~~Author’s Note~~

Welcome. “A Taste of Hell” is a mini series of small novelettes, each told from a unique point of view of side characters in my upcoming main series “The Pleasures of Hell”, a fantasy adventure set in Hell. While the main series will have two PoVs, both human (brother and sister) and not featured in this series, these prologue/bonus chapters will give curious readers a taste of this setting from the view of the various angels and demons that populate it, and a taste of the erotic elements.

These chapters are entirely optional. No need to read them if you’d prefer to go into the main series blind.

Erotically, “A Taste of Hell”, and “The Pleasures of Hell”, will focus largely on monster girls and monster boys, usually paired with someone not monster-y. Expect lots of kinks to be explored, with exaggerated proportions, size difference, deep/large penetration, harems and/or reverse harems, and plenty of others. There’ll be fantasies for dominant and submissive readers alike. Erotic scenes that are particularly long and descriptive will be bracketed with ♥♥♥ /♥♥♥ . If you’re not looking for a juicy scene, skim the dialog in these sections so you don’t miss anything important.

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~~Two thousand years before the Arrival~~

~~Eelis~~

“Get down!”

Arioch didn’t listen. Eelis grit his teeth until they threatened to break, and punched the mikalim in the face, toppling him, before Eelis slammed his titanic shield into the stone. The rocks shattered and split apart under the shield’s base, the holy metal sinking a foot into the bowel’s of Hell as Eelis braced behind it. And behind him, the fallen Arioch’s eyes stared wide through the slits of his helmet.

Hellfire crashed against them, and Eelis roared into his shield as he pushed his weight against it. The scorching heat rolled over them, and both angels tucked deep into the shadow of the shield, wings snug to their backs. Arioch was mikalim, and his wings came with no armor, but Eelis’s wings were larger, and white and gold armor guarded the arm of each. They glowed bright against the incinerating heat of the demon’s breath.

Only when they heard the battle cry of another angel launching themselves toward the bolstara did the hellfire cease, its billowing waves fading as the demon turned to face the attacker. Without the thunderous barrage of the deathly fire, Eelis could hear the battle rage around him. Holy metal struck metal. Demons roared and angels screamed. Before him stood the False Gate, with its giant walls of black metal, spikes, and a million hanging skulls. Above them, the great vortex swirled, and the base of the eternal maelstrom licked the top of the False Gate Cathedral.

Death was everywhere. Beside Eelis lay a fellow angel, Mayme, dead, both legs removed. Beside her, lay Nadir, with one of Belor’s weapons skewering his back. A double-sided axe with a long grip, with dark metal that glowed amber at the core, power they had not been prepared for. The korgejin that wielded it, a ten-foot-tall beast with wings and hooves, lay next to the two angels, a dozen deep gashes cut through his hard, black, leathery skin deep enough to bleed him to death.

Hundreds of angels, and thousands of demons lay in the field of stone, metal spikes, and jutting coils of metal chains, hooked to more spikes that stuck up from Hell’s surface. Around them far in the distance and in shadow of sharp mountains, cathedrals of black metal, blood, and stone surrounded the False Gate. Eelis did not know who built them, but he knew it wasn’t this Belor, this warmonger. Each cathedral was a battlefield, with angels flying around them, slaughtering demons small and large alike. The imps and grems stayed far away, watching the battle with wide, scared eyes, and the volas were nowhere to be seen.

In this fight, one could find only brutality and murder.

With a moment to breathe, Eelis turned and looked to the captain.

“Arioch, are you injured?”

“Other than your punch, I’m fine.” The mikalim stood up, and Eelis could see the man’s eyes go wide inside his helmet. “Your wings…”

Eelis looked to his wings and the armor that covered their arms up to the final joint. What was once metal, gold and white and beautiful, now sagged, half melted, and the searing heat teased Eelis with threats of incredible pain to come. His wings no longer glowed gold, but were tinted black where hellfire had burned his feathers.

“I’ll be fine.” And he would be, once they were done with this madness.

With a heavy grunt, Eelis stuck out his right hand, and summoned his spear. The enormous staff burst forth from a blast of light, a nine-foot weapon topped with a mirror blade. With his arm hooked into the several grip straps of his tower shield, he yanked it out of the stone, and held the seven-foot shield at his side.

Arioch joined him, a longsword with mirror blade in one hand, a medium four-foot shield in the other. Both of them wore the colors of Heaven on their armor and shields, shining white with designs of gold, lined with dancing silver. But both of them were covered in a new color: red. The blood of demon and angel alike coated them, oozing over the elaborate indentations and ornamentations of their armor and shields. Much of it was burned to black char, and the smell turned their stomachs.

They wouldn’t, couldn’t vomit, but their reflections wanted to, nonetheless.

The bolstara that had breathed flame upon them stepped back again and again, slashing at the angel in her face with her four arms. But the mikalim attacking her was relentless, smashing aside her claws with her shield, and blocking oncoming claws with her sword, all at the same time. Wings kept her in the air, and bolstara had no wings. The angel woman slashed away at her again, and again and again, pushing her back and stopping the huge creature from using her hellfire. And with the lighter armor and shield compared to a rapholem, the mikalim woman had the mobility to flap away almost instantly, and close the distance just as quickly to force the tetrad demon back and back.

Eelis spread his wings, summoned his grace, said a silent prayer, and pushed forward. And promptly stumbled, the weight of his armor crushing him and forcing him back to the ground.

“Eelis, you damn fool.” Arioch groaned and shook his wings out as he walked up to Eelis’s side. With a heavy grunt, he helped Eelis to his feet. “Stay back until you’ve recovered enough to fight.”

“I can’t stay back, we don’t—”

“I said stay back. If necessary, wait for help from the rest of Avinoam.”

“You think more survived?”

“I trust my legion.”

Eelis winced and looked down. He did not share Arioch’s optimism.

Before Eelis could stop him, Arioch bolted past him, wings bursting into bright light as they fueled his charge. He closed in on the enormous demon, but the bolstara compensated immediately. She ducked back underneath Arioch’s dive, disgustingly nimble for such a tall creature, and she spun as she did. One of her four hands snapped out and grabbed a nearby blade that had fallen from one of her comrades, one of Belor’s gleaming black blades made of meera, with veins of hellfire somehow trapped within cracks on the blade, like veins of lava.

The demon spun, a graceful dance as she continued to back up, her long hair tendrils slashing at the air with the many blades that’d been pierced into their tips. Arioch and his companion were forced to hover outside the range of the creature, both with sword and shield raised, but unable to approach. The woman, Eelis didn’t know her name, was exhausted, panting and unsteady as she tried to maintain her hovering next to her captain.

They both dove upon the demon again.

Eelis looked around again. A dozen of the terrible four lay dead before him, and a few hundred other demons lay about as well. Ragarin, tregeera, devorjin, gorgala and riiva, and borjin. How Belor had managed to recruit breeds from other spires, Eelis didn’t know, but the sheer numbers the creature had summoned surprised the mikalim assault into paralysis. The Heavenly Islands Ravid, Avinoam, Samael answered the call, and their rapholem and gabriem came to save what they could.

Only to find disaster. They’d yet to reach the stairs of the main False Gate Cathedral, where it stood next to the spire. But they had grown closer, and closer. But for each of the terrible four they slew, for each of the dozen lesser demons they brought low, an angel died. The battlefield of stone and metal, bathed in the red of the burning sky above and blood alike, was becoming a grave of claw, horn, and feathers.

Eelis lifted his shield enough to slam its base against the ground once again, and let it hold his weight as he fought for breath. Sweat dripped down his body, mixing with blood that coated the left side of his waist. Earlier, a blade had stuck him hard enough to break through his armor at the waist hinge. If he didn’t treat the wound soon, this reflection would succumb and die, and he would die with it.

