Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions-Chapter 313: The Gory Sabbath

"MOTHER, ISN'T IT TIME for the Rituals?"

Ursula Romanov turned from her night reading when she heard her son's voice. She threw back as she glanced over to the antique brass clock, "is it morning already?"

"0400 Hours, ma'am. It ain't like you to be tardy."

Mikhail dropped his voice conspiratorially low to add, "unlike some."

"Oh!" His mother chuckled—just as the some he spoke of came barging in: his sisters. Yukima, his direct elder was the first to ask, "what were you telling me just now, you vain boy?" Ursula's third-born, Mariposa interjected: "Can't be nothin' good, I tell ya." Of all in the large household of the Legata, Mariposa's Roan accent came a close second in beating Dash's at the harshest intonation.

"Mik!" Ursula closed her book and uncrossed long legs in her swivel chair.

Mikhail saw his mother's reptile eyes shorten and knew she was silently saying to cut out the argument before it could bloom. He said to his sisters, "alrighty, that's enough, you mangy-haired shrews. Don't go making mama have to call poor Delilah in to escort us out—again." The four girls rang out in laughter. "Plus we want to go into the presence of the Orishas contrite and free of all mind drain."

The girls nodded in unison, "Mmhmm," and their mother's slitted iris gleamed with pride.

It was the morning of Sabbath day, and in the Republic—with all the variety and spice of worshippers—Sabbath was a fiesta of colors and idols. No realm payed homage to gods than the west; just ask any liberal-minded fellow with a flashy rainbow turban.

The fifth-born daughter, usually silent Ilona asked of her mother: "Ma, is Sir Rafel gon' be there? I wish he'd be. Please make him come. Since his wife is our [Saint]. Maybe if we prayed with him today at her statue, she'd appear for real."

Ilona was talking about Calypso, whom across the River Sana'a was called Yemaya, Rafel's immortal goddess of a wife.

Yukima scoffed at her sister. "I'm pretty sure the Ambassador regards no gods—"

"But..." Their mother cut in, giving Yuki the wary eye for trying to dash her younger sister's hopes for the Sabbath, "I think he'll make an exception for us."

Just then—

STRRAAAKKKK!!!

A fury of green lightning whipped across, flashing the night sky in black clouds. The heavens looked pregnant with flying demons. "The weather does not favor us." Ursula told her heirs. "It's something in the air; sour." She put out her forked tongue as if testing for salt. But her kids were already used to the alien nature of her and didn't give a second glance to her strange anatomy.

"Aw! Shucks! This Sabbath sucks!" Mikhail joked.

Yuki elbowed him. He made a face at his elder sister. "What?"

Ursula shifted the oil lamp she'd been using to read, since a devious surge from the storm had put out the mana lamps. "Where's my youngest?"

"Yeah. Where is Dash?" Mikhail rolled his eyes.

"She's probably sleeping in...as if she needs any more reason to miss the Rituals." Yuki said this, even though she truly had seen her youngest sister in a cowl scampering for the cold north wing of the House—where the Ambassador dwelt.

The thunder hit. And everyone forgot about the auspicious day when a scream tore through all the silent halls.

"IT'S DASH."

After this one word from Mikhail, the entire family flew out of the bedroom so fast the door blasted right off. Clearly all the kids had gotten a share of Ursula's paranormal speed. As they ran fast as blurs of multicolored lights through the stately courts of the sprawling House, each sibling had a question bubbling through their minds:

"Is poor Dash in the [Shifting] again?"

"Another day to leash a tiger. She better not be in the pens. At this point mum should just put [Heim Wards] around her bedroom."

"Why does everything have to be about her?"

"It's probably a ruse to get out of going to the Rituals?"

"On Sabbath, yikes!"

In all this, Ursula was of one thought alone, "why is my baby's voice coming from the Ambassador's private quarters?"

• THREE SECONDS AGO

"Do not leave my back. Stay close."

"I-I have no intention to." Daschelle said this glued to Rafel from behind. She clutched to the edges of his shirt sleeves and felt the power brimming in the rip of his biceps. He was waiting.

—waiting on the monster beyond, to make the first move.

The Patch-work Man.

"You are a hard man to find, Helchild."

Rafel heard this greasy voice hoarsely mock him but saw only the slightest movement of the stitched face. The lips were sewn shut, but then under the spot for a mouth another oral cavity lay bare; someone had taken a knife and slashed a new mouth in that terrible face—as if to say the former was not good enough.

This hideous mouth was wide open and filled with shark's teeth. Rafel knew he wasn't mistaken when he saw the red paint over the jagged mouth wasn't lipstick at all, but dried black blood.

