Mortimer, page 21
part #6 of Everybody Loves Large Chests Series
That said, the succubus wasn’t stupid. She knew anything capable of besting Boxxy would mop the floor with her. She needed power to exact her revenge, and lots of it. Thankfully, there were upsides to being an unshackled familiar. She could now advance her Jobs and Skills on her own, much like mortals did. Granted, the process would be much slower, but her flesh would not age and her twisted mind would never forget. No matter how much time it took, no matter whose ass she had to kiss, and regardless of how difficult it was, she would find her Master’s killer and thoroughly obliterate him until not even his wretched soul remained.
She would do it all because that was what Boxxy would have truly wanted.
*CRACK*
A loud, sharp noise like a branch breaking interrupted Xera’s inner turmoil. She looked around in a panic, but failed to spot whoever or whatever had made it. She heard it again and realized it came from the sinister staff at her feet. The demonic skull’s hanging lower jaw had opened up as wide as it could, almost as if it were screaming. Its four gem-studded eyes then flashed with an intense red glow that matched the swirling inferno surrounding it in its intensity. The emerald flames engulfing the surrounding buildings began twisting and bending as if responding to the unheard will of Voidcaller. The recently-evolved archfiend’s detonated remains leaped off the wood, stone, and skin they were greedily clinging to and began swirling through the air like a scorching cyclone. The succubus watched in stunned silence as the magical blaze climbed into the air, then screamed in agony it rushed past her, right into the staff’s gaping maw. For lack of a better word, the staff was drinking up all the heat just as it had sucked the magic out of Xera through her Molten Guardian.
But then, something happened that the entity sealed within the Artifact did not expect. That pathetic little demoness, for reasons even she wasn’t certain of, threw herself into the torrent of heat. ‘These are my Master’s flames, not yours!’ Such was her impulsive whim at the time, moments before her conjured vessel was stripped from her immortal soul. The stream of anomalous heat continued to pour into Voidcaller unabated for nearly half a minute. By the time it subsided, not a single flame, ember, or spark remained of either the emerald flames or the idiotic succubus that thought she could claim them as her own. Only Voidcaller remained, now floating several centimeters off the ground. Its jaw had closed shut, and its eye sockets’ crimson glow had turned a dull purple.
Next, concentric circles of glowing sigils appeared underneath it. The arcane symbols spun, shifted, and twisted in a way eerily similar to the Summon Familiar Skill, but also subtly different. Copious amounts of magical energy poured into this particular formation and kicked up a steady breeze that blew ashes up into the heavy smoke still in the air. A curtain of impenetrable blackness surrounded the circular formations and the staff at their center. It was all an orderly, orchestrated phenomenon that left no doubt there was an intent behind it – a plan that was being executed to perfection.
Then something went very wrong. Or very right, depending on the point of view. Xera’s indignant soul strained to the point of breaking as it resisted the pull into the Beyond. Her disembodied consciousness couldn’t let things end like this. She flew through the ashen mist and soul-slammed into the stupid metal stick. It was an attempt as pathetic as a fly headbutting a fortress, but it was so unexpected that it caused a momentary lapse in the imprisoned entity’s concentration. The nexus of demonic energy exploded with a loud bang and a flash of light, dispersing the surrounding veil of smog.
What emerged wasn’t an ifrit sultan that had been planning an escape from its adamantite prison for millennia. The ancient demon had used every ounce of energy it had been saving up to pilfer the magic from its surroundings. He wasn’t sure how or why, but those flames held vestiges of divine power. Teresa’s power, to be exact. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Kora’s celestial romp with the Goddess of Truth and Justice had caused a bit of the deity’s essence to cling to her soul. This was then ignited by Boxxy’s Demonate Spell, which contributed to its spectacular results. The trapped demon cared not for the source of this divine power, but was nevertheless thankful for it. It was the stuff of creation and would have proven useful in cracking open Voidcaller’s skull.
