Chapter 42: A Rising Phoenix
"Cora! What have you done?"
The biting wind whistled and her ears turned red as she gathered to herself the elongated sleeves of her long crimson windbreaker. Aya had being tending to the horses in the stables, trying to keep Rafel's Pegasus from mating with a blonde mare, when she'd heard the monstrous explosion. It had sent Agamemnon, the black Pegasus neighing loudly in the air.
The mare had run off to a corner, forgetting the winged stallion's giant, pipe cock in a second. The beams of the stables had rattled with the force of the hit. Aya had immediately pulled off her gloves and tore through the swinging wood doors.
And although the stables were far across from the south sparring grounds, the shockwave from the blast had flattened the grasses this side of the land.
"I–I d–don't know what happened," Cora was muttering to herself when Aya reached her. Her silver hair was disheveled and frayed at the sides.
Aya knelt slowly beside the platinum blonde and picked up her face. Cora's eyes were frozen in their sockets. The blue orbs looked lost. Frantic. Afraid.
"Tell me, babe. Tell me what happened? Just tell me, and it'll be alright," Aya said to her.
Cora sat on the scorched earth in a petrified position. Lifting a stiff hand, she pointed towards the massive crater hole where the sparring grounds had once been. Aya followed the line of her hand to the wide crevice of black burned ground. Cora began to explain.
"He. . .wanted us to train. His G–Grace wanted us to train." She hiccuped. "—he said to give him my best shot. I tried to stop.
I–I implored him. I conjured a reaction blast using Hallowed Level cloud magic. The lightning comet formed. It fell. I was powerless to stop it. His Grace was there one second.
The next. . .he was gone. I–I didn't mean it, I swear! I SWEAR! I would never hurt my Lord.
I LOVE HIM. I WORSHIP HIM."
"Shh. I know, babe." Aya rubbed up Cora's arms. Her sofy skin was pale and ravaged by goosebumps.
"And I believe you," Aya continued. "But fuck! Lord Master is gone?!"
Cora began to sob. "Please help me. I would sooner slash my wrists than lift a finger to His Grace. He ordered me."
Aya pulled the witch closer. She felt remnants of elemental mana seeping into her body from Cora's. It was a potent summoning, backed by one of The Fallen no less. Aya kept Cora's head to her cleavage and softly stroked her white hair as she turned to look behind once more.
She gaped at the sight. The earth was still smoking.
And from what she could see, there was no Rafel, dead or alive in the pit of broken earth.
Aya gave Cora a minute and wiped at her teary eyes with the ends of her sleeves. She then pulled her up to her feet.
"Come on, babe. We have to check!"
"Nooo!" Cora wailed. She bawled and tried to pull away. "Please, no. Don't make me. I'll hate myself forever."
"We have to," Aya induced. "Look at me. Come on, look at me, babe." She made Cora lift shimmery pupils until they landed on hers. Aya spoke steadfastly into them. "I have seen our Lord Master go up against a Rank A Mauler and loose an arm but not the fight. I have watched him on the sands of the arena in action, long before he was ever a Champion of it.
Lord Israfel is called The Burning One. He was birthed in the fiery lava pools of Hel. I don't think he's about to let your little mortal lightning get the best of him, as formidable as you are. Besides, I don't see any bodies, do you?"
Aya was playing tough love. Cora saw this and nodded.
"Good. Then let's go find our infernal Master," Aya tugged at her.
They started towards the burning hole in the earth.
[🎶 Light 'Em Up (World Championship Finale 1) – Das Sound Machine (Pitch Perfect 2).]
The smell of ash filled the winter's gale as Corazón and Aya Naamah pulled closer to the crater. The tendrils of smoke rising up the hole was thick and Aya waved a hand over the place.
An immediate pick in the breeze sent the smoke tumbling up to the sky and dried up most of the red hissing earth. The alluring Succubus was no witch but she could perform mild magicks. As a sex demoness, Aya absorbed more than just the sperm—or squirt, in her case—off her partners. And the voluptuous brunette had fucked enough Mages to be able to conjure up a small wind.
It was the wind that cooled the earth enough for them to see.
Holding hands, they cautiously approached.
Cora still couldn't look and turned away. But Aya didn't. And she was glad for it. For she saw her Lord Master. He was alive!