He tried to lift his shield again, but it would not rise. He tried again, and groaned as flesh twisted and fought against the weight of his own blessing. But it would not lift.

“Eelis, you fool. Enough.” A woman’s voice.

Eelis looked behind him, wincing with the motion as his flesh fought to not tear. “Seonaid.”

Mikalim angels were powerful warriors of agility and strength. Rapholem like Eelis were immovable walls of protection. And Gabriem like Seonaid were beacons of restoration. Her armor did not have the thickness needed for prolonged battle, and her helmet did not cover her face. Her soft wings glowed behind her to their fullest, and her long blond hair flowed down over the plates of her shining armor. White silk drifted out from where layers of her armor met, but white no longer, stained red in the blood of the fallen, with sheets of shining chainmail behind, also dripping crimson.

With her open helm showing her face, her dismay was clearly visible. Eelis met her opal gaze for only a moment, before looking away as pain ripped through his side. He fell, and the stone beneath him cracked as his knee slammed against it.

Wind cut across the ground around him, and Seonaid joined his side instantly. The long white and gold bow and her quiver of mirror arrows vanished from her grip as she knelt down beside him, and placed her hand against the dent in his armor. The light of her grace flowed into her fingers and palms, and soon the soothing waves of its power seeped into the wound. Pain faded, and Eelis sighed relief as the flesh of his reflection mended. The armor did not; his rune and grace would only recover with rest.

And there would be no rest, not yet.

He grunted acknowledgment, nodded to the gabriem, and stood. Flesh struggled and screamed in pain, but did not tear. Good enough.

“Thank you, Seonaid.”

“Eelis, this battle has—”

“It is not lost!” Body no longer threatening to tear apart under his own power, he slipped his arm back into the grips of his shield, and lifted. A great weight, the great burden of all rapholem, and a weight he would bear. “The other islands will have heard of this assault. They must be on the way.”

“It will take days for them to arrive! The True Gate is too important, and—”

“Then we will make sure the demons are delayed until then.” Guardian shield at his left, spear at his right, he took a step toward the False Gate Cathedral. Never did any of them predict the demons would attempt this. Never did they think Belor would be this arrogant.

They should have, and now angels were dying because of their folly. Damn the council.

He took five more steps before Seonaid stepped in front of him, hand pointed toward him, eyes glaring.

“Eelis, your grace is drained.”

“The battle continues.”

“It does, and if you continue, you will die needlessly.”

“The battle continues, Seonaid. Step aside.” He took a step toward her.

Her face broke, a cross between rage, and sadness. “Must you, fool? Your death will mean nothing!”

“It will mean something to me!”

“You will be dead, Eelis! Returned to the Great Tower, and I will have lost my friend!”

He frowned at his old companion. His helmet hid his face, he knew that, and he knew Seonaid could guess his expression easily nonetheless. But her face softened as he gently pushed her aside with an armored wing.

“Go, Seonaid. Other angels need your help.”

“You damn fool.” The curse cut deep, and it hurt her to say it. “You damn fool.”

“I’m not planning to die here today, old friend. Go. I will enter the cathedral and save those I can.”

She glared at him, unbelieving, but he pushed her with his damaged wing a little harder, and she relented. Glare unending, she took to the air, and flew over the battlefield. Doubtless she would find more angels to save, others on the precipice of death. Angels were difficult to kill. But they could die, and they had not died in this number in thousands of years.

Eelis walked forward in the path of Arioch and the carnage the mikalim had wrought, and he looked about him at the increasing death. The bolstara who had breathed her flame upon him lay dying, long tendrils from her head scattered about and covered in blood, defeated. She glared up at him as he past by her, and she reached up to grab his ankle with one of her four hands. He did not avoid her clawed grip.

“Damn… you…” The ten-foot-tall demon, even with her elongated skull, smooth, noseless face, and horns and claws, was a strangely beautiful creature, alluring in an exotic way. But one of her arms lay beside her, severed, and several gashes cut across the beautiful black and bronze armor of the False Gate forge, exposing burn marks where the mikalim had smote her. She was dying.

He glared down at the creature, and pointed his spear toward her, its mirror blade reflecting fire and blood.

“Tell me how Belor amassed so many demons from so many spires, bolstara, and I will grant you a swift death.”

The deadly creature coughed, red pooling over her lustrous red lips. But she managed to glare at him through the pain, her dark eyes staring with the passion only one of the ancient four could muster.

“High on your perch, you stand and watch. But Heaven does not belong to you.”

“Belong to us? We never said it did, filth. We guard Heaven and the souls within to preserve the balance of the Great Tower. You know this.”

To speak with a demon was a rarity, and if he could gleam some information, all the better. But this bolstara spoke nonsense, and he frowned down at her as frustration boiled in his blood. All this, with angels and greater demons dying in droves, for some foolhardy notion the demons held that wasn’t true?

“Could have fooled me.” She coughed up another splatter of blood, and it fell into the cracks of her broken armor. “Lucifer will take back what is theirs. And your precious tower will crumble, the way it should have.”

“Lucifer…” Eelis cast his gaze to the center of Hell. In the distance all he could see was spiked mountains, lava, enormous statues of demons long dead, and colossal walls of jagged metal that blocked the horizon, but all knew where to look, when someone dared mention that name.

The Forgotten Place.

“Lucifer will rise again, angel. And Heaven will—”

He stabbed the head of his spear down into the huge creature’s large skull. Enough of this. They’d heard this garbage before. Eight thousand years ago, he’d heard this garbage before! Almost thirty thousand years ago, he’d heard this insane, worthless garbage before!

With a heavy growl, he pulled his bloodied spear free of the demon’s skull. Her blood flowed freely over the hard stone of False Gate, wasted blood to join thousands of her kin.

“Damned creatures.” He swiped his spear, cutting through the air hard enough to draw a line along the stone with the bolstara’s blood. Was that truly what this was? Not since the Third Age had he seen such chaos and carnage, and then too it had been a pointless war because another spire ruler thought they could somehow free Lucifer.

Fools. Damned fools.

He marched forward toward the great cathedral, and the sound of battle raged on. A glance left showed several mikalim encircling and rending a gorujin asunder. A glance right showed a dozen lesser demons swarming a fellow rapholem, and dying to her spear as their claws bounced useless against her shield. Slowly but surely, over the corpses of their enemies and friends alike, the angels were gaining ground, but not fast enough. If the battle did not end soon, if reinforcements from the other islands did not arrive soon, demons from the other spires would soon arrive. And Eelis, and everyone too foolish to flee and fly, would die.

What could Belor be thinking? Was he not content to rule his spire? Damned monster.

Eelis marched forward and flared his wings. The melted metal struggled to bend, but with a heavy grunt, he forced his wings to full extension, bending the metal regardless. Rapholem wings could wear armor for a reason. He growled louder as he looked between the two wings and tested them, flexing each massive appendage out to full length, despite how the metal sleeve of each wing’s arm protested. Flying would be difficult. Perhaps it was better to walk.

It was not a walk he looked forward to.

A glance above showed three mikalim circling a korgejin that had the audacity to fly in their presence. No demon could fly for long, tetrad demon or otherwise. Its great horns were soaked in blood, and it roared at the angels, hellfire spewing from its flat snout. One of them attempted to block the thick wave of fire, its density so great it was almost liquid. But the mikalim’s shield was not meant for such an assault, and the angel screamed as she was enveloped.

Eelis forced himself to look away as she fell. Her burning corpse and charred wings landed next to him on the black stone, and he walked past her.

