A couple tiger ladies pounced the dragon’s arms, and jumped up onto its back. Neither had weapons, but just like Caera they had big teeth and claws, and they used them. Roaring with desire and hunger, or maybe just rabid mindlessness, the two ladies sank their fangs and claws through the dragon’s thick skin. That was enough to pull the dragon’s attention, and again it lost itself in the whirlpool of blood and death.
Two whole seconds of holding still was two seconds too long, and another demon came at David from his left again, a satyr woman.
“Dao!?” He spun to face her. She came at him with a sword. Not Dao.
Whether the satyr was actually attacking at him or just mindlessly swinging at whatever was in front of her, he didn’t know, but she swung the big black weapon down at him, and he sidestepped. His hand lashed out, and the tiny, broken, heavy blade got the demon in the neck.
She stepped back, clutched her throat, and aimed her eyeless gaze at him. She lowered her head, aimed her bald skull and four huge ram horns at him, and charged. Maybe she meant to charge at him, force him to dodge again, swing the sword, and catch him on the recovery. She didn’t get to the second step. He jumped back again, and the satyr fell to the ground.
She tried to get up, arms shaking with the effort. Her head fell, her horns hit the stones, and she stopped moving. Blood poured out of her neck in spurts, flowed over the flat, hard ground, and joined more blood. And bodies.
Half a second. He gave himself half a second of contemplation and realization, just long enough to look at the dead satyr and how dreadfully similar she looked to Daoka. He looked at the blood on his tiny, useless broken sword, and then back to the spire. Don’t stop. Brood later.
He bolted. The spire grew closer, and the bodies in his way grew in number. Demons poured out of the main entrance, toward the dragon and the mosh pit, but none went back in. Maybe they didn’t realize the rider had entered the tower. Saldavin and the fujara tetrad continued to fight, their great height allowing them to tower over the crowd. David ran past them, only fifty feet and a dozen demons between him and them before he got past the apex of the crowd. Smooth sailing from there on out?
No such luck. One demon fell in front of him, leg cut off at the knee, and he had to jump over them. He tripped. His shin cracked hard against a piece of their armor, and he crashed into the blood-soaked stone. Stars dotted his vision, and pain flooded him a moment later. Only when he pushed himself back up onto his feet and resumed running did he realize blood flowed down over his chin and neck. Some of it was from the ever increasing crimson that soaked the area. Some of it was from his broken nose.
Just keep running.
Another demon stumbled into his path, some sort of dinosaur creature, titanic, with a dragon-like face and a flat head that almost seemed shark-like. Two big horns came out from the sides of his head, and connected to the dark bone plate of his flat skull. Shark dragon dinosaur? Mental note: ask the girls later. Short legs and long arms allowed the creature to walk on all fours, kinda like Caera, if Caera was less lizard-cat-like and more big-scary-dinosaur shaped. Whoever he was, he turned his eyeless face toward David just long enough for David to pause and look at him in return. Whoever this creature was, his face was unreadable.
“Wh–” The creature’s words, thick and guttural, were cut short. A gold-armored demon came at him, a brute, and the hulking creature swung a giant axe straight down at the other demon’s head.
David didn’t watch to see what happened. He jumped over the shark dinosaur’s huge spiky tail, and kept going. Roars and the clangs of metal and bone followed behind him, and someone’s shrieks of rage ended short. He kept going.
The Godzilla dragon turned. Maybe a demon bit its heels or tail, but something caused the giant beast to turn, and despite how long it took for something that big to turn around, its tail came around fast, the tip moving car speed. Demons toppled, big and small, black and gold armor, and only the wave of their collapses gave David warning.
He jumped, as high as his legs could get him. Not high enough. The giant tail swept under him, front to back, and clipped his feet hard enough he somersaulted. The world turned into a blur of reds and blacks, and gravity lost all meaning as he spun through the air. Again the ground crashed into him, and this time the backlash of pain that followed poured out of his arm.
He knew that feeling. That was a dislocated shoulder. Again. He ground his teeth, snatched his useless little sword off the ground with his good arm, and got up. His left arm dangled in its socket, and pain shot from his shoulder into his back, neck, and skull, with each frantic step he took.
He took them anyway. The spire was close, damn close, and he risked a glance up at its towering size, its flesh and bone, its black metal, and the balconies that circled it. No way a demon built this.
He ran for the entrance, and the battle grew further and further behind him. No more demons came at him from the sides. No more demons jumped in front of him. No demons fell in his path. Only the cave-like entrance of the huge building before him. What demons had been inside were now outside, giving him a clear path to get into the spire.
But now that he was inside, what the fuck now?
~~Mia~~
She clutched the spike tight in her hands until her fingers went white. What to do what to do what to do. Oh god if she didn’t do something right now she was going to get strung upside down and tortured and… and… and probably a lot worse than tortured. Zel would do things to her that defied the word.
If Zel found her trying to craft the aura, she’d let her live. For now. She wanted Mia’s power, her ability to read the ancient language, and–wait, Adron and Kas didn’t tell her she saw memories when she ate that demon heart. That meant something. That had to mean something.
They didn’t trust Zel either, maybe? Maybe they thought if Zel knew about that quirk, she might do something to Mia even they thought she shouldn’t?
And even ignoring all that, there was no denying that Zel would eventually turn on Mia, enslave her, use a rod on her, kill her, something. She wouldn’t share power, or even treat Mia nicely once she didn’t have to. Zel had shown her true colors, if only for a moment, a moment too long.
Mia squeezed tighter. She had to do this. She had to do this, and… and…
David. Her brother was out there, and she was making no effort in finding and rescuing him. She had to get out there and save him. The longer she waited, the higher the chance she’d never find him, or he’d die, or anything. The chances of her finding him were already pretty much nil, but he had to be alive — much as anyone was in the afterlife — and she refused to believe otherwise! He had to be. Had to be.
Sighing, she buried her face in her palms. If she did this and went on the run, she’d probably have to leave Kas and Adron and Hannah behind. Adron and Hannah were the closest thing she had to friends, sorta, and Kas… Just thinking about the stoic big asshole made her angry, and happy, and now sad because she’d have to leave him instead of getting a chance to peel the layers and see what sort of man he was underneath. Maybe he was a great, empathetic demon? Or maybe he was an asshole through and through. She’d never get to find out.
And of course there was the fact all three of those people had made her cum and cum hard, more than a couple dozen times in, what, three or four days? Her first sexual experiences, extreme and insane and so absurdly good even now the tingly desire for more crept up on her. She banished the thoughts quickly. She could lament abandoning the best sex life she’d ever get later. David was more important. Her life and freedom were more important.
“God, what do I do if I… if I…” Groaning, she threw her hands up and spun around. “I–” A glint of amber caught her eye. She froze, and stared at the back wall and the small chain that dangled there on a hook. The leash.
With a heavy gulp, she forced her eyes back up to the colossal monster bound to the opposite wall.
“If… If I… kill Zel, can you escape?”