"Oh, yeah, push it harder, baby."
"Deeper."
"Yes, right there! Don't stop!"
"Perfect… that's it… the climax!"
The voices echoed through the dim room, filled with desperation.
To anyone listening, it would've sounded like a scene straight out of a cheap porno, complete with the trembling gasps and urgency.
But it wasn't.
Not even close.
On a cold stone floor, a young man lay sprawled out, his shirt covered in something dark and sticky.
His head ached like it was being split in half and his eyes snapped open to a blur of crimson light and shadowed figures.
What the hell…?
He blinked.
He had just been at the convenience store buying chips and an energy drink.
Then… screaming and some strange people with weird masks had kidnapped him.
And now… this?
He could barely move but the voices were getting clearer.
A woman's voice echoed again with excitement. "Harder! Go deeper!"
A man's grunt followed.
The young man frowned, still in his daze.
Is someone seriously doing this right next to me?
Then something clicked.
A rusty scent hit him.
The haze in his mind cleared just enough for him to see.
The man wasn't thrusting anything obscene.
He was twisting a dagger right into the young man's chest deeply with devotion and the woman beside him wasn't moaning from pleasure, she was worshipping.
"Perfect…" she whispered, her voice shaking now. "Yes, yes… this is the climax."
The blade slid down his ribs as blood spilled over his skin but he didn't scream or even flinch because he didn't feel anything.
He didn't feel any pain or fear as if this was just another Tuesday for him.
What the fuck is happening?
The young man panicked.
Out of all the things to freak out about, being kidnapped, stabbed or even sacrificed, what really got to him was how weirdly chill he felt about it.
The cultist didn't care for his thoughts.
More of them appeared from the shadows, laughing, crying and moaning like lunatics in some unholy ecstasy.
Their voices overlapped.
Each one of them held a blade.
Each one of them was smiling.
"F–fwekrr… stawp…"
The young man tried to speak but his tongue felt heavy and his mouth wouldn't obey him.
The cultist's moans grew louder.
He even saw one woman falling to her knees, twitching in ecstasy as her pristine white robe was stained with something dark and suspicious.
It was obscene and somehow… sacred for the cultist.
"Ka'threl… naxur… sha'nael thar…"
"Blood for the Hollow Star! Flesh for the Sleeper!"
"Let it drink, let it wake, let it see!"
"Lurae… Thal'vahn… e'thir ren."
"Blessed be the silence that devours the sun."
"May His eyes open beneath the skin of the world."
Fuck…
The boy cursed under his breath because he knew there was no saving him but before the thought could even finish forming.
BOOM!!!
The ceiling exploded.
Stone and smoke rained down as the air itself split apart with a sound as the boy saw it.
An impossibly vast shape.
A presence that didn't belong in any world touched by sanity.
It stood above the ruin of the roof. It had an octopus-like head with its tendrils moving like a living being and behind it… seven radiant and pure wings.
It stared directly at him and in that instant, he could only feel awe and terror.
Those seven wings were the last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed his conciousness.
—
When the boy opened his eyes again, the world was… white and radiant. He blinked and the pain, the blood, the dagger, all of it was gone.
Instead, he floated in a place that felt happy or maybe it just wanted him to think it was.
Everything moved in slow motion and the ground, if it could even be called that, was soft and weightless.
For a second, he thought this was heaven and then he saw something move.
The same creature from before, the one that had looked straight at him through the collapsing roof.
That thing with an octopus-like head and seven wings was floating above, it's every movement slow and graceful.
The boy froze.
So… this is hell?
He thought bitterly.
Because there was no way in any universe that he was getting into heaven.
He knew better than anyone.
"Who… are you?"
Still, he asked.
Not that it mattered because he was already dead.
He expected the creature to answer in some reality-breaking roar… or maybe not answer at all.
But instead, a clear and gentle feminine voice echoed through the radiant void.
"I am the Angel of Compassion, oh poor soul."
The boy's brain blanked and his mouth went dry.
The sheer wrongness of hearing a gentle, almost motherly voice come out of something with tentacles and seven wings short-circuited his thoughts.
Then,
"What the fuck?"
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
Not exactly the kind of thing you were supposed to say to divine eldritch entities… but honestly, it was the only sentence his brain had left.
The angel just smiled.
"So… are you ready to be sent to another world, my child?"