The Song of Roland Ch. 19

"I... I didn't do anything." Kelsea said, the words feeling hollow and false on her tongue. They were the only ones she could think to use. Almyra was so beautiful, her natural curves only half-hidden by her robe. The Priestess seemed to sense the way Kelsea's eyes drifted across her form.

Almyra's patrician features turned in disgust. "You have done enough, and I have done far too much. To save the life of a Demon's at the cost of my own soul..." The Priestess grimaced.

"The horns are blowing; the attack will come soon." Kelsea insisted. "You must get to safety."

"There is no safety to be found here. Your kind have ensured that. There is only the death struggle to come."

A note of panic entered Kelsea's voice as she returned to that cold spot in the cave again. The laughing voices, the sneering expressions as those... things dragged her towards the filthy pit, her cracked and bloody fingernails scratching upon rock as she frantically tried to find purchase. A hundred clawed hands reaching upwards as they tossed her bodily into-

"We... we must leave!"

Almyra's eyes were frigid mirrors. "Then go: join your band of monsters in their glee as they tear down everything that I have ever worked for. You have already stolen my chastity, what is one more indignity to you?"

"I'm not like them!" Kelsea insisted, dropping to her knees as she moved next to Almyra. She took the Priestess' hands in hers. Almyra, scandalized, nevertheless did not move to stop her. Kelsea's instincts noticed the subtle blush that came to her high cheeks, the marked increase in heartbeat as she slid close to her. "Your Holiness, please: you've saved my life; I owe you a debt, the last thing I want is for something to happen to you or your people. By the God who made us both, I beg of you: come with me."

Kelsea never knew what the Priestess might have said to respond in that moment, for no sooner had she beseeched her than a sudden, burning brightness filled the room. An infernal heat ripped across the rooftop, illuminating the world in a strange, bluish light. Kelsea knew the color; like an unexpected nightmare she thought for a terrible moment that she had somehow been transported back into Grevich's clutches. The blue light blasted across the building, and in seconds everything was on fire.

Almyra screamed, the heat burning even from this distance. Kelsea, without thinking, leapt atop her, covering her body as best as she could. It wasn't enough, and the Demon found herself frantically patting at the Priestess' steaming clothing. Glancing up, she saw the wave spread across the rooftop like wildfire. Ash descended upon them, and a sudden blast of blackened smoke arose. To Kelsea's own shock the fire did not burn her, her body instead merely noting that the heat was intense.

There was a loud thud against the door, and shouting on the other side. Kelsea scrambled to her feet, pulling the struggling Priestess along with her as she neared it. The house seemed to be dying all around them

"Kelsea!" Cried the voice through the door. She recognized its tone.

"Roland!" She responded, but he did not answer. The fire was descending from above them, and Kelsea was out of options. Standing erect, she coughed as the acrid fumes obscured her eyes and filled her lungs. Seeing no other methods of escape she ran at the door, leaning her shoulder hard into the frame as she smashed it open. Her unnatural strength overcame the thing, and it burst apart from her strength and momentum. The shards of the doorway shot out, superheated by the blast. Kelsea collapsed upon the porch, momentarily stunned by the experience.

Hearing the pained moans of the Priestess inside, she gritted her teeth and pulled herself to her knees, choking and gasping as she re-entered the failing support structure of the building. She took the Priestess under her arms, grasping at her torso as she pulled her out of the cataclysm. Kelsea kept dragging, feeling the scalding force as she pulled Almyra out onto the relative safety of the scorched earth outside. Looking around with bleary, tearing eyes, Kelsea saw that the houses all around had suffered the same fate as her own.

Suddenly Roland was there, kneeling next to her. The murky world had become a strange, illucid dream. He was yelling something at her, something that had frightened him; she could see it the way his chin quivered beneath his thick beard, the way his blue eyes stared with a hard, metallic quality back at her own. She could barely hear him, her ears were ringing and her lungs were full of something black and choking. She continued to hack upon the ground, hunching her shoulders as she struggled to maintain her false impression of humanity. His hand went to her shoulder, touched the trailing curve of her cheek. She imagined placing her own over his, but her arms were too weak to support her.

