Chapter 18-463: Dark Places (1/2)

The demon princess Erichidnea was a daughter and servant of Ruilvei, her portfolio one of scorpions and spiders.

I frowned, and sighed. They weren’t undead-focused, so the Shroud hadn’t centered on them, despite having a concentration of demons. “Exactly how many succubi?” I asked calmly.

“Twenty-five.”

“Any advanced ones?”

“Three, at Ten, Eleven, and Twelve,” they reported grimly.

A similar amount of diamonds floated out of my Masspack, ignoring the slipstream of wind coursing by at 300 mph just inches away. I spent the Binding magic on them, aligning them towards Lust and turning them rosy pink as I did.

The gems floated into Legion’s Vest pockets, creating no bulges as they did. “What were your expectations?” I asked neutrally.

“We may be able to save some of the children,” they said slowly. “It isn’t quite as bad as the dragon’s bloodline, yet.” Their crown-like frill pulsed with hypnotic lights and fires for a second in arrogant sureness of the fact, and if the swirling center of the two highest horns happened to look like eyes gazing out scornfully upon the world, I was sure it wasn’t a coincidence.

I nodded. “Cough the succubi up into the Stones once you have their Truenames. They don’t know it, but they are bound to the Shroud, and as Sinborn they will be drawn after it even if it recedes, I have been informed by the Shrouded souls. They aren’t slaved to a Shroudlord yet, but if they get brought to a fully fallen world, it is inevitable. I may have another option for them.”

“And the rest?” she asked quietly.

“They have to go. I leave the method to you. Save what children you can. I will speak to the Ælves about adopting them as potential haror. The Silver Queen’s favorites are not to be given short shrift.”

They nodded, frowning slightly. “There are a lot of them...” they said softly.

“The choice is yours. Do as Heaven allows.”

They could kill them all or Consume them, as they wished. They had pointed out the protector ‘demi-goddess’, likely just a hopped-up Greater Fey’ri, was a Pact Patron to make sure I realized the point.

Death was just sending them into the Shroud, consigning them all to Demonium if and when they ever got out, if they did, and if weren’t used as fuel for some nightmarish magitech instead.

I certainly wasn’t going to tell Legion what choice to make. Taking in even more demon-bloods was going to be a lot of Sin, and it was going to be hellaciously painful burning the edges of it away, likely putting them out of commission for days.

Hellfire burned on Sin, but it was basically made to harvest it, like mining it from souls, piece by piece. Heavenly fire was made to burn Sin, period. Combine the two, and you could literally burn the Sin right out of a soul rapidly, not needing to stew someone in the pits of Hell like a tenderizing dumpling for centuries.

However, it hurt. It hurt a LOT, and they’d all be sharing ALL the pain of that happening.

“We... we will need to ride with you,” they whispered.

I nodded against their back. “I will get Sleipner ready, too. Wait until after the solstice.”

They nodded, fractionally relaxing as it was deferred, and not something to worry about for now.

Hellfire and heavenly fire burning them, what was new about that? It was just a question of how much burning they could take together, knowing that it would not, could not actually kill them, only make them burn, and how much of that pain they were willing to take on.

Quite notably, in the afterlife, it wasn’t about willpower at all. You Burned, and it was one in a million or billion souls who could take that pain and retain even a semblance of their mortal identity. The rest were just wiped away, soul energy to be absorbed by the plane and eventually leaked back into Creation in an endless cycle... or agglomerated and transformed into minions in a merciless kind of reincarnation, starting from the bottom of the ladder and working their way up as they became the limitless numbers of Sinborn, created from the Sins and Evil souls from all of existence.

One of the side projects Legion, I, and even Shvaughn had collaborated on was what exactly the Fiendish afterlife was about. The different Lower Planes all harvested Sin and Evil souls, having the same motivations, only differing in the discipline and methods of how they went about it.

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