Oblivion's Queen

by M. H. Johnson

  Breath turning ragged, Kazikil roared his fury. “This is my realm, sworn to me by Queen Lilith herself! You have no truck here, demoness. Begone! I renounce you from this place. Now back to the pits of Hell from which you came! Powers of this realm, yield your essence to me and destroy this interloper!”

  And the terrible demoness so named filled the chamber with her mocking laughter. “Sworn to you only for so long as you can keep it, Kazikil. But by all means, try to expel my daughter. It is fruitless, but it delights me to see you squirm with the horror of your own insignificance, before my greatest treasure consumes you entirely!”

  Jezabelle's ruby red lips quirked into a bemused smile, sensing truths regarding matters she had completely forgotten until that very instant; remembered, as if just then recalling a halcyon dream long forgotten. For her enemy was striving to wield the powers of Primacy. To claim Dominion over the very laws of nature that ruled this pocket realm. To seize Claimance and thus force this miniature realm of dream and Shadow to obey his will.

  She flashed Kazikil the iciest of smiles, understanding intuitively both the nature of his actions and how futile his trying to wrest Claimance truly was. With the last of his words the cavern floor's vibrations turned to a mighty stuttering rumble, chunks of softly glowing quartz breaking free from the vast arching ceiling to crash into the frantic melee occurring still on the chamber floor.

  Jezabelle grinned with pleasure at the carnage below, even as the massive hound covered in a shimmering latticework of blazing blood roared his fury, tearing through scores of furiously battling demons as if they were no more than fragile casings filled with blood and entrails, so quickly did the beast's terrible jaws snap them up and shake them to pieces, shredding his enemies with effortless ease, broken limbs flying off every which way in a grand crimson shower, even as the terrible hound quickly snapped up what remained.

  So too death stalked the swarms of demons in the form of inky blackness, the vicious swipes and terrible maw of the ebony cat darting through the melee with such speed that he seemed to flow from victim to victim, from shadow to shadow, leaving a stream of disemboweled and hamstrung demons in his wake, they having only moments to howl in primal terror before being quickly finished off, infernal essences devoured by the roaring hound that fought in perfect tandem with his feline companion, as if their terrible dance was one they had mastered long ago.

  Jezabelle felt the power of the demonlord's terrible abjuration then, cast with such brutal force and vitriol that it was obvious Kazikil was willing to tear apart this very realm to harness the energies sufficient to send her spinning into Hell.

  But Jezabelle found that, strangely, save for the softest of pressures, as if she ran against the wind, there was no real force behind the summons at all.

  Near effortlessly, she strode on the air as if it were land still, ignoring the whirlpool of energies roaring into her, spells that would force entire armies into the unimaginably distant spinning vortex just feet behind her. No more difficult to resist than the gentle currents of a shallow stream she waded effortlessly across.

  Slowly striding forward, her mithril sword blazed with a terrible ebony brilliance potent enough to sear mortal flesh from bone. Jezabelle slashed the very air before her and felt it literally part with the screaming fury of the voidal edge, sharp enough to slice through the fabric of reality itself.

  Effortlessly, she snapped the crimson chords, massive as they were, that Kazikil had used to anchor his abjuration. She chuckled throatily. Having resisted her foe's grand curse with surprising ease, she sundered the demonlord's spell just for the pleasure of watching him stumble back, shaking and sobbing, overcome with the horror of realizing that his ultimate demise was at hand.

  "Are you afraid, little lemurling?" Jezabelle taunted. "Afraid of what comes after I tear your spirit free of your flesh, and drain you dry of every drop of your soul's might till you are naught but a shriveled husk? Do you wonder what it will be like, all your power and potential reduced to a fragment of bitter folly, unworthy of even a mortal's fallen soul? No need to wonder any longer, my sweet pustule, for soon you will know!” With that the awakened queen roared and charged, effortlessly countering her foe’s desperate strikes, forcing him ever further off-balance with every vicious rebuttal, savoring the inevitable outcome of their deadly dance.

