Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

"FIRE! FIRE! Fire!" someone shouted. The whole base woke up to the sound of screaming. Grone the Grievous, awakening from a snore borne of the river of mead he'd ingested at the coronation rites pulled his great bulk up and rubbed his eyes. His braided beard couldn't not hide his wrath at being interrupted.

The Skullrider snarled as he pushed off the hill of blondes curled in with him in the noble tent. He stumbled his way out and found a light commotion had started. The girls curled in with him pulled robes around their shoulders and stepped out too, ignoring his kiss to urge them back to sleep.

They flanked Grone in a ripple of golden-haired tops. The Skullrider was shirtless with the slabs of huge muscles that likened him to a man-beast on full display. His leonine eyes sparkled fury.

A group of people were running around with filled pails from deep wells. Grone grabbed the nearest man. Though he didn't mean to, he took him off the ground by the back of his shirt. The lad was by no means little, but still found himself dangling from the ham arm of his lord. Grone questioned him immediately about what was going on.

"You! What warrants this sudden disruption in my camp?"

The lad's limbs trembled. Before he could make a squeak, a person running by yelled up to the dark skies: "Fire!"

Grone sighed. "Right." He dropped the boy. "Off you go, lad." The young man grabbed his pail and scurried off as fast as he could. Just then Israfel appeared out of the nearby tent: another kingly canopy in the red earth of the militarized base. In his elevated status as warden of the Bonelands, his quarters had seen considerable elevation too.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Rafel stepped out of the tent flaps surrounded by his own harem of gorgeous damsels too. Grone turned to him and allowed a moment of mischief to pass between their eyes; the Skullrider made about ten women in the group that followed Rafel out—and they were clutching to wrappers that barely covered sumptuous chests.

Grone gave Rafel a look of innate pride only Alpha wolves could achieve. "Well-done, my king." His eyes crinkled at the corners.

Rafel glanced to the women blushing at his sides and waved Grone off. "I could say the same about you too, Skullrider." He stared out into the line of [Novice Survivors] a small distance away whom had made a sweeping file that passed buckets of water from hand to hand, drawn by the first man in the line from a deep well. Others were emptying large barrels too. "What's with all the fuss?"

"Don't mind these fucking NURs." Grone offered to Rafel, "they make even the mildest shit into a worrisome affair. As dramatic as my first wife, Leona, this lot." He nodded to himself. "If you ask me, it's nothing so disturbing."

Grone mumbled and raised his eyes up to the dark skies. His beard was lit only by the standing torches around the tents.

"What the fuck is happening to the sky? Why is it still dark? Fresh dawn was two hours ago."

Behind Rafel, among the group of curvaceous mamas and model-esque girls that had shared his bed last night, Aya Naamah dropped her head and pulled in deeper to the circle of females. Corazón chuckled over her head. The succubus was the one responsible for the continuing night.

Like a conjured [Pillar of Abyss], the skies over the base were ominous black. The clouds up there hollowed at ascension; it well resembled a worm-hole. A dread singularity. Grone stared up at the puzzling firmament like he half-expected a dark winged [Cherub] to burst forth from it, descending in golden aura and luminous halo.

None of this happened.

Grone would never know that it was the god-king's servant sukky that had spelled the endless night.

Darkness consumed the desert stretch as far out from the commanding base as the eyes could see. Because of this, Lord Zaf and his forces, and the Junker queen Dementa and her vestals, who'd come in for the [Rites of Issus]: the coronation had not yet started the journey back to Caer Mullhen and Helladeep. Although in Dementa's case it was more because she had been in Rafel's tent all night.

She too stood among the hot group of rounded cougars behind Rafel. Taller than the rest, Indira, Dementa and Cora dwarfed the concubines.

Rafel said nothing to accept the fact that his little witch [Bond] had spelled the whole territory—just to make him sleep. Inwardly, he wanted to reward his delicious, amethyst-eyed succubus.

Luckily, the passing of another frenzied lass took Grone's attention away from the auspicious skies.

"Fire! Fire!" The girl went off screaming. "Hel rains upon us."

"What fucking fire!" Grone was enraged. "I have been standing here for ten minutes and see no fucking fire."