To the left, two shakarin’s circled a rapholem. Large creatures, nine feet tall and thick with muscle, they prowled on two legs but could easily walk on four. Their heads were flat and connected into sharp snouts full of death, and their horns spread sideways before pointing forward. With many spikes on their bodies, along with a long tail, they were well equipped for battle, but they did not have the power of the tetrad. Eelis did not know this rapholem, likely from the island Samael, but she fought off both demons without issue, blocking one of the huge beasts with her great shield, as she stabbed forward with her spear. The sudden thrust caught the shakarin off guard, and he went down in a roaring mess of blood and slashing claws as the great angel spear skewered his guts.

Eelis ignored her as well, and marched forward. There was a path before him now, cleared by Arioch, and he had to follow it while it was still available.

The dark stone ran red with blood, but not only blood. As he grew closer to the grand False Gate Cathedral, the glowing red grew more intense, coloring the stone around it. Lava. Molten meera and other minerals of Hell flowed through tiny streams, deep cracks in the stone. Many of the cracks grew thicker as they winded through the landscape, cutting through the stone hills, and running between the other cathedrals of black metal that lined the horizon of False Gate. But the largest and deepest cracks snaked their way toward the False Gate Grand Cathedral in the center of the land, next to its spire.

The spire. He spit upon the stone the moment he looked its way. As he grew closer, he gazed up at the colossal tower, and grit his teeth. Its shape curved in and out as it went upward, like a tall vase, thicker at the bottom. The base was as wide as the False Gate Grand Cathedral, the structure easily able to house thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of demons with its thickness and height. The black metal of the spire stabbed into the ground with enormous spikes not unlike claws, and more spikes jutted out from its sides in spiraling patterns moving upward. The spire matched its environment. Blood flowed down from the top of the tower where a host of spikes waited, a landing platform of sorts, and the red splashed endlessly against the stones beneath the tower’s base. Thousands of chains dangled, many decorated with the bones of demons and humans. And now, more than a few fresh angel corpses joined the spire, hung up by blasphemous demons seeking to increase their status.

He ignored the spire. It was already under Belor’s control, it had been since the Third Age, and freeing it from Belor would accomplish little when another demon would simply take his place. No, they hadn’t come here for the spire. They’d come for Belor, and the creature would be waiting in the grand cathedral.

The spire had many doorways, hundreds, lining from top to bottom, making it an easily assailed structure by those that could fly, if desired. The center cathedral of False Gate, on the other hand, was thick, tall walls of black metal, also adorned with spikes and chains, but no doors except the front door. A huge building with towers and steeples, though like the base of the cathedral, the towers had no windows. Instead, gigantic statues adorned their faces, statues of enormous skulls of many shapes and sizes, and made of the same black metal that gleamed in the light of the lava rivers.

The heat was intense. His reflection sweated within his armor, fighting off the heat as best it could, but this close to the False Gate Cathedral, it mattered little. In the end, only his grace kept the heat from breaking him as he approached the titanic black doors.

They were open, and battle echoed within.

He chanced a glance up to Hell’s sky, and winced. The vortex continued to spin, the tornado of fire, ice, and lightning. A wound in the Great Tower that would never heal. The bottom of the vortex licked the top of the cathedral, forever marking the center of False Gate, and Belor’s home. It was not a safe area for a building, and lightning struck the stones of Hell from the vortex every so often. Perhaps that was why Belor had taken the cathedral for his home, as a statement of his power? Or he deemed it worth the risk, to harness its forge. He’d certainly put it to use.

Whatever the case, the demon had overstepped himself. The conclusion was inevitable.

With each step up the stairs, the noise grew louder, and the heat grew yet more intense. Within, he knew Belor and his great forge awaited, the source of the heat, where the demon crafted the hellfire-imbued weapons that had killed so many of his brethren today. The creature would pay for this insult.

The doorway of the False Gate Cathedral was not as impressive as the True Gate, but that didn’t mean Eelis didn’t stand in awe of them. Open as they were, he stood before and between them, and risked another moment to stare up at each colossal, black slab of metal. Each was adorned with carvings of demons and humans, twisted and trapped in a permanent maelstrom of sex and violence. Upon the center of the doorway was an enormous statue of a demon skull, where the two doors shared each half in the middle.

Within the structure, Eelis found exactly what he expected: metal, blood, and death. Enormous rooms a hundred feet high, separated by walls and columns covered in the same spikes he found everywhere, with twenty-foot doorways at the walls’ base. Braziers hung from many spikes, illuminating the otherwise dark building with almost blood red flame. Archways decorated the gigantic walls, spikes lining them, decorated with chains and metal skulls. From the ceiling hung cages on chains, each filled with one, two, or sometimes three humans cramped to the point of agony. They cried misery and begged for mercy. Eelis ignored the damned souls, and moved on.

The main room of the cathedral could fit thousands, and nearly that many demons and angels fought within. This close to the throne, fighting was pandemonium. Belor kept many of his most powerful within, more the terrible four, the tetrad. Gorujin and korgejin, and bolstara and fujara, titans all, ten feet in height and adorned in horns, claws and fangs, and all wore armor. Not the typical armor many demons created for themselves, lumps of bent metal strapped to body parts, held together by leather straps from local creatures, and mixed with the thick bones or horns of other demons. No, Belor had recruited many of the tetrad to his cause, and had crafted them armor of sleek, thick metal, not unlike what the angels wore save for the color. Black, and a bronze so stained it almost looked red.

And their weapons burned with veins of hellfire dancing along the shining black of their blades.

“Arioch!” Eelis shouted.

“Eelis! Guard the right wing!”

Eelis was no angel of Ravid, but he was no fool. Arioch led this charge, and he knew what he was doing. The mikalim soared high, and his blade glowed with the power of his grace as he drove it down through the right horn, and into the skull of a korgejin. The flying, hoofed beast came crashing down, knocking aside dangling cages and earning cries of pain and panic from the trapped souls within. The huge creature slammed into a host of lesser demons, and for a single moment, there was a clear line of sight between Eelis, and the throne.

A giant throne of black metal, like the rest of the cathedral, its outside lined with spikes and adorned with metal skulls. Before it stood Belor, and fear crashed through Eelis in a wave of paralyzing coldness.

A demon of the Second Age. An abdarin. A child of Abaddon.

To see the creature now, it was clear how the demon had managed to survive through the Third Age. A mythical beast of violence and power. How many thousands of years had this beast bided his time, building his forces? How many millennia had this colossal creature spent mastering the forge in the shadow of Lucifer’s strike against Heaven?

Belor was at least twelve feet tall, with leathery black and red wings wide enough to bury them all in his shadow. Four great black horns raised high from his face, and two tusks of black jutted forward from the sides of his jaw. Black spikes decorated his elbows, knees, and back, and his claws were thick. A hoofed creature, Belor had two arms and two legs, and looked similar to gorujin, but far more ancient. Demons after the Third Age had faces often a cross of human and their ancient kin, but Belor showed his heritage on his face, its demonic shape a cross between a dragon snout and a skull. And his eyes glowed with the power of hellfire.

The sword in his hands was almost as long as he was tall, a black blade with hellfire glowing along its edges, and wielded by his two colossal hands. A demonic skull decorated the bronze guard, and its eyes glowed with the same hellfire as Belor’s.

As the chaos raged around them all, Belor swung the sword to the side, and cleaved through everyone. Demon, angel, all fell before his sword, metal melting and flesh burning with the fury of hellfire. None of the tetrad let themselves get too close to Belor, they knew what would happen, but dozens of the smaller demons fell before the blade as the ancient creature swung for the angels. And the angels went down just as easily.

