"Brother? What are you talking about?"
I stepped forward, my voice cutting through the tension like a blade. Beatrice's head snapped towards me, her face a mask of disbelief and fury, but the creature in the cage… it smiled. A wide, triumphant, utterly insane grin that stretched its human mouth and warped its boar snout into a single horrifying curve.
"Oh, she never told you?" the doctor's dual voices cooed in mock sympathy. "How quaint. She keeps her little secrets, our dear General. But some secrets don't stay buried. They get… repurposed."
"Shut up!" Beatrice roared, her fists pounding against the energy cage, making it flicker violently. "You're lying! That thing is no brother of mine!"
"Maybe?" the creature chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. "But you can't deny that both of you came from the same source."
"!!!" Beatrice froze, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and denial. "How... how do you know that?"
"How?" the creature laughed, a dry, rattling sound. "I know everything, Beatrice. I know about your past. I know about your family. I know about... 'Her'."
"!!!" Beatrice's face turned ugly.
"Who?" I demanded, my patience wearing thin.
"Who, indeed?" the creature said, its eyes gleaming with a feverish light. "Do you mind sharing some of your... precious memories with us, General? I must say your family is a fascinating subject for my research... a very big family."
The creature's elephant trunk snaked through the bars of the cage, its wet tip almost touching Beatrice's face.
"Your mother, Lilith, must be so proud of her children."
"Lilith?!" I couldn't help but exclaim the name, my mind racing.
'Lilith... as in the one who created succubi and incubi? THE Lilith?'
'Beatrice is her daughter?... and that serpent is her... brother?'
I looked at Beatrice. Her face was pale, her body trembling with a mixture of rage and something else... Fear?
'What kind of family are they?'
"Don't you dare speak her name!" Beatrice snarled, her claws extending, inches from the creature's trunk. "You have no right."
"I have every right!" the creature shot back, its human face twisting in anger. "I am the one who will usher in the new age! I am the one who will bring your 'brother' back! I am the one who will make your mother proud!... both of them."
Both of them?
I looked at Beatrice again. Her face was a storm of emotions.
'Don't tell me...'
"Your other mother, the Great Mo—"
Thud!
Before the creature could finish its sentence, Beatrice's fist shot through the pink energy cage, her claws digging into the creature's throat. A torrent of dark red blood, mixed with something black and viscous, sprayed from the wound.
But the creature didn't scream.
It just smiled.
Its human face split into a wide, triumphant grin. Its boar snout twitched in amusement.
"Hehehe... You're... too late," it gurgled, its voices a wet, bubbly mess. "The... ritual... has... already... begun..."
With a final, shuddering gasp, the creature's body went limp. Its multiple limbs hung lifelessly, its three eyes stared into nothingness.
"SHIT!" Beatrice cursed, pulling her hand back from the creature's throat. "I let him get under my skin."
"Bea... What the hell was he talking about?" I asked, my mind still trying to process the information I had just heard. "Lilith? Your brother? Your other mother?"
Beatrice looked at me, her crimson eyes filled with a turmoil of emotions I couldn't quite decipher.
"It's... complicated," she said, her voice low and strained. "And now is not the time or place for a family reunion. We have bigger problems."
As if on cue, the entire chamber exhaled. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the stone floor, climbing up our legs and settling in our teeth. Something vast shifted just beneath the foundations. The green fluid in the vats began to bubble violently, the bodies inside thrashing as if electrified.
"He said the ritual already began," I said, my gaze sweeping across the room, my senses on high alert. "We need to stop it."
Soon, we started to hear footsteps.
Lots of them.
Heading directly towards us.
Beatrice snapped, rushing toward the long table where the important books and scrolls were.
"I need this!" she snarled, waving a hand. A slender black ring on her middle finger—simple obsidian, one I had never seen her wear before—flashed once with sullen crimson light.
The scrolls, grimoires, and scattered parchment leaves lifted in a spiraling wind and vanished into the ring's hungry mouth. One particularly thick tome resisted for half a second, pages fluttering defiantly, before it too disappeared with a soft, sucking pop.
...
Step! Step!
"INTRUDERS!" A roar came from behind the now open door of the lab.
"Kill them! For the Master!"
"Protect the ritual!"
The red-robed priests poured into the room like spilled wine, faces twisted in fanatical fury. Their hoods had fallen back, revealing shaved scalps tattooed with spiraling ouroboros sigils that seemed to writhe under the flickering green light. Wicked daggers curved like crescent moons glinted in their fists; some carried serrated swords still wet from earlier sacrifices.
