist.
Kas clicked a few times. Acelina clicked back a few more.
Grumbling, Mia backhanded Kas upside the arm. Which honestly surprised her. Was she that comfortable with him yet? Something about his asshole demeanor and willingness to be completely honest and brutal with her about whatever they talked about made it easier for her to relax with him. She couldn't even give Zel an angry face without paralyzing with fear, but Kas she could apparently hit.
Kas grunted and shrugged.
"Acelina was wondering if your aura is real."
"It is." Wow. The lack of her own hesitation surprised her again.
The busty bitch nodded. With her mouth closed, her face was a completely black thing, and when she turned enough that Mia got a peek at her profile, the first thing she noticed was the strange similarities between her and Zel. Almost no nose. She had the mask-like face shape Zel had, and was utterly beautiful, even with all her facial features hidden in the obsidian darkness of her face's skin color. It was unfair how hot she was, with tits that utterly defied reason, and ass and thighs to match.
"Show me," Acelina said, and again her scary big smile emerged from the darkness of her face. Okay, yeah, super hot, but that smile was straight up horror material. It was like seeing a shark's mouth in the dark.
"No." Mia folded her arms across her chest.
Acelina clicked a few times in her throat before gesturing down to Mia with one of her long arms, and a set of long claws.
"If it weren't for Zel's interest in you, I would rip out your heart where you stand, meat."
"Yeah, I'm getting that a lot, and I'm kind of tapped out on being afraid of everything all the time. Get back to me in a few days and try again."
Acelina stared down at her -- probably, hard to tell without eyes -- and growled quietly, but a hint of a smile with some teeth showed through after a while.
"I can feel the aura regardless, meat. A quiet thing, barely there, but it is there. You do not know how to suppress it completely. For a soul to even have an aura is stranger than your lack of a mark." Acelina talked with a bit of that regal sound, kinda like Zel did. It was annoying. "As much as it annoys me, I can understand why Zelandariel keeps you alive. You are a mystery."
Kas clicked twice. "She's a pain in the ass."
"I can see that." And of course the bitch with the face of tar pit grinned down at her.
"I'm showing her the hatchery so she leaves me alone," Kas said.
Acelina went quiet, grin disappearing and face going full black hole mode again. But after a few seconds of odd silence, Acelina nodded and gestured to one of the huge flesh tunnels.
"Follow me, then." And ahead she went, big butt on stilts swaying left and right with each step, tiny long tail slithering behind her, wings hanging with space between them so Mia's eyes couldn't help but be hypnotized by the way her curves moved.
Mia glanced over at the other two ladies. They watched her, clicking, talking to each other, and they both offered her some more of those evil smiles that sent a chill down her spine. As absurdly beautiful, scary, and sexy as these three ladies were, they were also kinda creepy. All demons were scary, but creepy was a different vibe, a 'might crawl out of my TV set and kill me' vibe. The fact Acelina was covered in chains and skulls along with her red silks only made the woman more scary.
But, Mia really was burnt out on being scared all the time. Fuck being scared. Plus she had a bodyguard now, and he'd been an enforcer at a dueling pit before that. Surely he'd be able to kick serious ass if he had to.
"Kasimiro is a sarkarin," Mia said. Considering the breed name, and how Kas looked, she didn't even have to guess that other humans probably called his race sharks. "What are you?"
Acelina clicked several times as she turned her head, and aimed her eyeless face over her shoulder back at her.
"If it weren't for my love of Zel, I would punish you."
"Yeah well, like you said, Zel wants to keep me around. Besides, not like I'm asking a horrible question."
Acelina clicked once, hard and loud, as she looked back to the path.
"I am zotiva. But many call us spire mothers, or simply mothers."
"Spire mothers?"
She didn't answer. Mia was tempted to push her on it, but considering how much Acelina didn't like her, getting one answer was pretty good.
But maybe she could go for two anyway?
"How do you know Diogo?" she asked.
Acelina stopped, half turned, and glared down at Mia. How she managed to do that so well with no eyes was a mystery.
"Do you know what I do to unruly children?"
"Uh..."
Kas clicked a few times, and gently tapped his much, much larger tail on the floor. Whatever he said, Acelina took it in stride, grumbling, and resumed the tour.
Remnants dangled from the walls of flesh and bone, groaning and screaming, but as they went deeper into the tunnel, the amount of remnants faded to almost nothing. A few still dangled from the giant rib bones ceiling, but it did seem like there were a lot less of them. But as if Hell couldn't dare let Mia get comfortable, the floor she'd carefully been navigating, jumping from big bone to big bone, stopped having bones to walk on. All that remained, was a floor of flesh.
She sucked in a breath as she forced herself to look down. The floor wasn't skin, but a giant slab of muscle, not bleeding but it still felt exactly like muscle, warm and pulsating. It was alive. God, every step she took really hammered her with that strange reality, that Hell was a-fucking-live.
And somehow, she still didn't see the next room coming.
There were holes in the walls of varying sizes, all of them close to the ground--er, flesh floor. And the holes pulsated slowly, same as the floor did, just more obviously, more like an... orifice, that wanted to push something out. And one of them did.
That was an egg.
"What the fuuuuck..." Mia took a small step forward, but froze as another demon moved around the room. A big room, like the others, but this one was covered in eggs. Dozens. Hundreds. Each egg sat on the floor in a groove in the muscle, varying shapes and sizes, with some eggs fighting for space. Some eggs were tiny, like a loaf of bread, others were a few feet tall, ovals.
They didn't even have the courtesy to be white eggs, or maybe blue, or have colorful dots on them. Nope, all black, with some red blemishes on them. They looked moist, too, as if someone had dipped them in a blood bath.
Another one of the demons like Acelina, a spire mother, walked among the eggs, squatted down, adjusted them, and moved along to do the same to more. Just like Acelina, this one was ridiculously tall, ridiculously curvy with an extremely tiny waist, and all sorts of scary jewelry. Every step she took was the most exaggerated, sensual, beautiful thing, with a hip sway that was hypnotizing. Combined with the chains, especially the belly chain and the skulls dangling from it, it was practically a dance.
"Pavia," Acelina said, strutted up to her fellow zotiva, and gestured back to Mia and Kas. "This is the little irka Zel told us about." Irka?
Pavia looked past Acelina to Mia, and showed the exact same sort of crazy, scary smile that would have made Pennywise proud, in a black void face.