Except Xera butted in at the last moment, and through a twist of fate had supplanted the much more powerful and far more ancient ifrit sultan. An untold number of seemingly disparate events, both major and minor, were linked together. An unseen force had grasped hold of the stray strands of destiny and had woven them into a tapestry of reality that could not have existed if any one of them was out of place. The outcome of this incomprehensibly complex series of machinations was that the interloper’s flesh was not only restored, but also reflected her now elevated state of being.
As the suddenly inert Artifact clanged to the ground yet again, a creature that used to be a succubus was left hovering above it. It was undoubtedly Xera, as could be gleaned from her voluptuous proportions, cerulean skin, alluring face, glowing pink gaze, and obscenely long straight hair the color of the night sky. However, her horns had undergone a drastic shift. The pair of ram-like protrusions that poked out of the sides of her head now looked to be forged of smooth gold rather than ridged bone. Their bases were also connected by more of the shiny material that spread across and protruded from the top of Xera’s forehead. A sizeable pink opal was embedded right in the middle of it, above and between the matching pair of eyes. Combined with the sleek surface and clean contours, the arrangement appeared to be a luxuriously thick and heavy golden diadem, even though it was little more than a demon’s horns.
The rest of the demoness had undergone changes as well. Though her impossibly erotic body remained mostly the same, her wings and tail were gone. Their absence didn’t impede her ability to fly, given how she hovered gently above the ground. The fetishistic leather outfit that her soul felt most comfortable in had been replaced by an even more obscene one. Her considerable breasts were left bare except for diamond-shaped golden plates held in place by a few shiny strings that covered her nipples. Soft, slightly transparent purple cloth tightly hugged her nether regions with the help of yet more golden thread. More fabric dangled loosely from the sides and back of her waist like a half-skirt that would be touching the ground if its owner wasn’t hovering above it. The flimsy material also covered her legs from her ankles up to her thighs and the middle sections of both arms. The fabric covering her limbs was held in check by a collection of bands and bracelets that looked to be, but probably weren’t, pure gold. It also left her hands, feet, and shoulders as bare as the overwhelming majority of her upper body.
On the whole, this outfit – which was probably too strong a word – left just enough to the imagination to drive men wild. It was no different from usual succubus attire in that respect, though the exotic style was more evocative of a sensual belly dancer from the southern desert than a demonic dominatrix. The excessive amount of shiny metal-like ornaments were merely a manifestation of Xera’s recently developed desire to become more appealing to her now-departed Master. Indeed, it wasn’t a stretch to say the former mimic had been instrumental in shaping the demoness into what she had become, including being unintentionally responsible for kicking the Agent of Chaos Skill into action.
The fragment of divine power had fulfilled its unknowable mission and manipulated events to produce an otherwise impossible outcome. It then attempted to report its success to its owner, but the notification failed to reach its intended recipient. At that point in time, Boxxy was a disembodied soul that had yet to reconnect with its mortal vessel and was thus unavailable for such communication. The update regarding the normalized state of the flows of chaos was left to drift in the void, becoming yet another drop in the ocean of this world’s ambient magic.
But even if its declaration of success had gone unnoticed, the changes brought about by the uncontrollable Agent of Chaos were impossible to ignore.
[Rank up complete.]
[Congratulations! Your species has become Djinn (Mirage).]
Xera’s Status update caused her reeling consciousness to snap back to clarity. There were a slew of other messages above and below, but her mind didn’t even register their existence after witnessing this monumental notification. The former succubus’s first thought was to inspect her new self, which she did by grabbing and fondling her own breasts. A small moan escaped her lips almost immediately as she was caught unawares by her new vessel’s increased sensitivity and heightened capacity for stimulation. The amplified feeling of her hands sinking into her mammaries flooded her cesspool of a mind with perverse impulses in record time.