“No!” Eelis dashed forward into the fray. Arioch wanted him to guard the right flank where a couple fujara were fighting half a dozen angels, and he would, but only so he could close the distance to Belor. He would not let another angel die to this creature tonight.

With a heavy grunt, Eelis charged down the right flank, and smashed his shield into the surprised face of a treegera. The demon woman, eight feet tall when they bothered to stand on their hind legs, rolled over closer to the center of the huge room, clutching her shattered face. Eelis pushed past. A devorjin rushed him, a nine-foot-tall brute with no tail, spikes, or much in the way of defining features except that their skin was thick, and their faces bore a closer resemblance to a skull than most. Eelis braced himself against the charge, and the room echoed with the sound of impact as the demon forced Eelis to slide back along the black metal floor. Before the momentum could come to a stop, Eelis let the huge creature’s weight push the shield in, and he spun around with spear stretched out, turning his back to the creature long enough to bring the weapon behind it and slam the mirror blade into the devorjin’s back. Its plate-like skin prevented it from being cut in half, but did not stop Eelis from slicing through its spine with the spear’s sharp sides.

Panting until his lungs burned, Eelis pushed forward. He was a First Shield of the Avinoam rapholem. He would not be felled by some lesser demon!

Sure enough, the moment the thought past through his mind, one of the fujara before him broke free of the six angels he’d been rushing toward, and came at him. The titan glared down at him with her four eyes, and swiped at him with one of her swords. She had four of them, one for each hand.

Fujara looked similar to their tetrad sister bolstara, four-armed titans with no wings. Fujara looked closer to demonic dragons than bolstara though, with raptorial feet, three long fingers with claws per hand, a long spiked tail, and a host of spikes on their back. Even with all the spikes on her body, Belor had forged meera metal armor to fit her limbs and torso, with reddened bronze dancing along its edges and seals.

Eelis must have looked like an easy target, bleeding, wings damaged, and almost limping. He was not.

As the fujara bore down on him, Eelis raised his shield, and poured his grace into it. It glowed gold, lighting the death and blood around him, and when the demon’s four hellfire-imbued blades crashed down on the great wall, sparks as hot as lava splattered over the black floor. They sizzled as many fell into pooling streams of blood. And the colossal creature did not stop. Again and again, with each one of her four arms, she slammed one of her four blades into his shield, each impact hard enough to knock him back along the floor an inch. It would not be long before she pushed him far enough he fell over a corpse.

A glance past her revealed his kin were quickly surrounding the other fujara demon, but two broke away to come to his aid. Two mikalim, weapons held high and glowing bright, brought their swords down on the fujara. One sword bounced off the armor, but the other managed to break through the black metal of the forge, and the fujara screamed in fury and pain as she turned to face the two angels once again, gushing blood from a shoulder.

Eelis managed a nod to the two mikalim, and pushed on. To his left where the rest of the colossal room awaited, the battle raged, with far too many of the great four serving Belor’s whim. The council hadn’t expected this. They couldn’t have. The tetrad demons tore through angel after angel, stepping on their corpses as they pushed through the chaos and brought their hellfire weapons upon Eelis’s comrades.

But the angels pushed forward nonetheless. The might of Heaven had come to end Belor’s rise to power, and his army could not stop them, no matter how many tetrad or lesser demons he had. Hundreds of the terrible four, and thousands of lesser demons, devorjins and gorgalas, ragarins and tregeera, all died to angel blades, or errant swings from their greater kin. Hellfire weapons, or hellfire breathed by particularly powerful demons of the four.

Belor stepped into the center of the chaos, pushing aside several of the greater demons, small compared to the child of Abaddon. The titanic abdarin beast opened his enormous mouth, and breathed hellfire over the swaths of lesser demons and angels before him. It burned the air until the room smelled of more than burnt flesh, but burning leather and melting minerals as well.

The screams of Eelis’s comrades cut through the battle like a shrieking violin.

He charged forward through the madness, and brought up his shield against the inevitable flame. Belor looked at him, and the monster’s gaze alone almost struck Eelis still. Those burning eyes, filled with rage, were overwhelming.

“Behind me!” Eelis stabbed his shield into the floor of the cathedral, breaking through the stone. With spear pointed behind him and wings snug to his back, lesson learned, he stayed out of the path of the imminent hellfire as best he could. “Rally! Behind me!”

The titan came closer, eyes burning red as his gaze moved to Eelis. Other angels who’d managed to survive the onslaught of deadly flame threw themselves behind Eelis. Many had lost an arm or leg to the incinerating blast, rapholem like himself who did not have the mobility of mikalim to fly high at a moment’s whim. And as they fell in around him, those that could still summon their greatshields did, and set them by his own. Injured mikalim dove behind the growing wall of shields, and prepared themselves.

Belor’s hellfire fell upon them, and crashed against a wall of greatshields glowing bright with the power of their grace. Gold, against the searing red. A tornado of heat and wind crashed against them and sent many greatshields sliding back, but none toppled, none fell, as Belor unleashed the deadly flame of Hell over them. A dozen rapholem stood against the heat, and every one of them struggled. But by the will of God, none fell.

It was the moment the mikalim needed, to gain footing in the chaos. It was what Arioch had hoped for, for Eelis to get close and create the opening, but the abdarin had fended off Arioch’s spearhead attack, and now the mikalim were in disarray.

Not anymore.

“To the wall, brothers and sisters!” Eelis poured every drop of power, every scrap of grace he had left into his shield, until its light filled the whole of the False Gate Cathedral. “To me!”

And they came. Mikalim broke away from their battles with distant lesser demons, and flew overhead, dodging claw and blade and spear from greater and lesser demons alike, including the smaller creatures that hung from chains above. They soared over the great tide of flame that crashed against Eelis’s phalanx, even as Belor stepped closer and closer, until Eelis could hear its roar over the carrying thunder of the flame.

Eelis looked up long enough to see a dozen mikalim, blades glowing bright, come down upon Belor. But Belor would not be distracted so easily. As their blades crashed against the colossal demon’s armor and horns, Belor lifted his blade, and swung the weapon into the phalanx.

Eelis’s greatshield broke, his grace depleted, and he flew back as the impact of the titan sent him back into the melted remains of the battle behind him, while the corpses of his friends rained down around him.

Darkness took him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Three years before the Arrival~~

“Eelis, please, speak to me.”

Eelis shook his head. High in one of the golden towers of the Heavenly Island Avinoam, he stood in one of the many archways of his room, and looked out to the sky to watch the angels come and go. Far below, humans and angels walked the streets. In the distance, the city opened up into its massive fields of green, and colossal white sanctums, gorgeous buildings that stood tall and wide, decorating rolling hills. The sky was glimmering obsidian and twinkled with the infinite stars of the universe, and Heaven was quiet.

“There is peace,” Seonaid said.

“There is.”

“Then why do you let the memories torture you so?”

“A stupid question.” He glanced back at the gabriem stood in the center of his room. “Because I failed to save my comrades.” How many times did they have to have this conversation? At her insistence, no less.

Sighing, she walked up to join him, and leaned against the other side of the archway as she pushed the see-through white silk aside.

“It was two millennia ago. You have changed your reflection four times since then.”

“The memories remain.” He looked at his hands and touched one to his chest, before slowly turning to look at the grand mirror in his room. The mirror, circled in silver and gold, and tall enough for any angel, showed his reflection’s beige skin and eyes of lapis blue. Light blond hair flowed down to his shoulders in loose waves, and his beard was considerably long. His expression was serious and heavy despite his soft features, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not wipe the obvious moroseness from his gaze.