"I'm- I'm fine!" She gasped. "Al- hukh- Almyra is-"

Roland glanced down at the Priestess. Her eyes were fluttering, her breath was shallow, and her reddened skin looked like it had suffered from a spate of harsh, unexpected sunburns.

"She'll live. We've got to go! Now!" Roland said, hefting the Priestess in his arms as he rose. "Can you stand?"

"I-" Kelsea stood up on wobbly legs. "I can." She blinked hard, putting a hand against his body to steady herself. After a few long, hefty inhales, she nodded at him.

"To the gates!" He said, taking off in the opposite direction of the fires. Unthinkingly, Kelsea followed after, her steps becoming more sure and swift as she went along. The explicable necessity of their impromptu flight became abundantly clear when the sound of animalistic jibbering came from behind. Kelsea glanced back and saw the horrid contortions of Impish figures dancing in the firelight. Their shadows twisted and warped as they ran, their silhouettes set in stark relief to the blue flames eating the last of the burning hovels' bodies as the fires began to mercifully sputter out. They were gaining on the two.

Roland sensed it as well. He glanced back, his eyes reflecting the heat with a riotous passion. His brow pulled down, and he stopped short. Kelsea skidded to a halt alongside him. Without preemption, he shoved Almyra into her arms. "Go." He said, "Get her to safety; find Carl, and stay safe."

"But-" Kelsea began, hefting Almyra in her grasp like she was nothing.

"Go!" He said, leaning in and leaving a last kiss upon her lips. "I'll be back soon." He said in an unconvincing fashion, stroking her hair before turning to face the oncoming wave. "Tell the Cloister there's a Succubus loose in their walls - as if the fire wasn't enough of a sign!"

A Succubus. At first Kelsea didn't understand the import of his words. However, her eyes widened as she began to grasp the true implication of it. Kelsea's common sense got the better of her fear, and she forced herself to do as he bid. Her footsteps were unsteady and her heart hammered in her chest as she imagined Roland caught against the wave of little creatures that were chomping at their heels. She made all haste to the gate, her feet carrying her like a wind across the fog-strewn streets, with only the candles of the still-standing buildings to light her way. The snow was beginning to fall harder.

She came to the main road leading to the portcullis just in time to see it close. The iron gate collapsed to the ground, smashing against the dirt with a loud, clanging finality as the shouting of men carried in the uproarious din. Kelsea held the panting Priestess to her body, a heavy sigh of relief emerging from the disguised Demon's lips as she saw the flicker of consciousness return to her charge's muddled senses. "It's okay." Kelsea whispered as she trotted to the gate, "You're going to be all right, your Holiness."

"Gosvin protect me." She muttered in response, hissing in pain from the burns she'd sustained. Their eyes met, and the Priestess managed to hold the Succubus' gaze for once. Her singed black brow lowered onto her clenched eyelids. "Why." She asked, neglecting to frame it as anything resembling a question.

"I couldn't leave you." Kelsea said, her body trembling at the Priestess' word. There was something powerful lurking in the sound of a preacher's condemnation.

Almyra blinked. "Why?"

A genuine question this time. Kelsea could not bring herself to look down at her, staring instead at the crumbling battlements of the Inner Cloister walls. "Because I... it was the right thing to do." Staring at Almyra's placid features, Kelsea could not help but recall another woman's face, from her time with Grevich. "I want to believe that I wouldn't." She whispered.

The sound of chittering laughter brought a cold feeling at the base of Kelsea's spine. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, her mind racing as she tried to imagine a scenario where the appearance of the little monsters did not coincide with something awful having happened to Roland. "Help!" She called up to the battlements, though not a soul stood visibly atop them. "We need-"

The Imps were coming. Kelsea did not have time to think. She propped the pained Priestess up against the wall line of the white, crumbling stone and then spun around, resolving to do whatever she could to defend her with her bare hands. She remembered her half-hearted attempt to stop the Imp attack in the woods with Roland, her thoughts sharpening to a murderer's edge as she clenched her fingers against her palms. Not again. She thought in fierce tones as the evil things scampered towards her. Never again. She knew how empty the words sounded, as a dozen of the things rushed towards her.