  Jezabelle's terrible smile served as her enemy's only warning, the heavily armored hellion stumbling back, hissing a panicked curse even as she swooped in to strike, but it was already too late. Having sensed the perfect moment, her mithril blade arced out in a tight, fluid slash that left her enemy stunned and reeling, gazing at the bleeding stump of his arm, a fountain of crimson horror where once his great serpentine blade had risen proud before him.

  She gazed into his eyes and savored his screams of horror, peering deep into the windows of his soul. And in that instant, she understood him utterly. He who had once counted himself as the bravest of the Fallen, the match of any of his betters in terms of bravado, had dared accept the gauntlet of looking upon the whirling pool of the Void itself. A dare he had scurried away from at the last possible moment, the abyssal winds of the end times shrieking madly from the lip of the impossibly massive precipice upon which he had stood, fearing at the last to gaze at in the face Oblivion, the promise of Death it held for all.

  It was only to burn away the shame writhing through him that had goaded him to accept the gauntlet of Lilith, gambling his very existence for a taste of greater power, a taste that had led him to this very moment, the horror of his own unmaking.

  The Fallen angel screamed then, gazing upon the terrible beauty of the queen he faced. For the Void he had fled in such horror was looking right back at him, burning brilliantly through eyes of darkest mirth and madness.

  And Jezabelle smiled. It pleased her to note the dread in the shaking demon's gaze.

  “No, you can't be!” the creature moaned at last.

  In the instant of his greatest despair she tore through the air in a vicious arcing cut, armor shredding with a shriek of tortured metal and ruptured souls, her mithril longsword cleaving through her enemy's massive frame with the ease of the headsman's axe, cutting him neatly in two.

  The demonlord blinked but once, still alive, eyes widening in uncomprehending horror even as he dropped, his two halves plummeting to the ground far below. For Jezabelle's fearsome blow had not only cut through flesh and bone, but through the very chords of power that had anchored the summoned demon to this realm.

  With a hideous scream, the Fallen angel's sundered body began to smoke and boil away to nothingness. The young queen crowed with triumph as the demon's wailing soul, torn free of all fleshly anchors, funneled helplessly into her ravenous form.

  All the power and essence of the fallen demonlord, the endless scores of fallen souls he had greedily caught and claimed for his own dark usage, now roaring into her in an explosion of swirling energies even as she screamed in darkest ecstasy, the might of a lord of Hell boiling her blood, rattling her bones, climaxing through her soul.

  Baptized in the blood of her enemies, drinking deep in the forgotten power of an ancient hellion, the doors of her mind's eye were torn asunder, her blade glowing with the forgotten power of millennium, their ancient connection rekindled to wakefulness once more.

  "Well done, my Jezabelle," crooned the sweetly seductive voice of the ancient succubus gazing down in exultant pleasure even as she rode her hapless thrall to exhaustion, Morlin de Plaga's cries as much agony as passion, his body all but tearing itself apart to please her. "It is time for you to claim all that is yours!"

  The Heavens themselves rang out with a thousand warning bells as ancient prophecies blazed to life, the clock of eternity winding down her final hours. For in the instant Jezabelle's fingers had touched that dread blade piercing the very heart of Oblivion, chords of power long ago severed screamed to life once more, her soul now shimmering with the terrible power of the Void itself.

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  Who dares to challenge me?" the awakened queen roared, ruby eyes blazing with such hideous power that she found herself able to peer right through the paper-thin dimensions of her fragile kingdom of wind and rain, sunshine and forests, where the seasons of life and the storms of the heart were interwoven into the very fabric of existence. The sanctuary of millions of souls freed from endless nightmare whose countless lives had strengthened and nurtured the patchwork realm a desperate young queen had forged an eternity ago. Yet now it was effortless for Jezabelle to gaze beyond the limits of the realm she had danced the seasons of existence upon for so many lifetimes.

  She could peer right into the heart of the countless planes of the Abyss spiraling endlessly below her fragile, patchwork realm. She could feel the carefully cloaked linchpins of power feeding upon entire realms of horror, sensing kings and queens of Hell shuddering from her presence like brilliant stars blazing upon the midnight sky.

  Breaching the infinite distances between their realms by will alone, Jezabelle stared fearlessly into the hideous faces of countless rulers of those dark dimensions howling their outrage at her incursion, gazing with twisted hate right back at her.