He was built as most rapholem, seven feet tall and thick with muscle, size needed to wield the great shields and towering spears of the guardians one-handed. And now, with only his potram rune held in his mind, he wore nothing more than a white silk robe, and sandals. This reflection wasn’t much for jewelry, save for a single, subtle gold necklace, and two thin gold bicep bracelets. A far cry from the jewelery Seonaid’s potram rune gave her.

Beneath his robe, however, he still bore the scars. They’d cut his previous reflection deep enough that they lasted four new reflections, marks that forever proved his failure.

Seonaid reached across the archway with a wing, and nudged the soft feathers of a gabriem against his shoulder and his own wing.

“Belor was killed. The cathedral was destroyed. The mission was a success, Eelis.”

So they were told. Despite how the vortex pierced straight down into the center of False Gate, and stopped above the False Gate Cathedral, using it to approach the ruins was suicide without a grand force. And the council had decreed it best to leave it be, lest more angels died. From a distance, the False Gate Grand Cathedral, what remained of it, was quiet, and the False Gate spire produced only a fraction of the demons it once did.

A victory, so he was told.

“My comrades still died.”

“They returned to the Great Tower, Eelis. Why—”

“Great? No. It is the Forlorn Tower.”

She winced quietly and looked away. “You believe as the others do?”

“I am beginning to.”

Sighing again, she stepped closer, and rubbed his shoulder with a hand. Seonaid, like all gabriem, was absurdly beautiful in a way rapholem and mikalim could never be. Six and a half feet tall, average for an angel of female tilt, she was quite thin, with sharp facial features and opal eyes. She would normally be platinum blond, similar to him, but she had… ‘dyed’ her hair sky blue, closely matching her eyes. Her eyebrows as well.

Of course Heaven could not create real dye, but the sanctums were more than capable of providing the means to create the effect. And it looked delightful on her. Many of the angels had taken to dying their hair, the women in particular, in the past sixty years. Would their reflections come with such wondrous colors naturally, some day?

“Eelis, you—”

“Yes, I know. I need to let the past go.”

“I was going to say, you need to learn to enjoy yourself, you damn fool.”

He managed a smile at that. A weak one, but one nonetheless. A powerful curse, for a gabriem to use, especially within the walls of Heaven.

“You’ve said that before as well.”

“It still applies. These dreams that haunt you will only fade if you can find joy in the present. You are hereby banned from your post—”

“I—”

“I am your supporting angel, Eelis. You must answer to me, and I am giving you an order.”

He frowned at that. It was only technically true. The Avinoam council had decreed that he was no longer fit to make his own decisions; the aftermath of two thousand years of his silent watch. Now, he was assigned a gabriem, not unlike the humans below and how many were assigned gabriem to help them overcome the scars on their souls. Though the humans and their new prime bodies rarely carried visible scars, Eelis’s body was covered in them.

But was that not how it should be? No matter how many reflections Eelis went through, the memories would never truly fade. Why should the scars?

“Very well.”

“Good. Now, your isolation has left you… hard. You need interaction. I suggest you spend time in the sanctums.”

“With the human souls? Why?”

“Because you need contact with something other than angels.”

“I don’t think—”

“You will find their shortsighted views on life to be a pleasant change, Eelis. You think gabriem loathe our time with the humans? We adore them.” She said it the same way he’d heard humans swoon over puppies. As much as Eelis had spent the past two thousand years avoiding humans and angels alike, they were everywhere, and he did occasionally overhear a conversation.

“I know, but—”

“There are two humans I think it would do you well to speak to. Two women.”

He eyed Seonaid, and she smiled, a hint of mischievousness in her opal eyes.

“… very well. Do not blame me if it goes badly, Seonaid.”

Her grin only grew. “It won’t.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Creatures of the afterlife, demons and human souls, did not need to bathe. That included angels. Sweat and the like evaporated into the aether, no longer needed by their reflections. But their reflections were not immune to the lure of warm water and its therapeutic effects. Skin, muscle, flesh, pores and hair follicles, all rejoiced in the sensation of warm water soothing the body. The water sent pleasure through his muscles, and he released a pleased sigh as he sat back upon the bench in the pool. Dressed in only a loincloth, he stretched one wing out to its full length, and then the other, covering the large pool in his wingspan, before he let them relax, half curled to his back, half drifting out against the wall of the pool and the water.

It had been ages since he’d last visited the adult sanctums for a bath. Literal ages, according to the scrying pools. The humans on the surface talked in such strange words now that the Estian language struggled to convey it, and even his latest reflection had needed time to learn the insane lingo. Why did the humans evolve their ways of speech so quickly? Eelis had avoided others for so long, talking was difficult enough without the extreme changes.

What, in the name of all that was holy, did low-key mean?

Sighing, he reached down to the scar at his side where Seonaid had long healed him. No pain, but the scar tissue, forever carrying over to his next reflection, tugged at him with each motion. They all did. Reminders that would never fade.

“I know I am not to blame, not truly,” he whispered as he looked down through the water. “I know that I am indulging in pride by indulging in such guilt, as if these circumstances could have been fixed by me and me alone. But…” Pride tormented all the awakened. Demon, angel, human. But why did it insist on tormenting him to the brink of insanity?

An intellectual and emotional disconnect, according to Seonaid, and he knew better than to ignore her wisdom. Utterly frustrating. Why couldn’t he be left to his own at his post? If it took him another two thousand years to bridge the gap in his mind, then so be it. This utter insistence that he—

“Geronimo!”

Eelis snapped his gaze up in time to see two figures jump into the water. Two humans with knees pulled up to their chests fell into the center of the pool, and their combined weight and timing sent enough waves to splash up against Eelis’s chest high enough to wet his face and hair. He groaned at the two newcomers, and pulled his hand down his face, pushing aside wet strands of his blond hair and water from his beard.

“I assume you’re here at Seonaid’s request,” he said, eying the two humans.

“Yeap!” the first one said, a big smile on her face. A woman, average height for a human; tiny compared to him. She wore, what the humans of the modern era called, a bikini, a skimpy thing of blue that defied purpose, since it left utterly nothing to the imagination. She was also quite lean, with a touch of muscle to her frame. Beige skin and short brown hair, and mischievous green eyes.

“Sorry,” the other said. A taller woman, perhaps five eight, but still a tiny thing compared to Eelis’s seven foot height. She had tan skin, with black hair in a pony tail. Like her friend, she was also quite lean, with a touch of muscle, but a touch curvier. And like her miscreant friend, she also wore a bikini, white, that left, again, nothing to the imagination.

Clothing picked at Seonaid’s request, no doubt.

“I’m Debbie,” the shorter one said, and she waved — with far too much enthusiasm — as she swam closer to him. The warm water was shallow, and she stood up once she was only a few feet from him. “You’re Eelis?”

“He has to be,” the other said. “Seonaid said—oh, I’m Sofia.” Sofia came closer, not bothering to swim, and came to a stop beside Debbie.

Eelis may have spent two thousand years avoiding contact with the souls of Heaven, but any fool could recognize the body language of two people attracted to each other. The two women stood hip to hip, and the shorter one with the playful grin glanced down at her partner’s rather large bust several times. Of course, when she also hooked a hand behind her partner’s back and held her further hip, the language of lovers was blatant.

“Let’s get this over with then. What did Seonaid tell you must be told to me?”

The two women blinked at each other. Confused, or feigning.

“Your face doesn’t match your attitude,” Debbie said, grinning. “You look like a sad puppy, you know? Like a… golden retriever!”

“More like a grumpy old golden retriever,” Sofia said, shaking her head, and her ponytail bounced lightly behind her. “Which is pretty weird, cause golden retrievers don’t have a grumpy bone in their body.”

“You’re right. That’s why it’s so strange! He doesn’t look like he should be so grumpy, but he is.”

God, if you’re listening, give me the strength to deal with fools.

