Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

[🎶 O Salutaris Hostia – Pawel Bebenek.]

The Rebellion Army broke into the golden polis of Titans Landing in a move that on a chessboard was tantamount to checkmate in three seconds. With horrendous battle cries, the soldiers of the South, crazy highwaymen and even crazier wilderwitches surrendered the stunned military of the free city to the silver of their blades.

Each man and woman in the army of the [Blood Coyote] banners had a river of bad blood between them and the despots they'd come to kill. In the shouts of battle were wilderwitches scorned twice over and manic as shit to return to the city that had banished them. These women conjured beasts of the deep sands that split the skulls of many a Blackguard.

Great scorpions and spiders that feasted on scores of Eldorian men alive.

"Save me!" Many soldiers of the Capital yelled at the closing mouths of gigantic rattlesnakes which had been conjured by these scorned women. But today, on the dusty horizon, there was no savior, just hordes of more barbarians eager to avenge centuries of bad blood.

Whack! Slash! Boom!

Blackguard soldiers were hacked to pieces where they stood: on temple steps. In towers of lordly manors. On sofas of whorehouses—where more than one soldier had being beheaded with his pants down; the sucking whore pulled back to watch and be sprayed red in wet blood. The men's screams rose higher than the walls of the city that day. The forces of Titans Landing didn't know from where the Rebellion Army took flight.

They just kept on bursting out from holes in the ground: grates of restaurants, loos of taverns, the pantries of bakers and yards of washer-women. The southern warriors were everywhere. Blood soon began to run with brown piss in the drainage of the city. Cobblestones leaked scarlet.

The forgotten tunnel from which the host of rebels had made their [Houdini] entry had plenty mazes built in by those ancient miners which ran up as mouths into the city. Filaments under the city. No one expected eighteen thousand people to burst out from their lavatories—certainly not the robust Blackguard; this was one war where the elite and masterpiece training of the grey-armored Eldorian officers could not save them.

"Yeah! Whoop their arses!" One aged [moonling] fae spurred on the blood and death of a certain platoon lined up before a Tormentor's Guillotine. The greying gypsy patted his fat dreadlocks and grabbed himself a pitchfork to which he impaled a grim wraith demon cut asunder from the waist but still crawling for refuge in a trail of bloody entrails. The old man faerie stuck the demon through the red eyes. "Die, you little unholy fuck! Back to the flames of Hel with you lot. You hear me. All of ye!"

All around the city, faeries were joining in the side of the rebellion. They were finally stepping out the bubbles of their refugee camps. For some, so the first time in four years.

The white tents of the skylings dropped, and more gods-descended elfs rushed to the battle bugle to join the fray; with Rafel's southern host they cut down the imperialists. Ian Noguri, the first martyr of this revolution would have been gladdened to witness such a day...when the unified bands of thieves and whores and dimwits brought down the reign of Morningstar. Who would've thought?

The infantry of the Rebellion Army who had crept out the tunnels with Rafel charged in formation to the already depleted forces at the eastern gates. A third of them finished off the rest of the watchers on its towers. And with shouts from battle-borne throats, they let down the drawbridge over River Sana'a, and ushered in the [Iron Force] and cavalry fronts.

Six thousand of the finest [metal benders] out of Caer Mullhen rode in through the eastern gates of the city at the strike of the third hour. Their ranks trampled on the bodies of dead soldiers. Chariots, bikes, and horsemen left a field for vultures and dark crows. Lord Zaf led the [Iron Force]. With the joint [shield formation] of the Skoatl Mountains tribe warriors, they held the flanks and hindered the Hellion royals from escaping.

If you wore the seal of Lilith's Court on your breast, you were done for.

The streets of the golden Capital were sludged in thick red. The most fright to the citizens of the city was, that if such a well-guarded and wealthy city could fall, then what realm couldn't? In the face of true revolution, even the mightiest villains stood to a reckoning. This was the case of Rafel and his auntie: the two champions of both armies; the two that had started it all. A cause of spies and broken men. A cause of love and war.

Whilst the battle raged within the city's high walls for hours, the Rebel Lord at the moment stood in the rounded chamber of the highest storey in the castle at Darkwake. And running into his arms was the Dowager.

"My boy! My dear b-boy. Ohh, my... dearest!" Lilith had her arms spread wide to hold her nephew. An inch from wrapping her arms tight around him—

Click!