Carnal desires aside, she had a distinct sense of invulnerability, a sort of overflowing power that welled up within her and demanded to be unleashed upon the world. It was an intoxicating feeling brought on by the chaotic energies she had absorbed moments ago. They elevated her to the next level of demonic existence and left her with a supercharged body that exceeded the already formidable abilities bestowed by her former Master. This was both a blessing and a curse, as it was only made possible because her Status was no longer shackled by a demonic contract.
“Snack? Ktktktktk, is that you?!”
The freshly reborn Xera heard a familiar voice behind her. She twisted her new body around in the air as if dancing, reveling in the strangely euphoric feeling coursing through her. Her eyes confirmed that voice belonged to Drea, the sight of whom made the djinn’s warm and fuzzy thoughts instantly ice over.
“Oh,” she let out in a low voice. “It’s you.”
A powerful urge to lay into and belittle her former co-contractor for failing to protect her beloved Master overcame the ex-succubus. By her modest estimate, the stalker deserved to die in excruciating agony exactly 53,471 times to atone for the sin of her own incompetence. However, Drea’s sorry state made that violent urge subside as quickly as it had appeared. All but one of her back-mounted scythes had been either ripped or broken off in the struggle, both of her wrists were bent at weird angles, and her face looked as if it had been kicked by a horse. It was somewhat of a miracle she was even still alive, and she absolutely wouldn’t have been if she were a mortal creature that required functioning internal organs to survive.
In short, Drea had clearly fought as long and as hard as the limits of her conjured flesh would allow, but it simply hadn’t been enough.
“So. Care to explain what exactly happened here?” asked the newly reborn djinn with a damning glare.
“I failed…” admitted Drea, looking at her feet. “I, ktktktkt, I couldn’t kill him fast enough. Ktktktktkt. Master… died because I wasn’t, ktktktktkt, wasn’t useful enough. It is a, tktktktkt, strange and, tktktkt, unbearable shame.”
Now that the telepathic link between them had been severed, the spider-girl was forced to use her voice, which brought her nervous tick to the forefront. Judging from the ceaseless chittering of her mandibles, she clearly felt upset at the loss of her master. Not as much as Xera, but enough to keep the djinn’s spiteful side from lashing out at her. Which was good, because there was a much more deserving target for the fury burning within her than the arachnid assassin.
“Listen, the past is the past, and neither of us can change that,” Xera grimly stated. “We have an eternity ahead of us to lament our respective failures, but right now I have a box murderer’s life to ruin. And… I need your help.”
Drea’s compound bug-eyes went wide when she heard her fellow demon’s intentions.
“You wantktktktkt to go after that thing?”
“Of course I do! I won’t feel satisfied until I turn that piece of shit and everything he holds dear into a smoldering pile of fuck!”
Xera’s scalp and hair momentarily lit up like a bonfire. The djinn quickly composed herself and forcefully patted down the blinding flames with her bare hands in a fit of angry embarrassment.
“That’s… ktktktktkt… new,” remarked Drea.
“Never mind that!” insisted Xera. “Look, I somehow or another did a Rank Up, so I’m still getting used to this.”
“Ranked Up?! Ktktktktktkt! First Koralenteprix, now you?!”
“Yeah… Something of a parting gift from my Master, I suppose.”
“Ktktktktkt…”
Drea enviously eyed Xera up and down, subconsciously letting out a quiet chitter as she kept thinking how lucky the woman in front of her truly was. Though, she’d probably sing a different tune if she was going through the same emotional turmoil as her fellow demon. Which she clearly was not. Her attachment and fascination with Boxxy were nowhere near as strong as Xera’s. The stalker still felt pity and disappointment at how things had turned out, but nothing approaching her co-contractor’s genuine grief. It was a clear sign that her affections for the creature had always been rather superficial, closer to a form of distant admiration one would hold towards a famous person rather than the soul-warping passion Xera harbored.
“Will you help me or not?” impertinently asked the djinn.