“If you’re not here on Seonaid’s request, then leave me be. This sanctum is reserved.” And Heaven could produce infinite to satisfy the ever increasing divisions of souls. God forgive him, sometimes he thought of the humans as the humans thought of locusts.

“Don’t worry, ya big grump,” the littler one said. “Seonaid sent us, yeah, like Sofia said. She thought we might have some input that could help.”

“Mhmm,” the slightly less little one said. “She didn’t go into any details, but she said we have insight into something you should hear.”

Debbie nodded. “Heavy stuff.”

“Heavy stuff, and things we might be able to shed some light on.”

“Seonaid also said you were gorgeous.” Debbie, with a massive chipmunk grin, waded closer, and stopped in front of his legs. “Damn you’re huge.”

“I am average height for an angel.”

“And angels are huge!” The tiny woman leaned closer still, gawking as she looked between his wings, before her eyes settled on his torso. She bit her bottom lip.

And her partner promptly slapped her on the thigh.

“Debbie you’re drooling.”

“Shit, sorry.” The chipmunk stood up straight again and half turned toward her partner, but she continued to sneak glances at him. His body, specifically.

It wasn’t unusual. Angel reflections were all the epitome of human beauty, grand and majestic. And while rapholem and mikalim did not have that absurd allure of gabriem, their reflections were gorgeous nonetheless. Angels accepted that, and had no reason to mind that their reflections drew the eyes of enthralled souls. Such was the will of Heaven.

At the moment, however, Eelis very much wanted these two humans to simply be gone.

“I’ve only been in Heaven a year, you know?” the chipmunk continued. “Angels are so… wow.”

“We died on the same day, dumbass. I’ve been here as long as you.” Sofia rolled her eyes, but despite her obvious annoyance with Debbie, she pulled her dark ponytail over her shoulder, and gently combed her fingers over it as she also sneaked a few glances at Eelis’s body.

“Visit one of the other adult sanctums for sex,” he said, “if that is what interests you.”

“We have!” Debbie said, grinning brighter. “Several times.”

“Several dozen, dozen times. Slut.”

“You were with me every time, bitch.”

Sofia rolled her eyes again, but leaned in and set a kiss on Debbie’s cheek. “Sorry Eelis, but Seonaid sent a couple of very forward women to talk to you. And looking at you now, I can see why. You are totally a closed book.”

Eelis frowned, but said nothing. Which sent Debbie into a fit of giggles.

“Ask us how we died,” the littler one said.

He was tempted to say no. But, if he did not play along with this silliness, Seonaid would not give him back his freedom. She’d given him a trial he had to suffer through, and he’d suffer through it, if only so he could have his peace and quiet on the wall once again.

“How did you die?” he said, voice a grumble, eyes on Debbie .

She stood up straight, and saluted. “Line of duty.”

He raised a brow, and looked to her friend.

Sofia stood up straight, and saluted. “Line of duty.”

“You two were soldiers?”

Debbie nodded, and swam to his left. Once there, she stared at his left wing, which was much larger than her, and her gaze slid along it with awed eyes.

“I was a medic. Sofia was a private. We both died in a gunfight. Same city.”

Sofia sat on Eelis’s right, nodding as she looked up at him. With him sitting on the pool’s bench, the water barely reached his sternum, but it splashed up against her collar bone and shoulders. She leaned forward as well, enough to avoid touching his right wing with her body. She had more respect than her chaotic lover.

“I… did not expect you two to be soldiers.” It did explain their fit prime bodies, though.

“Cause we all gotta be grumps, right? Like you? Covered in scars and smoking cigars, wearing wife beaters?” Debbie giggled and shook her head. The crass word choice made Sofia roll her eyes, however.

“Seonaid says you have survivor’s guilt.”

Eelis gave Sofia a single glare, and she froze, gulping and staring up at him. But she did not retreat from him either. Brave, for a human.

“And you two do as well?” As if humans could understand, with their short lives, and an afterlife that cared about them. As if—

“Hell no,” Debbie said, sitting down on his left, mirroring Sofia. “We died, duh.”

“What my dumbass girlfriend means, is we were some of the first to die. When shit got bad, we went down.”

“We did our best.”

“People died with us.”

“And if our comrades had done better, we could have survived.”

Eelis snapped his gaze toward Debbie. How dare she say such a thing? But, despite how she flinched, she kept her smile, and met his gaze.

“What Debbie means, is shit went bad, because people fucked up. People failed to do their job, and people like Debbie and me died because of it. Caught up in a meat grinder.”

“It was bad. We didn’t go down in a blaze of glory.”

“I didn’t get to fire a shot,” Sofia said.

“I didn’t get to save a soul,” Debbie said. “And we didn’t die quick. We bled out, torn up.”

“Same where I was. Caught out on two sides, got shredded, and it was hours before anyone could secure the position. Bled out before helped arrived. Last thing I heard was the screams of my friends. At least one of them was crying and begging before they died. Nightmare stuff.”

“Same here. It was… it was bad, Eelis. Sofia and I, are textbook examples of the shit other soldiers feel bad about. We checked the scrying pools. The people who lived through that day are fucking wrecked, drinking themselves to death.”

“A lot of them are in therapy. Every one of them feels guilty.” Sofia tugged on her ponytail over her chest a few times, soft tugs, a nervous tick. “It fucking sucks, seeing them tear themselves up, especially cause every one of them is convinced they don’t deserve to live after what happened.”

“And the worst part is,” Debbie said, “that yeah, sure, some of them made mistakes that got people killed. But not one, not fucking one of us blame them, you know? And I’ve talked to the others who died, found them up here, and they agree with us. I mean sure, the dude’s down there on the surface, still alive? They messed up and gut us killed, but none of us actually blame them. None of us want them to feel guilty. Not a fucking one of us is angry or bitter toward them.”

“We died. It was part of the job. We knew damn well going in that mistakes could happen. I look in that scrying pool and see my mom and dad, and they’re wrecked too. And sure they blamed our commanders at first, but that past. Now everyone is recovering, except for the people that blame themselves. They’re all spiraling down into this pit of guilt none of us want them to.”

“Christ — sorry — if we could help them, we would. But… but we’re up here, and they’re down there, dying on in the inside.”

Sofia reached across Eelis’s lap, and took Debbie’s hand long enough to give it a squeeze. “Some day they’ll be up here. We can wait, long as we want.”

Eelis looked between Sofia and Debbie , mind reeling as their words cut him down, and down, and down.

“You don’t hold the ones who failed you accountable?”

“Nope!” Debbie said.

“Nah,” Sofia said. “I mean I did when I realized I died. But that anger lasted maybe a day? One look in a scrying pool to see what was happening, and any hate or anger I had just went poof, you know? Jesus — sorry — how could we be angry with them? They tried, they really did. And that’s all anyone can ask for.”

It hurt to hear these words. And that was why Seonaid picked these two humans to speak with him. Not because of any similarities; they had none, in personality or circumstance. Seonaid sent them, because they could say the words Eelis knew his dead comrades couldn’t. It was silly. Eelis knew his comrades would have said these words, he knew that before ever meeting these two humans.

But there was a difference in knowing something, and experiencing it.

He sighed, nodding, and let the tension in his body go. Instantly, both women did the same, and they leaned back against the pool wall, and his wings. Normally that would be beyond annoying, but Seonaid’s little gamble had paid off, and he could no longer summon the anger that normally boiled under the surface of his skin. It was still there, and it would take time to cool, but he could not bring himself to unleash it upon these two women. If anything, they were cooling him as well. Perhaps Seonaid had been correct in more ways than one, and humans were worth speaking with, to—

“Seonaid also said we should see if you’d be willing to fuck,” the littler one said, chipmunk smile in full force. “I think the gabriem really have a thing for sexual healing. Some of these sanctums are nuts! Like, I’ve seen some crazy stuff when I was alive, but I ain’t ever seen six dudes literally fucking one girl — angel — at the same time. Or six girls fucking one dude — angel — at the same time.”