There was the twanging of bows, the snapping of strings, and a sudden whistling of air. A flurry of arrows rained down from either side of the Inner and Outer Cloister gatehouses as the men hiding atop them stood up from cover and unleashed a heavy volley. A spate of shafts peppered the creatures, the ground becoming a sudden porcupine of arrow crossfire as they loosed in an aggregate mass. In the space of a second nearly all of the creatures were lying prone upon the frosty earth, unmoving.

The nearest surviving one, a spindly thing with three eyes and a spate of irregular horns like curling, bony hair limped forward, an arrow jutting out of the back of its thigh. It hissed at Kelsea, dragging itself onwards in an attempt to continue its attack. She kicked the thing hard in the face as it moved towards her, sending it sprawling out into the snow.

The other two survivors leapt at her from amongst the growing pile of corpses. A green-skinned leech with a gaping maw cackled at her as it leapt at her waist. Kelsea let out a grunt of air as the thing knocked her backwards. The Imp rolled about in a vicious circle like a rabid rodent as Kelsea scratched and bit and fought for her very sanity. She grabbed it bodily and flung its squirming form as best as she could off of her, but the second creature took this as merely an ideal moment to attack. It jumped upon her back, shoving her forward and forcing the Succubus to lose her balance and topple face-first to the ground.

She felt it. She could feel the heavy set of its sex upon the back of her spine, trailing up her neck and poking at the ends of her hair. Kelsea could smell it: a sickly sweet scent of noxious and illicit arousal concentrated in the fat package of the red monster sitting atop her. It shifted its hips forward, simulating a rough fuck session against the back of her head, grabbing handfuls of her scalp and shoving her face down into the earth, into the dirt. Right where it wanted her.

Kelsea gasped, her body twisting this way and that upon the ground but not moving to throw the thing away in the struggle. Something called to her, something primal and dark and alchemical to her body. It soothed her raging anger, her pumping fear, her rational thoughts. The human within her continued to cry out, looking desperately for a way out of the situation.

The Succubus within her licked its lips and began to lean into the abuse she was enduring.

More might have transpired, but a broad plume of orange flame shot from the base of the white wall of the Inner Cloister, bathing the creature she had thrown but moments ago in an aura of death. The creature atop her forgot about its conquest, focusing instead upon this new mortal danger that had reared its heavenly head. Almyra stood, her hand raised, fire in her eyes and upon her fingertips. "By the God of Mankind I command you:" She said. "Release her." The Imp laughed and leapt at the Priestess, its needle teeth flashing as it made to murder the still-standing woman. Almyra whispered a prayer, and this time a flashing tuft of orange spurt from her hand like a cloud, striking the Imp and causing it to scream in pain. A well-placed arrow from up upon the battlements pierced the thing's head, ending its suffering.

Kelsea stood up, her arms shaking as she fought to keep the beating burst of her heart. Her jaw was clenched, the muscles standing in stark contrast as her whole body tightened. She managed to stagger to her feet, her eyes lingering for far too long upon the wondrous curves that Almyra sported.

"Are you well?" Almyra asked, her voice as unsteady as Kelsea felt deep within. The Demon managed to nod.

"The..." Kelsea took a breath. "Y-yes."

A shout from the battlements. A second wave of the monsters arrived from the direction of the destroyed outer wall, back where Roland had initiated his desperate stand. They tripped over each other in a mad dash, slavering monsters ecstatic at the sight of raw, untouched flesh. Almyra stepped forward, placing herself firmly between that of the breathless Succubus and the arriving creatures. The arrows began to fly from both angles, catching individuals as the horde arrived.

Something strange happened. The imps that had already been perforated with arrows rose as one, their movements even more jerky and unnatural than before. They were silent, their eyes still empty of thought and expression. Their muscles were slack, their faces caught in the unseeing oblivion of extinction. And yet they moved.

...And yet they moved. The once-limp Imps stood up as their fellows reached them, laying into the charging clutch. A savage civil war played out before their very eyes as the soulless creatures of the abyss fought the lifeless corpses of their comrades. Claws dove into chests, teeth bit off hunks of flesh; a tangled ball of death terminated the lot of them in a conflagration of Demonic butchery. In moments the better half of the living Demons were destroyed. Almyra, stone faced, stepped forward, chanting in a high voice as Gosvin's heat leapt from her fingertips, covering the rest in her purifying vengeance.

"What..." Kelsea gasped, but the sound of a frightening chuckle drew her ears.