"You are one ugly bastard." Rafel couldn't help himself.

The monster let slip a low growl. The original mouth tried to make a snarl, the thin, fleshed-out lips pulling at the skin threads that held it shut. While the scary, carved-out mouth split apart, stretching wider on each side to the lobes of humongous ears that really looked like hanging beef.

The eyes were total black.

Soot black.

Rafel knew even [Tormentors] of Hel would not wish for a face like that.

A face that had been peeled off and then stitched back; it looked like the person who'd done the carving had done it with a florist's tools. In fact, the Patch-work Man was as a dead body hacked apart and then put back again together. It made grim sense that 'their' memo was stitching up bodies dismembered—Rafel didn't know if it was male or female.

The hung penis dangling between its legs was definitely male. But the legs weren't.

So smooth. Alabaster white. Perhaps the only clean piece of skin it got showing. At the sight, Rafel was angered, 'where the shit did this vile abomination get those legs? Off a schoolgirl's cold corpse?'

The image of a lost girl in a dank basement; oily, her former white stockings festered in dirt, chained, gagged, shivering, about to be cut-up by a deranged monster, probably lured off the streets in her simple innocence filled Rafel's head. And his [psyche bridge] connected with Peitho.

[Ding! Bloodthorn Equipped!]

Rafel's right arm sizzled as flames erupted on his skin, climbing his veins. The crimson broadsword roared to life in his fingers. The fiery soul of it roared at the adversary beyond. With glazed eyes, sparked by [Sunfire], Rafel pointed Bloodthorn at the Patch-work Man.

"Foul creature! Speak your business with us!"

STRRAAAKKKK!!!

Thunder burst in the black, rolling heavens yonder.

The green antlers of lightning were the only thing brightening the hollow Athenaeum chamber every three seconds.

Dash mewled and hid herself deeper in Rafel's broad back as the monster put one bare foot in front of the other. And Rafel knew that whomever this sick motherfucker had killed and taken her legs was no Commoner's daughter. The feet were too clean.

It looked odd in comparison to the bear-like, raccoon ugliness of the overall body, which made it the more frightening.

"You forget your purpose, Helchild," the Patch-work Man told Rafel, entering the room nude as it was. The long dick swung about. The bastard did not so much as acknowledge the fleshy member. The upper lip of its second mouth raised to expose more of blackened razor teeth.

The face shifted—as if the horror of the raw flesh stitches wasn't enough. And underneath the first face was another: crueler; the face of an evil bambino.

A face that hunted many Templar monks at night.

Nothing like a white baby with a scry's smile and scarlet eyes.

"Oh gods help us!" Daschelle hid her face.

"DARK ARTS: YELLOW RAGE!" Rafel swung his red longsword in a crescent and watched the poison he commanded seep out from his [Griffin Rune], on the spot just under his scapula and fill the sword with more vengeance.

Bloodthorn ate up the fresh energy and vibrated to be put to use. Rafel gripped tighter.

He decided to listen to what the Patch-work Man had to say before he cut it up to pieces—again.

The smooth lips of this new evil-baby face said,

"YOU HELCHILD, you have lost your way. You deny your true identity. The path the [Fates] forged for you. In your quest to escape the flames that birthed you, you have loved the fleshbags more than your origins. You, with the [Arcane Rune]: 666. You, the Abbadon! Champion of Fire! You, the Seventh Son of the Abyss. You, Helchild have forgotten your purpose.

"It's simple: I'm here to make you remember. . .and if that means purging the earth with the scythe and saw, I WILL."

Rafel had a tired expression. "So, just to be clear, you are just a crazy person with transgender fantasies. Huh? That's a bummer. I thought you are another one of the goons of the person I'm trying to find." Rafel paused, "so you followed me all the way from Titans Landing over here, watched me kill an assassin, then arranged the corpse into a bloody fucking Madhatter fashion just to get me to... BE MORE EVIL?"

"Hahahaha!" Rafel started laughing. He snorted. He couldn't help it.

—and the evil-baby face? You couldn't make this shit up.

Rafel rubbed his eyes and chuckled. "Just to be clear, you are not the first psycho to tell me to 'RISE' or whatever. MY ENTIRE FAMILY ASCENDED HEL FOR THIS SHIT! I think I should get to decide how evil I wanna be, don't you?

I am the Apollyon. I should get that right."

Rafel sighed and twirled Bloodthorn over the bambino face. "I guess you'll have to join those other crazy motherfuckers. But I wouldn't be as merciful with you as I was with my Uncles. You kill people and stitch their body parts onto your own. You must really hate yourself. If you wanted to be a girl, you could've just asked?