Good Lord, please, give him patience.

Sofia nodded. “I think most of us were thinking, if there’s a Heaven, and if we get to go to it, it’s probably not going to be filled with fucking all the time.”

“Sexuality is one of the deepest aspects of being alive, one of its greatest pleasures. It is not inherently evil.”

“Fucking right!” Giggling, Debbie pushed off from the pool wall, and stood in front of him. Sex wasn’t evil, but her grin was. “So, you wanna?”

“Slut,” Sofia said, but she laughed as well, and swam up to her lover to embrace her from behind.

Eelis had to admit, the swimsuit invention ‘bikinis’ were alluring to watch, playful evolutions of wear he’d seen from Greek souls, thousands of years ago. Not unlike the potram clothing of many angels, as well. And while humans would never carry the perfect beauty and grace of an angel, they were gorgeous little creatures nonetheless.

He was no gabriem. It was not existential to his being to want to help the human souls of Heaven, to soothe their wounded souls until they were ready to move on. But, he was still an angel, and no angel could ignore the desire to care for them at least a little.

After several minutes of watching the two women, and how Sofia hugged Debbie from behind while teasing her body with wandering fingers, Eelis sighed. How long had he avoided the approach of others? Human and angel alike, neither had touched him in so long. An angel could contain their mind, their desires, their thoughts, for thousands of years, but now that he sat here, talking with two women, warm water gently lapping against his body, he could no longer suppress his inner thoughts.

“Alright,” he said, a small smile sneaking onto his face he could not suppress. “I submit.” He was tired. Tired of Seonaid’s pestering him, but also, tired of being alone.

~~♥♥♥~~

“Yay!” Debbie wasted no time, stripping out of her bikini with all the grace of a two-legged dog. If not for Sofia helping, Debbie would have fallen; her clothes did not have string knots, unlike Sofia’s. Naked, the thin woman’s small breasts pointed at him with hard, pink nipples, and like most angel reflections this century, she didn’t have a single hair on her body below the neck.

Without bothering to ask for permission, Debbie swam up between his legs, and reached down through the water to begin undoing his loincloth.

“Seonaid says you should just sit back,” Sofia said over Debbie’s shoulder. She too had come closer, and licked her lips as she looked him up and down. “Just relax and let us take care of you.”

“Not terribly angel of me,” he said. “Angels take care of humans, not the other way around.”

The littler human took a moment to adjust her short brown hair, before she finished unwrapping the one piece of clothes he had. The hunger in her eyes was positively animal.

“Well, Sofia and me are awesome, and Seonaid says we’re cool to help others. You’re not the first person we’ve helped out. First angel though.” The littler human purred as she ran her hands down his shoulders, his chest, his abs, and down his smooth pelvis to slowly wrap her hands around his girth.

He was an angel. All angels were not only taller than humans, but proportionally larger, wider and thicker, with the frames to support it. They looked like large humans, with white wings earning most angels enormous wing spans. For an average height, thin human like Debbie, he was much, much larger than her.

The differences didn’t stop there. Angels were well endowed. Extremely.

Debbie giggled openly as she tried to touch finger and thumb around his girth, and couldn’t. Slowly, she stroked his length, and squirmed between his knees as she experimented with different grips. With each moment, her breathing grew faster, and her eyes drifted from his face, his chest, his abs, and down through the water to watch her own hands work on his shaft.

“You ok?” Sofia said. It took Eelis a moment to realize she was asking him.

“I am an old creature, Sofia. I have had sex with many humans and angels in my life.”

“Yeah, but that was a long time ago. If you want Debbie to slow her slutty ass down, just say something.”

He smiled lightly to the tan-skinned woman, nodding. She returned it, blushing as she combed her ponytail once more, before she undid the knots of her bikini, exposing her own naked body. Like Debbie, her past as a warrior meant she was both lean, and carried some muscle, but not enough to hide feminine curves. Her breasts were quite larger than Debbie’s, and she pressed them into her friend’s back after swimming closer, and hugging her lover from behind.

“Sex in water really sucks, on Earth,” Sofia continued. “Had a dude once tell me it was like fucking a wet rubber balloon.”

“But not up here!” Giggling again, Debbie turned her back to him, set her hands on Eelis’s knees, and hopped up. She came back down still between his legs, her own feet touching the pool floor, but now her butt pressed to his abs, and his hard shaft stuck up from between her thighs. With a shivering groan, she slid her ass down his abs until her tiny sex pressed against his girth.

“The sanctums were created to—”

Debbie gave his side a gentle slap, before she ground her hips up and down against his length, rubbing her hot, soft flesh against him. “We know we know. To please horndogs like me.”

He wanted to correct her, but it was easy to see with a rambunctious creature like Debbie, he’d be better off letting her think what she wished. Sanctums had many purposes, but cleaning the body was not one of them. No angel or soul created body residue that lasted beyond the moment. Sanctums with hot pools such as this one were meant to relax in, and if desired, to have sex in.

Sofia took Debbie’s hips, and Debbie reached down to grab his girth once again as she stood up. Slowly, she placed the head of his cock against her slit, and once his glans began to spread the tight hole of her entrance, she grabbed Sofia’s shoulders.

Sofia smiled, her expression slowly turning sinister, as she pushed down on Debbie’s hips.

Eelis groaned, a soft, quiet sound, but enough to have both girls echoing with their own moans, as they worked together to sink the small woman’s body onto his cock. They wanted him to not do anything, to just sit and watch, and he could do that. Debbie’s ass, the ass of a warrior, slowly lowered closer and closer to his pelvis as her lover pushed her further and further down. The littler woman’s slit clenched hard on his girth, her insides spread wide and taut by his thickness. With each inch Sofia managed to force into her lover’s body, Debbie trembled, and her grip on her lover’s shoulders grew visibly tighter.

Half way down his length, with her tiny entrance clenching hard enough to compress his cock ever so slightly, he reached the deepest part of her insides. Debbie’s groan increased in pitch, and she whimpered openly as she pressed her face into Sofia’s chest under her chin. While it had been millennia since Eelis had had sex with a human soul, he knew very well to go so deep was quite difficult on their small bodies. Even a human soul’s prime body, resilient as they were, could struggle to bed an angel.

But he also knew that, when they were delirious with arousal, to the point their bodies shook and their breath was reduced to nothing more than pants, humans often loved to be stretched deep, and deeper still. And Debbie apparently took little stimulation to get to that point.

Sofia grinned over her lover’s head to Eelis, and continued to push down on Debbie’s hips, forcing her lover further down onto his cock until his glans filled the crevice of her deepspot, and stretched her inward. Deeper, and deeper, and deeper, inch after inch earned as Sofia ground her absurdly aroused friend’s hips harder, earning more whimpers, and eventually outright squeaks from her tiny lover.

Finally, the woman’s large, round ass pressed to his pelvis, and Debbie’s hands lowered so she could hug her friend around the waist.

“Oh fucking god! …. Sorry.” Debbie, a trembling mess now, managed to peek over her shoulder at Eelis, blushing horribly. “Can’t help cursing.”

Eelis couldn’t help but smile at the silly girl. As if God would have cared about human souls using their name in such a way.