"Think again, BITCH!" Cora stood at Rafel's side; her charge pistol pointed directly at Lilith's head. The soft side of her temples. It was the sound of the safety engaging on the gun that Lilith had heard. The Dowager halted. Cora hissed. "Yeah, that's what I thought. BITCH!"

"Step away from the King, demoness!" Another girl voice spoke out in the corner.

Lilith turned to it and found Ravenna crouched at a crystal lattice loft in a sniper position. She held a tight bowstring, and a flaming [Akkadian] arrow ready to sing. "I SAID STEP AWAY!" Lilith took two careful steps back. Despite being a Principality, she knew the girls weren't kidding; they'd kill her. She knew—because she would too. Because the young man in question was Israfel.

"King?" Lilith scoffed, raising her pale hands with a growing smile. "Is that what they call you? Huh, my darling? King of the South?" She laughed. Rafel stood mute. For so long, he'd wanted facetime with his Aunt. Now he got it, something hindered him from ending it. Some inexplicable bond he felt toward this. . .bitch that had murdered almost every other love in his life. Lilith teased him some more: "I think my monicker for you is best, my love. You are my Apollyon. My Blood prince. Far mightier than any earthly king. Don't let—"

"Shut up!" Aya Naamah appeared out of thin air with a whoosh. She pulled on Rafel's [Nightwalker] ability. And since he was her Sire, she could safely execute it without risking interference from a [Soul-crusher]. "We call the shots now!" She iterated.

Aya's longsword balanced perfectly on the swan neck of Giselle. She looked the [sunling] faerie up and down. "You always had such a beautiful throat, Lady Imperia. Whatever did this bitch do to make you love her." Aya didn't drop her sword hand an inch as she cut eyes at Lilith.

The Dowager suddenly began to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Rafel barked; he had found his voice.

Lilith shocked them all: "You think I care about this faerie girl? Or those sods dying outside?" She sent an apathetic wave out the window at the churning sounds of screaming men dying. "I only kept her close because her warmth reminded me of you. And those soldiers outside are mere chickens to us." Lilith reduced Giselle and ten thousand men to history in one sentence. "Come, nephew," her amethyst eyes went soft on Rafel, "let us leave this world. These weak, weak world. Come with me!

Please!

It had been you. Only you. Always..." She choked.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Rafel didn't flinch at her tears.

"You MURDERED my girlfriends!"

"HARLOTS!" Lilith yelled back. Her violet-ringed iris went luminous with flames of deep affection. Anyone could see clearly the one thing this crazy, extremely powerful demoness cared about was him. But Rafel wasn't done railing.

"You locked me in a prison! As the fucking Red Titan!"

"Better a dumb giant than far from me!" Lilith caught the flash in his eyes and straightened. "I-I only kept you chained because I wanted you close to me. You were angry then, but I knew, that give or take a few hundred years—when all these whores have died off," her eyes flashed to Cora, "you'd be calm. . .and mine again."

"I'LL NEVER BE YOURS! YOU MAD CUNT!" Fury shot out Rafel's ears. He couldn't believe his ears. This fucking woman! Yes, she was his Auntie. But this kind of loving bordered on depraved and psycho.

Lilith calmly said with a twinkle in her eyes. "Oh honey! You'll only ever be mine.

—You only ever was."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

KRRRAAAAAA. . .BOOOOMMM!!!

This mighty sound interrupted everything in the room as the ground shook beneath them. Every person—including Cora with the rifle to Lilith's head forgot their animosity toward each other for a second to gaze in unison out the open window as the great wall of Titans Landing came down in a mushroom explosion. Jaws dropped everywhere in the city. Dust and smoke rose high into the red skies. Blue clouds darkened slowly.

Giselle was the most shocked of the bunch in the castle's tower. "These walls were builded in the days of my great grandmother, Kathaea's rule. No mortal engine could tear it down."

"You're right, little fae." Lilith was smiling again.

Giselle didn't smile back. The demoness had said she didn't love her. To Giselle, Lilith was out of her good graces, no matter how entrancing she found the older woman's goth beauty. Rafel pulled closer to the window. He jerked on his Auntie's arm.

"What's so funny this time? How is Giselle right?"

"That!" Lilith pointed to the calming dust.

Though the famous golden walls of Titans Landing had come down harder and faster than Jericho, the explosion center had begun to settle. Through the haze of stone-dust, the watching city spotted figures beyond the collapse.

These apparitions were quite big in the reflections of the evening sunlight piercing through the dust, and they looked to have horns. But if all the forces of the Rebellion Army were in the city, then who stood out there?

At this point, everybody was just waiting for more dust to settle.