  She sensed their hungers, one and all.

  Jezabelle seethed in sudden fury, sensing the ghastly appetites of those kings and queens of Hell, craving as they did for nothing so much as to find but a single pathway into her realm of light and life, eager to feast upon the fragile flesh and helpless souls of all those within the world of Dawn.

  A realm she had once wrested from Hell itself, claiming it as her own.

  Jezabelle roared her challenge then, and none dared answer her call, pausing only to blink their multifaceted, puss-filled eyes, pinning her with their alien stares, chittering, cursing, screeching in a dozen abyssal tongues, yet none slithered forward through the realms to accept the gauntlet of her challenge, for all that Jezabelle with chilling ease melted a pathway between herself and any of them, all of them, facilitating even the most hideous and warped to step forward and face her.

  And nothing.

  Not one dared stir from their sybaritic thrones of decadence and misery, darkest glory and endless debauchery, draped with scores of screaming souls tormented endlessly for their amusement. Not one of them dared leave their dread halls of hideous delights and advance toward Jezabelle's shimmering invitation to duel, all hiding behind their slaves and servitors, lest any gesture be taken as challenge by the Risen Queen.

  And Jezabelle laughed with contempt. "None of you cowards dare to face me! With all your power and influence, none of you dare come forth and accept the Gauntlet of Challenge, battling me for Ascendance over my realm and your own! Your hideous shapes are an affront to the very laws of existence, you cowardly excuses for Fallen lords fleeing from the light of my blade and the heat of my wrath!" Her smile was gleeful, even mocking. "It matters not that you refuse to take up arms against me. For even here, I taste the echoes of your power. For even now, my eyes pierce the veil of worlds. It is nothing for me to tread the abyssal paths to your festering realms, and bring the Gauntlet of Challenge to the foot of your rotted thrones! And when my fist shatters the very flagstones of your shaken empire, that shall be a call you cannot deny!”

  Her smile turned fierce, crackling with madness, heir to the awful knowledge of all the secrets lost screaming in the deathless Void. "Tremble, Fallen angels denied the beauty of the Heavens above, and weep not in bitter sorrow of all that you have lost. For I shall happily put all memories of such folly to rest when I plunge my fangs into your pustulent necks and devour your very souls! Gnash your teeth in despair and wail the final cries of your damnation, pathetic wretches, for soon I shall come hunting for you!"

  Her shrieks were the laughter of pristine madness and the promise for seething retribution both, a warning and a threat to all those lords of Hell that had dared spin machinations threatening her glorious realm. And she did notice reactions then, waves of abhorrence and hatred launched at her by the shuddering twisted beings moving in directions and angles strange and hideous to all known points, yet they could not escape her terrible gaze.

  And in dreadful unison, howling and shrieking as one, the wretched kings and queens of Hell screamed out curses as old as time itself, seeking as one to bar their realms from entrance by the Risen Queen, the Heiress of Oblivion; an engine of destruction so terrible that none save mad Lilith herself would have dared awaken awful Jezabelle from her endless slumber. The most hideous of creations, the one daughter who had not perished within her mother's Castle of Bone.

  The Queen of the Moonlit Garden grinned brightly then, laughing as her enemies strove desperately to close off their vast planes of existence to her, before losing herself to a storm of remembrance as ancient flashes of imagery played upon her mind's eye. She recalled battling an army of her foes so massive as to stretch to the borderlands of infinity itself, in a titanic struggle as old as time, her two oldest companions fighting by her side as endless legions of howling enemies fell to blade and fang in a sea of blood and sundered magics so vast that the world itself had flooded with the madness and glory of it, even as she and the pair of ancient gods butchering under her crimson banner drank from the terrible fountain of power roaring forth from the sea of dying enemies at their feet, claiming this realm of existence and all its potency for their own.

  Jezabelle screamed in ecstasy. And then she heard a roar.

  Before her, as if summoned by her will alone, was a massive shimmering hound bathed in swirling runes of blood. Jezabelle breathed deep, tasting a scent that was rich, musky, and hauntingly familiar. "Ah, Rage. You are beside me again, at last. It has been too long since we tasted the terror of our enemies. Come, my Hound. Shall we wade in seas of our foe's blood once more?"