"That's because we're being blocked out." Cora calmly stepped out around Rafel. Everyone studied her as she moved ten paces forward and kicked down a wall of empty ale barrels stacked to be lumbered away. The kegs hit the ground. And scarlet radiance instantly hit them all. "There!" Cora pointed. "There's your fucking fire."

Gasps rose from the women. In the short distance of about ten meters, an inferno raged. It rolled as a storm of flames. A vortex that spinned up to the clouds, casting ash and hot wind upon the near areas. The fiery waves was so hot it had risen the gross temperature of the base by a few degrees. It illuminated a good portion of the dim heavens.

The fire was furious. The height of it alarming.

The fire burned in the temple. The temple where the god-king was coronated.

Israfel frowned where he stood. No wonder the base had been thrown into total chaos. The temple going off in flames just a night after the [Rites of Issus] was an omen if he ever saw one. Now the Bonelanders weren't a particularly superstitious people, but the Vestals were beloved to them.

And the statute burning was a Vestal temple.

"You're telling me we were blocked by a fucking wall of wine all this time!" Grone charged.

"By the Martyr. No. No. No!" Indira sped out faster than everyone else, hurrying out to the great red flames. "Careful, Mother." Natalya followed after her, joining her to grab a pail of water and the firefighting.

In seconds, both teams of the blondes and Rafel's concubines had joined the fight. Grone led the charge, barking commands to this mixed pool of anti-heroes from the three desert territories. Lord Zaf and Dementa led joint forces, taking on the roaring inferno from three angles. In a triangle force, they approached and tackled the mighty flames.

The heat from it singed the skin. But the people were fierce and determined.

"STOP!!!" Rafel's voice brake like thunder in the commotion. As people dropped empty buckets and looked to him, he began walking in their midst. The flaming temple was his backdrop. Rafel held out his hand, pointing straight back to the rage of orange tongues. "THIS FIRE IS NOT A OMEN. It was perpetuated by a betrayer. An attempt to incite doubt in your battle-ready hearts!"

"Treason!" Grone barked from the circle.

"Aye! M'lord." Rafel answered. "But we shall find this arsonist. And in the same manner, the disloyal cunt shall burn. But first," he raised his voice to be heard by all, "I must calm this purge. Your pails of water fail to quench its thirst because this is a scourge from the Abyss, likely started by a spark of [Helflame]..."

Dementa said to Khalifa in the left flank of the fire-fighter charge: "this gives us an insight to the perpetrator. It must be one of Lilith's mercs."

Khalifa nodded, intensely glad to be reunited with her Skullrider. She told the Junker queen,

"The question is, just how did the Dowager worm her way into Grone's camp: the most protected base in vulture country."

"Hmm." Dementa cocked her head in thought. The rising sound of Rafel's voice sealed their discussion for another time.

"...I shall now attempt to absorb it, for [Helflame] cannot be quenched by any earthly element. EVERYONE!" Rafel stretched out his hands. "STEP BACK!"

The Skullriders helped to move their citizens back from the close surrounding of the fiery carnage as Rafel turned and faced the burning. He opened out his arms wider and the heat blasted him like a door to the face. He felt his loose clothes melt away, the threads cut like cobwebs. He stood naked a second. And then walked into the fire.

"Sanctia Maria!"

"Holy Issus!"

"Great Visha!"

"Good gods!"

People gasped.

The deathly flames of Hel consumed him, like the live bowels of Phlegethon, eager to use his flesh as fuel. But he didn't burn. In the depth of the inferno, Rafel expanded his [mana core]: the red organ of demonic proportions close to his heart, and began to absorb the flames.

His body ate the fires. The flames spiralled down and into him. With every fiery tongue his pale body swallowed up, the mouths of the people dropped an inch lower.

Wispst!

The flames extinguished like a finger snap.

Rafel stood in the pit of hot coals and smoking stones. His lupine physique on full display. His skin gave off strange irradiance. Wisps of silver smoke rose up from his body. He turned. And his eyes were bright and golden. His entire body was brilliant. He was ethereal, glowing in the night. The women tried not to stare at his luminous cock.

He looked dipped in gold. Or come off a shower in a volcano.

Just like that, he had eaten the [Helflame].

[DING!]

[Lord Host has bonded successfully with abilities and arsenals of Mythical Survivor rank!]

[INFLUENCE: +2 000]

"Woah!" Ravenna gulped by Aya's side, 'Whomever that arsonist is, he just fucked up. Big time."