She glanced over, at the iron gates that partitioned the graveyard quarter from the rest of the Cloister. They had been flung open, a thick heft of fog curling about the man who stood, a pillar of darkness amidst murky gloom. The tombstones that loomed around him seemed almost companions in his ghastly reality, like spectres of a dead host waiting to accept more into their slumber. Kelsea could not see his cold grey eyes, but she could feel them. She saw the fluttering of his robes, black in sharp relief of the mist that made him but a haze in her vision.

His awful laughter carried, like an invitation, like a malignant inducement to join him in the void. Amongst the bones, amongst the ashes, Bogdan cackled. It was somehow a worse noise than the scattered screams that were beginning to rise far in the distance.

"Succubus." Almyra said, seeing for the moment that they were safe. She did not turn back to look at Kelsea. Her voice was a stricken, strained thing. "Find your servants. Bring them here. If we are to die tonight, I would have us hold off the creatures together. Your blonde attendant was at the tavern, the last time I saw him." Almyra's hands clenched into fists, her shoulders hunching against her frame. "I am putting my faith in you." Her voice cracked as she said it, "...Do you understand?"

"Yes." Kelsea said.

"Then go."

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Roland ran for his life. He fled across the burned out husks of the annihilated hovels as a horde of snarling monsters followed in hot pursuit. He had lost track of how many had died by his blade. In the space of moments between Kelsea's escape and his own showdown with the monsters, he had realized that simply standing his ground was untenable. Instead, he conducted a running battle with the Imps, doing his damndest to keep them nipping at his heels while remaining just out of grasping distance. When one got close enough to touch him, he'd reward it with the removal of the offending limb. He was starting to run out of breath, his arm aching from the repetitive action of slashing and hacking.

One of them, a bull-headed beast with an oversized set of fangs emerged from within the charred remains of one of the buildings to his right, latching its teeth upon his arm as it moved to climb up his leg. Roland kicked the thing as hard as he could with his foot, connecting with its jaw and sending a spray of teeth out from its face. He felt the jolt of it as it let go of his sword arm, blood slipping down onto his hand and coating the pommel between his fingers. He cursed.

Four more of the things charged him through the dying blue fires that now had mostly sputtered out. Smoke filled the air, and as it mixed with the fog it made everything seem hazy and indistinct. The Imps were quadruplets, made of similar raptor-maws and sickly yellow skin. Roland cut one down but two others tackled him, their immense strength bringing him to his knees. He moved to pull his knife free, but one Imp grasped his wrist, cutting into it with its fingernails at the same time as it shoved his weapon back down into the sheath. It grinned at him, licking Roland's upper arm with its curling tongue. The mercenary punched it, pushing it away just in time for the other two to shove him onto his back.

He kicked, kneed and punched. Hands were at his pants, tugging at his trousers and pulling at his shirt. Part of his foppish dress was pulled over his head and he was blinded. His sword was beneath him, his arm caught against the fabric as the other fumbled madly for it. More of the things were coming. He could hear them. He could not escape. "No!" Roland shouted, feeling something warm and fleshy tap against the top of his head. Another slapped against his arm. They were beginning their deleterious duty, touching themselves as they poked and prodded at him with their naked erections. His hand grasped his sword, but he knew he could not pull it free with his weight atop it. His pants were halfway down his legs, his eyes squeezing shut as he felt-

A whirling, winding wind wafted across the gaggle of Demons surrounding Roland's prostrate and struggling form. At first, all Roland could hear was a rise in the breeze, but the hesitation that it brought the Imps caused him to look up. The air began to cyclone around them, the flaps of his shirt seeming to almost float by the buffeting air. His eyes widened as he saw the winds whip themselves into a fury, sending sudden, blasting torrents into each of the Imps atop him. It was like hitting a brick wall. A concentrated burst of air smashed the creature sitting on his chest, crumpling it and sending its smashed body flying off into the night.

Its fellows fared no better. A howling gale took on the tones of an ancient voice, billowing out a cone of air that sent the whole of them sprawling, bones snapping as they were dragged hard across the ground. The gusts were strong enough that Roland, merely brushed by them, felt a booming pop in his ears, as though from a sudden rise in elevation. He sat up, pulling up his trousers and readjusting his clothing.