  And her hound’s howl was so piercing that the vast cavern shook anew, great spikes of shimmering quartz crashing into the ground, fragments of rock shearing through the countless hordes of demons still stumbling toward them. And Jezabelle smiled, crimson eyes blazing with inhuman hunger. “Come. Let us feast on this appetizer. The main course will arrive soon enough!”

  Raising her terrible blade, Jezabelle uttered a single harsh syllable and a wave of ebony flame sprang forth in a spinning vortex, consuming a dozen shrieking porcine demons in a white flash of heat, such that but the slightest trace of their ashes remained, billowing in the thermal currents, Jezabelle inhaling it like the finest of incense, shivering with ecstasy as the taste of their sundered souls stoked her insatiable appetite for destruction anew.

  Her eyes caught sight of the vast, hideous structure of twisted metal in the center of the great cavern, and with a contemptuous shout her voice tore through the metal frame with such force that it exploded in a shower of molten steel, blasting outward in a deadly cone of shrapnel that slayed dozens more of their foes. And Jezabelle howled with pleasure as she sucked down the power of spirits cleaved free of once immortal psyches, reveling in those sweet final moments of terror that so delighted her, her discordant laughter a mixture of madness and darkest glee.

  Her eyes then caught a glimpse of the dozens of sweet souls still living, gazed into the eyes of sobbing women and children looking up at her in helpless terror, only by chance protected by the stream of metal shrapnel she had used to obliterate scores of her hellish enemies.

  Jezabelle smiled, entranced by the innocent gazes of those humans quaking before her, her ruby red lips pursing into a hungry grin so very like the demonic succubus even at that moment gazing down upon her, shrieking with laughter so very like her own, did she but look up to see. “Yes, my beloved daughter. At last you are ready to taste the sweet fruits you have nourished in the bowers of your garden for so very long. Too long! Come, my child. Free yourself of those final chains of sick morality, and let us begin a reign of such terror sufficient to send all our enemies weeping and wailing through all the realms of Hell!”

  The Risen Queen snapped her ruby red gaze up to meet the mocking stare of a
woman who looked so terribly like herself. lush lips so very like her own curved upward into a teasing smile.

  Jezabelle snarled, eyes only for the hapless lover that mad Queen Lilith still rode. "You! I know you, sire of the Plaga clan! You who would sacrifice the blood and flesh of my prizes for your own twisted games. You owe me a debt, Plaga, and I will see you pay it!" The roar of her voice caused the very roof of the great chamber to fissure and crack, as if on the verge of collapse from the terrible pressure of Jezabelle's gaze, glaring as she did at the shimmering image of the windswept glade, the very spot where the waking world superimposed upon her own location, deep within the realm of Shadow and dream.

  And in that moment the stunned Lord Morlin gasped and shuddered, utterly spent, his body shaking and spasming as he gasped for breath, freed at last from the endless sybaritic delights of the succubus who had so thoroughly used him, consuming every ounce of his vitality and passion, draining him dry yet demanding more, ever more, till the very moment he was left gasping and paralyzed with exhaustion, broken and strangely vulnerable, unable even to look away from the furious gaze of the woman glaring up at him from the portal he perhaps only now realized served as a gateway not just to lost Pomell, but to endless realms of nightmare below.

  "Jessica de Calenbry," Morlin whispered in horror and awe. "Saints above. You really are one of us."

  He then shrieked a horrific wail of pain as Lilith gently caressed his back, dark sparks of purple fire coursing through him. “You will call her by her true name, lemurling. Jezabelle. The Risen Queen. The End of All Things. Every other mortal utterance she has chosen to wear over the ages were but shells. Masks to hide my prize away till the time was right to awaken my child to her glorious Doom once more!”

  Lilith's husky chuckle turned mocking. "One of you? A fallen mortal daring to congress with the greatest queens of all of Hell? Oh, you fool! How I revel in your boldness. How I delight in the sheer corruption of your soul. But no. My daughter is as far beyond you as a dying star exploding in all its transcendent glory is to my gentle lips blowing out the sputtering wicker of your life."