There in the center of the brimming crater, Rafel sat cross-legged as if in meditation. His eyes were closed. He was naked. Gloriously naked. The comet's blast had incinerated his clothes to ash around him. He was born of fire.
In his position, he looked fresh out of a bathroom. His skin gleamed like the jewels of the Seely Court. He was gold and silver, crimson and clover, dark and bellunder.
The chemical reaction of the collision of livid lightning with sand had left most of the earth around him as glass. The mirrors surrounded him, and in the steam of heat, Aya could also his back in them. His serpent symbiote crawled from one corner of his golden skin to another. It took diverse coiled shapes in the impressive musculature.
"Lord Master. . ." Aya croaked.
And Rafel opened his eyes.
Streams of liquid fire poured out. His lashes were more wisps of flame than curly hair.
He gave her a small smile that made Aya sink to her feet in front of him.
"My Lord Master," she intoned again. Her voice was wind through grass.
"My beautiful slave,"
Rafel spoke telepathically to her. And Aya's eyes watered some at their connection. To hear his timber voice in her mind was a great honor: to be one with a god. Rafel trusted her.
On her knees in dimmed coals, Aya Naamah watched her Lord rise. He was a Phoenix ascending from the ash, ruffling its feathers and entering life anew. She could distinctly make out the wings of fire sprouting out his back.
When he stood to his full height, they flickered away.
He began walking to her and Aya felt her violet eyes sliding down the planes of his chest and abs to his hot cock. Like, literally hot. If this wasn't an instant turn-on, Aya didn't know what was. Languid fire glowed just underneath his skin. She wet her lips with her tongue.
Cora was turned away from them and didn't notice what was happening. She was sobbing into her hands on her feet.
"Forgive me, gods of the Underworld. Forgive me, thou Queen of the Night, Lilith Firstborn. Lord Morningstar, your Incarnates: Nyx and Erebus, have mercy. I have taken away your Apollyon. Hold not your wrath from me. .
.fall upon me and take my soul. I only ask that you curse me not with the absence of your dark grace. For I wish to serve you in death, even as in life. I would serve a sentence of a thousand years on the darkest moon, in the deepest trench, anywhere as penitence. I'll walk on coals for you. I'll scale the frostiest mountain and dip the—"
"Ah, Corazón. I thought you were supposed to be the strong one."
Cora froze at the voice. Her hands fell away. She could not believe her ears.
"L–Lord M–Master?"
She wished with all her heart she'd heard correctly. She wished so much it actually hurt.
"Yes, Corazón. It is I."
When he called her Corazón again, Cora knew it was him. She grinned widely and spun around. She threw herself into his arms.
Rafel caught her without a stumble. She was purring on his body like a cat. She rubbed and rubbed herself into him. She caressed his hair and inhaled his neck. She licked his hot skin and clawed at his back. Rafel's serpentine parasite retreated at her zealous embrace.
"I'll have you know that I'm quite nude here, Corazón. As much as you dress boyishly, you are still a hot girl. Don't tempt me." Rafel chuckled.
He hugged her back. When Cora finally pulled away, Aya had stood up to her feet. Both women smiled up at Rafel. It was in moments like these he really decimated their poor, emotional hearts.
Rafel pulled them close, saying,
"I had hoped to get an least an hour in the flaming crater, communing with the tongues of fire. They provide the quality temperature for focus. . ."
Cora knew Rafel was kidding and smiled more. She kissed his clean shaved jawline. He was an extremely attractive man. To Rafel, sitting in a river of fire in a volcano could be equated to a zombie stumbling upon an Epic [Rejuvenation Pool].
He continued, ". . .but alas, you hot chicks had to come in and be my hero. Heroines, I guess."
Cora and Aya laughed. Rafel grinned with them.
"Now come on, you lush babes! I may be born of fire. . .doesn't mean I don't feel the cold. I have no intention of getting shrivelled balls. This fuckin' winter!"
The girls laughed harder. Rafel strolled with them to the Manor, buck naked. At the high doors, Aya made them invisible. The fairies whose kingdom was Emberfall's orchard soon came upon the dark crater. Tiny shimmery wings buzzed as the began sowing new Wyrm seeds to grow up the moon savanna again.
In half an hour, by speedy pixie magic, the little fairies had tendrils of fresh green reaching up for the minuscule watering jars of fairy dust in their hands. Mia, the lead fairy kept a souvenir: a shard of comet glass born of a Hellion's infernal bath.