“I want to, but… Isn’t it just a waste of effort? Ktktktktkt… If me and Koralenteprix couldn’t take that thing with Boxxy here, then how can the two of us hope to defeat it?”
“You’ve given up already, haven’t you?” responded Xera with a disappointed sigh.
“No, I’m serious. Ktktktkt. I want to butcher that asshole, eat him up, make him into webbing and then burn it! Ktktktktk. I just… lack the means to do so,” she added, shamefully averting her eyes.
Although her previous words sounded like she was admitting defeat, that wasn’t the case. They came from the perspective of a ruthless killer who had made a cold and hard assessment of their target. While Drea was scarily effective at leaping from the shadows and instantly tearing her victim to ribbons, that approach would prove ineffective on a monster with a Mana Locator Gland. Her Master knew that and held her back during the battle until the target was sufficiently distracted. Even then, she didn’t do much beyond bringing down his Mana Shield. The ensuing scuffle had made it quite clear her opponent’s hide was also much too solid for her razor-sharp appendages to penetrate. This was hardly new, as the stalker had always struggled against heavily armored targets.
No matter how sharp her chitinous claws and scythes were, they couldn’t cut something harder than themselves.
“What I’m asking you is how do we kill it?” she reiterated. “Ktktktktktk, you’re a succubus, so you should have some, ktktktktkt, devious plot or underhanded method in mind, right?”
A wicked smile spread on Xera’s lips when she realized she had a partner-in-crime after all.
“You’re gods-damned right I do. I’ve a number of ideas and tricks I could use, but first I need to find out where that thing is hiding.”
“Good. Ktktktktkt, because that’s something I already know. I tracked it back to its real hideout after it, ktktktktktkkt, killed and took Boxxy.”
That was why Drea was nowhere to be found when Xera had arrived at the scene. She had only come back to this place at all because she noticed the unquenchable flames had suddenly gone out and backtracked to investigate. She passed by a cordon of Azurvale’s city guard, who seemed to be sealing off the area and waiting for reinforcements before they dared get too close. Apparently, they had deemed the situation exceedingly dangerous after Jones Alexis wiped out their first-response unit. Of course, their perimeter was full of holes, which was how and why Drea was able to easily slip past them despite her near-crippling injuries. The mortals’ caution was also a wasted effort since the chief instigator was already long gone.
“Wait, really?” asked Xera wide-eyed. “He just let you tail him that easily?”
“Yeah! Ktktktkt! That bastard!” complained Drea in a huff. “He probably thought I’d just abandon Boxxy to protect my own life! Ktktktktktktk! That or he put too much faith in his sensory gland’s limited range! Ktktktktktktkt! Either way, he wasn’t careful about being followed at all! Ktktktktktk! It honestly pisses me off to be done in by an amateur like that! Ktktktktkt!”
Xera had to admit she may have underestimated Drea’s convictions. Though, it was still a bit irritating that she seemed more pissed off by the fact someone she was following had underestimated her rather than because said someone had murdered the target of her immature infatuation. Nevertheless, actions spoke louder than words, and it was reassuring to find out that Drea had the foresight to continue spying on Boxxy’s killer even though she had no idea how to actually deal with him.
“Alright then,” the djinn’s devious mind churned at full speed. “Let’s find a good hiding spot, then I want you to tell me everything you know about who this Jones Alexis really is. As for how we’ll deal with him, that may turn out to be easier than you might think.”
She floated over to the inanimate Voidcaller and grasped its shaft yet again. The strange connection she now had with the occupant of the staff-shaped prison allowed her to lift it with astonishing ease. She gave it a few trial swings and stroked its smooth skull while the malicious grin on her lips widened ominously.
“All we have to do,” she continued, “is point the finger at him, then let the mongrels sort it out among themselves.”
[General Information]
Xerababadubuth L’okrelaila
Djinn (Mirage), 748 years old
Level 58.93 Succubus