But the moment their lead rank crossed the threshold—
Tik! Tik! Tik! FUSSHH!
Twenty skeletons engulfed in blue flames emerged from the ground around the priests. Empty sockets blazed with cold fire. Bone jaws gaped in soundless howls. Each skeletal warrior clutched a weapon forged of the same icy flame—scythes, glaives, jagged longswords that trailed comet-tails of frost and cinder.
My Cinder Wraiths.
"Cinders!" I roared, power surging through my veins like molten iron. "Burn them all!"
The skeletons obeyed with mechanical glee.
The first priest barely had time to raise his dagger before a flaming glaive cleaved him from collarbone to hip. The two halves parted with a wet sigh and collapsed, shattering like glass. Another cultist screamed as skeletal fingers closed around his throat; blue fire raced down his windpipe and out his eyes in twin gouts of sapphire light. He convulsed once, then dropped, skin sloughing away in ashen sheets to reveal muscle cooked to charcoal.
The blue flame of my Cinder Wraiths is truly a mysterious thing. It is a cold flame that logically shouldn't burn, but it does, and it burns hotter than any natural fire.
It doesn't just consume; it erases even souls.
"Let's go." Beatrice didn't wait for the carnage to finish. She grabbed my arm, her fingers digging into my bicep with bruising force, and pulled me toward the massive door, bypassing the battle entirely.
I didn't resist. We had our priorities.
The Cinders were holding their own. They were born of my power, fueled by the ambient rage of this place. They would buy us the seconds we needed.
"Do you know where we're going?" I asked as we sprinted down a long, dark corridor. The stone walls here were covered in carvings depicting scenes of conquest and sacrifice—mostly women being offered up to a shadowy, serpentine figure.
"I have a pretty good idea," she replied, her voice tight with focus. "He said the ritual has already begun. That means it's happening at the heart of this fortress. The place where all the power converges."
"Which is?" I pressed, ducking under a low-hanging archway.
"The lower levels," she said, her eyes fixed on the path ahead. "In the succubus's last known location."
"INTRUDERS!" A roar came from the front—two more red-robed priests.
"MOVE!" Beatrice commanded, her illusionary male form melting away like wax, her true self blazing to life. A pair of magnificent, leathery wings erupted from her back, cracking like thunder. She launched herself forward, a blur of crimson and purple.
I saw a flicker of movement—a priest lunging with a jagged sword aimed at her heart. But Beatrice was faster.
With a simple movement from her index finger, a pink phantom sword appeared and split the priest with a single, elegant stroke. His body separated into two clean halves that fell to the stone floor with wet thuds.
The second priest she left for me.
I, still in my male incubus form, pulled out the flail from my inventory. I spun it once, the heavy, spiked ball whistling through the air, then let it fly.
CRUNCH!
The weapon connected with the priest's skull, shattering bone and brain in a spray of red and gray.
"This way." Beatrice didn't even slow down, her wings folding as she rounded a corner and disappeared down a narrow staircase.
I followed my senses on high alert. The air grew colder, the chemical stench stronger, until it was almost overpowering. It smelled like antiseptic and something metallic... blood.
It took us more than ten minutes to descend until we reached the bottom of the staircase.
Of course, we met more unfortunate souls who were generous enough to present their faces to my flail. I did devour some to replenish my stack of wraiths.
Devouring in male form worked exactly the same as in my old world.
A black vortex that would swallow the body.
Phew... I got scared there for a second, expecting the body to be shoved up my ass by a dark tendril.
"By the hells..." I whispered, my stomach churning.
The corridor opened into a vast, circular chamber. And in the center of the chamber was a massive pool of blood. A lake of it, bubbling and churning like a witch's cauldron.
The edge of the blood lake was filled with magical runes and glyphs, glowing with a sickly green light. And in the middle of the lake, a small island of black stone.
And on that island was a figure.
A woman.
She was naked, her body covered in intricate, glowing tattoos that seemed to writhe and crawl over her skin like living things. Her long, silver hair cascaded down her back, and her face... Her face was beautiful. Terrifyingly so.
She was chanting, her voice a low, hypnotic murmur that seemed to vibrate through the very air, raising goosebumps on my arms. With every word she spoke, the blood in the lake would bubble more violently, and the green light would intensify.
"Snake?" Narrowing my eyes, I spotted scale patterns on her skin. Her eyes were also slit, like a reptile's.
"Lamia," Beatrice corrected, her voice a low whisper. "A very powerful one."
"We need to kill her to stop this ritual."