I know a pretty good Bodyforge god.

But no. You had to go and ruin my Sabbath day with this kind family."

In his [psyche bridge], Rafel said, 'Peitho, you know what to do.'

[Ding! Yes, Lord host.]

[BLOODTHORN: 2nd Evolution Sequence]

The crimson broadsword glowed and stretched to a startling 9ft. Behind, little Dash wondered how he could even lift the glowing blade. But Rafel did not want to waste another second of the day locked in a gory Sabbath with ...fucking Patchwork Man.

His face looked like a fucking quilt!

Fuck this guy!

"Get on my back." Rafel tossed behind to Dash.

She quickly nodded and hopped on him, curving her arms around his neck. She held on tight.

"Good. Close your eyes." Rafel told her, "with all these different body parts, this cunt is gonna bleed heavy."

Satisfied when Daschelle followed his commands without a squeak, he took his stance—just for a second and then he rushed out with fearsome speed. The Patch-work Man didn't catch him move, nor his feet when he did. They were a blur. Like the streaks of jade fire splitting the skies outside but his pure gold.

"COMET OF VENGEANCE," Rafel roared, "LAUNCH!"

He sent Bloodthorn forward in a devastating arc.

The broadsword was larger than a tree saw as it swept for the terrible skinhead of the Patch-work Man. Those ugly raccoon eyes enlarged under the fury of the incoming decapitation. The glowing blade, full of [Yellow Rage] aura would go through in a millisecond, slicing bone just as easily as flesh, and the creature wouldn't even know what had hit until the sword was out the other end.

And how Bloodthorn would glory in eating this cunt's blood.

"HIYAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

Rafel's heels were quicksilver on the tiled stone of the Athenaeum. He was just about to collect one odd head when the Legata's distinguished voice filtered into his damning wrath.

"Wait! Israfel...please."

She had just come bursting in the door with Yuki and the other kids. Rafel's feet skidded as he sent the blood-eating blade hurling upward instead. The sword cut a very large chunk of ceiling material, exposing the rocky skeleton of the small chamber. And the crimson glow filled it with hellish light.

Rafel was used to it. But not to Ursula saving the arse of a sick hermaphrodite.

"What is this?" He turned to her, his gold eyes still swirling in [Blackfyre], "why do you stay my hand from claiming this monster's putrid soul? Is he a friend of yours?"

"HELL NAH!" Mikhail cut in sharply from his mom's side.

Then why?

Everyone's eyes moved to Ursula. Daschelle did climb off Rafel's back when she saw her mother, missing his warmth instantly. Meanwhile, the Patch-work Man tried to hack at Rafel with what looked like the dissection kit of a demented surgeon. Rafel was guessing that was the bloody shit that had taken 80% of his real body.

He easily dodged all the swipes made at his body. It seemed the bastard was really interested in his face. Yukima put a hand over so the girl wouldn't see the swinging dong slapping grayish thighs as the creature hopped around to cut Rafel.

The penis looked like a buzzard hanging out its nest.

This dude made all her thoughts about unshaved pubes being sexy completely disappear.

Tired of dodging, Rafel wove [Chains of Anubis] in the cosmo threads. Raven-black manacles that looked like scorpions attached on their tail ends wrapped around the offensive psycho, pulling him down to the floor.

He landed with a thud, on his knees in front of Rafel. And couldn't so much as blink without the grim cuffs hitting him with deadly stings.

Ursula shook her head and responded to Rafel:

"No, dear. I do not know this...oddity. I only wish to make an example of him. He dared trespass into my home. I think I'm a relatively level-headed regent, till the lives of my children," she gazed Rafel's way, "and friends are put in danger. This hideous man sent a message to me and my Republic, threatening the state's peace and tranquility. It's time I send one back."

"Guillotine!" Ilona did a yippee.

It was the first time Rafel had seen the ash-haired girl really smile—and it was at the concept of public execution.

Rafel put out his left hand, the one free of the hungry vampiric sword, and angrily tore off the evil-baby face.

"Ugh!!!" Everyone turned their eyes away.

Underneath the bambino face was peeled, oozing red muscle.

Another face.

Rafel tore that one off too. And it was yet another face; this one the porcelain doll-like face of a very young girl. Rafel was guessing he'd found the owner of those legs. Turns out she'd being made into a body mask for a madman.

"My god!" Yukima gasped.

Rafel snarled. "He only needs legs to walk to the Guillotine, doesn't he?"

Ursula nodded. And he promptly cut off the weird beefy arms with the stick fingers.