Shit.
“I don’t know. I’m just… just a regular girl. I mean, that’s what I thought, anyway. Boring typical person’s life, until I died.”
“Indeed. You seem like a normal person. You smell like a normal person. Fresh meat, waiting to be cracked open and your resonance enjoyed.” Zel squatted down beside her again, grinning at her with a sly, super-smart-and-knows-it smile. “But you’re not. I can feel the tingling sensation of a subtle aura, waiting to be grown. It’s not unlike a hatchling testing their sin for the first time.”
They were right next to the balcony edge. Maybe she could push Zel off?
“I hear that a lot. Hatchlings? Demons lay eggs? But, I also heard demons don’t lay eggs. I’m so confused.” Misdirection. Make her talk about other stuff.
But Zel shook her head, grin unrelenting. “I am not some devorjin for you to twist and manipulate. Diogo, smarter than other devorjins, is still a moron. I am not. Now, you will demonstrate to me your ability create a sin aura, and you will do so now.”
Double shit.
“I don’t know how to control it. It just… comes out of me.”
“Ah, I see.” At least the demon was willing to listen to reason. “A vola’s — succubus or incubus, fresh meat — sin aura is almost always sexual in nature, and that is the comparison Diogo made.” The giant demon, still squatting in front of Mia, reached out and traced a claw down Mia’s naked chest. “Are you a sexual creature, Mia?”
“I… uh…” Oh god oh god. The beautiful alien demon woman was looking at her from so damn close, Mia struggled to hold still. “I… am.”
“Oh? A vixen on the surface, were you?”
“Um, not really.” That answer wasn’t going to satisfy Zel. She needed to keep talking. Ugh, she wasn’t going to have a single secret about her private life left at this rate. “Just, had a really big sex drive.”
“A surface virgin?”
“… yes.” No need for a mirror. She blushed from head to toe, even more than when the big pretty deadly demon lady had touched her.
“How curious. And no demon has touched you?”
Adron had said Zel wouldn’t care if a human had touched her. The look in Zel’s black and red eyes confirmed. She liked the idea that Mia hadn’t been touched by a demon yet.
“I mean, no demon had… um, done anything to me yet, not really. Diogo wouldn’t let anyone. And Adron, he–”
“Adron.” Zel stood up as she rolled her eyes. “That sneaky little vratorin. What web has he spun this time?”
“I… don’t think he’s spun any webs. But, um… He’s been very nice to me.”
“No doubt. He is too smart for a vratorin, though he does have a habit of chasing his dick straight into trouble.”
Zel knew Adron well, apparently.
“He did save my life once. I owe him a lot.”
“Then he aided Diogo in carrying the prize to me. I should reward him.” Nodding, she gestured for Mia to follow, and they walked back into the spire. Outside was less scary. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“I don’t think so.” Mia hugged her arms as she sidestepped a remnant growing out of a hunk of flesh overhead. “But, why are you asking me so… openly? I could be lying, right?”
Zel smiled down at her. She either found Mia amusing, or straight-up liked the things she said. Maybe both? Hopefully both. Both meant a better chance of surviving longer.
“The truth will come out eventually. You’re not going anywhere for quite some time, I think. Unless you have some place to be?”
“I… don’t.”
The alien demoness goddess shrugged, with all fours arms, and gestured to the another doorway. Another set of stairs to climb, ugh. Did the demons really take the stairs everywhere? It didn’t seem like. The balcony layers inside the spire were close enough, demons jumped from one balcony edge to the next, going up and down. Powerful legs. Demons couldn’t walk for hours, but they could probably kick ass running obstacle courses, if jumping floors was how they did most of their traveling in the spire.
“This game will take time to unfurl,” Zel said as she stepped into the next room, “and I see no reason to rush things, or to risk my assets; that’s you, by the way.”
Mia clenched her teeth, and nodded.
Which of course only made Zel giggle. “Many human souls who come to Hell think of demons as villains, to be fought and defeated. I do not get that sense from you.”
“I… I guess not. Calling demons villains makes as much sense as calling surface predators villains because they eat herbivores.”
“Indeed.”
“Though, I mean… that’s only true for the eating comparison. Torturing humans, or trying to kill angels, that seems pretty villainous.”
Zel nodded as she walked up to one of the walls in the new room. A small room, really just a short hallway with lots of hooks on the walls. And there were full skeletons on them, at least a few of them. No remnants, though there was plenty of flesh and stone where remnants could grow out of. But it seemed like the purpose of the room wasn’t the corpses, but the hundreds of different things dangling from the spikes.
Jewelry. Black metal chains dangled from the hooks, some thin some thick, many of them with spikes, most of them with a skull or two hanging off them. Plenty of human skulls, but plenty of demon skulls, too. All the skulls were real.
Zel slipped her silk wraps off her body, and hooked them on the wall. Completely naked now, Mia couldn’t help but stare at the damn tall woman’s muscular, thin body, and her perky breasts standing out against her firm chest. And of course, holy shit those long legs. Somehow the length of her lean body fit the four arms really well.
Zel unhooked her belly chain, hooked it up on one of the spikes, and grabbed another chain, this one with bigger but fewer skulls. Brute skulls, judging from their size and lack of horns. She changed her necklace for one with a big skull, something even bigger than a brute skull, and four horns. Massive. The other necklace had dangled skulls between her breasts, but this giant thing hung against her stomach.
She didn’t stop there. A metal bowl dangled from a spike, and she plucked a couple white, thin things from it. Finger bones, sharpened on both ends? Whatever they were, she casually slipped them into her nipples, and she shivered — and moaned softly — as their tips pierced through the dark red skin. A single drop of blood rose to the surface of the skin, and Zel smiled down at her body as she casually flicked the small drops away. And with just as casual a motion, she grabbed a thin, dangling metal chain, and hooked its ends onto each nipple piercing.