“Feel good?” Sofia said.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Yes? Just yes!?” Growling, Debbie turned herself around. A difficult feat for her, considering she did not remove his length from her. But with Sofia’s help, she managed to straddle him, legs spread and knees on the pool bench. A quick glance down showed her flat stomach distended with the thickness of his girth, its length enough to reach her navel, and perhaps a touch past it. “I am… prime grade A pussy.”

“I—”

“Debbie, don’t be an asshole. He likes it.”

“I am a lady, and expect better compliments.”

Rolling her eyes, Sofia pressed her breasts to her lover’s back, slid one hand down over the bulge along her stomach to Debbie’s clitoris, and the other up her friend’s naked breasts to her neck. Her left hand squeezed, encircling much of Debbie’s throat, while her right began to caress the tiny woman’s swollen clitoris, earning a pleasing whimper from her.

The strangest thing happened, and Eelis found himself unable to do anything but watch. The two women began to wrestle. Debbie fought to escape Sofia’s grip, but Sofia was larger, stronger, and it didn’t take long for her to get a solid grip on both of Debbie’s wrists. That didn’t stop Debbie from squirming and wriggling to try and free herself, and a rambunctious, energetic girl like this one wasn’t gentle or subtle.

The squeezing friction of her insides was relentless, and Eelis found himself releasing a slow, steady sigh of pleasure as her boiling, clenching insides sparked bliss down his length. Rolling tingles flowed down from his swollen glans, underneath his length, down to his testicles in the hot water, and underneath them. Heat began to build as the two women continued to wrestle with each other, and he smiled as he watched.

For all Eelis’s complaints with Heaven, Hell, and the Great Tower itself, he could not deny that it did as God wished for the human souls within. They were happy. And no angel, not even a bitter rapholem like stupid Eelis, could deny that seeing the humans happy, made the angel happy.

“Eelis! Help me out!” Sofia said. “Grab her hands!”

“No fair! Interference!” The littler one squirmed harder, actively trying to escape, but also blatantly enjoying herself, unable to stop smiling. And unable to stop moaning as well.

Eelis did as ordered, and took the wriggling woman’s hands into his. He couldn’t help but smile warmly down at her as he pinned them to her own thighs near his hips, rendering her defenseless to her lover’s touch.

Taking her hands earned both a surprised squeak from Debbie, and a heavy blush, her playful smile slowly fading as a more earnest, aroused expression took its place. Her moans turned into quiet whimpers and mewls, and her body shivered with obvious pleasure as Sofia pressed her large breasts into her friend’s back once again, hugged her, and forced her to move. With a mischievous grin to rival Debbie’s earlier one, Sofia pushed her back into Debbie’s in a sexual rhythm, forcing her to move back and forth a couple inches along Eelis’s pelvis, all while her fingers played with the tiny bud of Debbie’s clitoris.

The littler one came, and she leaned back into her lover’s body as she did, panting loudly. A noisy one, this Debbie warrior, and she closed her eyes as she trembled on his cock. Muscle spasms within milked at his length, and brought him close to the edge as her squeezing depths massaged every inch of him.

Chuckling with the dark tone of a demon, Sofia grabbed her lover’s hips, and forced her to move faster, and harder. Half bouncing her, half pushing her back and forth, Sofia looked up from Debbie to Eelis, and she returned his smile with approval as his eyes half closed.

“You two are adventurous lovers,” he said, voice a gentle sigh as the first gush of his cum flowed into the wriggling Debbie. The sparks of pleasure filled his length, and spread out into his core, milked by the small creature riding him.

“Definitely,” Sofia said, nodding. “Hornballs through and through. And in Heaven, we can just… go crazy? No diseases, no pregnancy risks, no—”

“No judgment,” Debbie said, and she forced her eyes half open so she could look Eelis up and down, several times, body blushing all the more as she realized he was filling her with his cum.

“No judgment. Heaven is a horny person’s paradise.” As if Sofia had succeeded in explaining the purpose of life itself, she tightened her grip on her lover’s hips, and worked her friend harder. She peeked over Debbie’s shoulders, and stared through the water where her lover’s tiny slit was spread taut by his girth, and how each time Debbie was forced to bounce on it, a tiny sliver of her pink insides came out with her. And seconds later, his white cum flowed out of their connection as well, earning a heavy groan from the taller woman.

He almost said something. Perhaps he wanted to describe all the non sexual things they could do in Heaven; artists were practically idolized by the angels, after all. But he said nothing. This made them happy, and he could see why. He let out a quiet, deep groan as Debbie’s bouncing body earned another gush of his cum, pleasure growing almost painful as her insides clamped down desperately. Soon, the littler one was trembling again, brought to climax in no time at all, body forced to squeeze his length and draw every last drop of him as Sofia bounced and ground her on his body.

Sofia slowed down, letting her friend rest, but her eyes had stopped staring at Debbie, and now stared at Eelis. Hunger, deep hunger flowed through her, earning a blush through her tan skin. She stared down at the base of his cock, now coated in juices the water would not wash away. She stared at his abs, and how large they were compared to the tiny creature riding him. She stared at his huge hands and how they buried her friend’s. She stared at his massive wings, wide shoulders, and enormous chest. And finally she met his lapis eyes again, and she shivered as they watched each other.

He expected her to ask for her turn, or perhaps simply remove her friend from his length and replace her. But instead, Sofia watched him, eyes ravenous, as she resumed bouncing her friend on his cock. She went slower, but with the water lowering the weight of her friend’s body, she had no trouble lifting Debbie up half his length, before pushing her down again.

Eelis let go of the littler one’s hands, knowing full well Debbie would simply collapse back. She did, eyes barely open, watching him, arms dangling at her sides and making no effort to stop Sofia. Both women watched him as Sofia grunted with effort, making an obvious attempt now not to help her lover cum again, but to help him cum again.

The littler warrior’s sexual appetite matched her attitude, full of energy and desire, and where many women would grow tired or satisfied, the tiny creature continued to moan.

“She’s insatiable,” Sofia said, catching the meaning in his gaze. “You have no idea.”

“Evidently.”

“Assholes.” Without a pause in Debbie’s joyful whimpers, she came yet again, but even as her legs quivered around him, and her limp hands suddenly clutched Sofia’s guiding wrists with desperate pleasure, she kept her eyes open. Both women wanted to watch him cum.

Well, he’d just had an orgasm, and unlike the fiery creature riding him, it took longer than two minutes to earn a second. Ten minutes later, with poor Debbie reduced to nothing but tiny squeaks, Sofia groaned with frustration, and worked her little friend harder. Debbie erupted into weeping mewls as she collapsed backward again, and her insides clamped all the tighter as Sofia grew rough with her, forcing her up and down on half his length, each stroke stretching the warrior deep enough the distension on her abs reached high. Sofia was determined.

But at last Sofia earned her prize, and Eelis relaxed back against the wall of the pool as his muscles announced their pleasure. Debbie forced her eyes open, and despite her exhaustion, managed to lean forward. She pressed her hands against his body, and smiled up at him, mouth parted and filled with pants.

“You angels… are so damn… sexy… it hurts.”

He smiled at her, and how her hands squeezed against his abs as they flexed with each spurt of his cum. Through the pleasure, Sofia continued to grind her friend’s body back and forth on him, a slow pace now, her eyes locked on Eelis, wide with hunger and wonder. They liked watching him climax.

“You two are… a pleasant surprise,” he said, though he could not keep hints of pleasure, small moans, out of his voice. “I have enjoyed this day more than I thought possible.” He did not know what dreams would come later, but perhaps they would not be so bad this time.

Sofia grinned at him, and kissed Debbie’s neck and ear, several times, eyes never leaving Eelis.

“Good. Because we’re awesome.” Nodding, she lifted her exhausted friend off him, and climbed onto his lap, replacing her. “My turn.”

~~/♥♥♥~~