To Hell And Back
Authored by \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Commissioned by \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Authored by \r\n\t\t\t\t\t
| \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMilkie\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Commissioned by \r\n\t\t\t\t\t
| \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGunslingerDragon\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\tIt was almost impossible to see the place as a castle, even though that’s exactly what it was.
\tIt barely had the architecture of a castle, and as far as legitimate castles went, this one didn’t have a deed tied to noble lineage... not unless one’s definition of “noble” stopped at simply “one who is rich.” It was the kind of castle a kid might have come up with, highly idealized with a loose grip on structural standard. It was perfect for those who called it home.
\tLike Carmine. Carmine was one of several underlings that lazed the days away between fulfilling his boss’s villainous schemes. He’d not been there the longest, still only somewhere in the middle of the seniority ladder, but he’d made himself quite at home. It wasn’t hard to cut out a place for yourself when nobody cared enough to stop you. Normally he would have been content to spend every evening in the minion lounge couch-surfing or playing video games. Normally he wouldn’t go far, even for work, but unfortunately it wasn’t work that got him off the sofa one night.
\tThe bangaa descended into the bowels of the castle, deep under the ground where warmth was absent. The modern styling gave way to more traditional stone walls and floors. Gaps in the walls housed sprung traps that hadn’t been reset - axe blades jutting out into the corridors, the occasional open pitfall, and empty holes containing automated arrow-firing mechanisms that had remained empty. The sconces were lit with ethereal blue fire, bathing the area in pale light that sucked the saturation out and left even Carmine’s green scales looking dull and greyed. The basement was creepy, and the only people who stayed down there were the boss’s... less-savoury minions.
\tIt was an unnerving place, but Carmine didn’t mind it. It suited his pitch-black eyes and their bright blue rings. He walked with purpose toward one of the far ends of the long, dark corridors, where he arrived at a classic wooden door that wasn’t as old as everything around it. The polished wood smooth, rust-free hinges were lit up by a neon sign above the door, its filament tubes spelling “Princess” in pink cursive. A glowing neon yellow crown blinked just above the last S, its light flicking on and off at regular intervals. Strange sounds came from the room behind the door.
\tIt was there that Carmine hesitated for only a moment before reaching out and gripping the door’s handle to push it open.
\tThe inside was an arcade. Not the normal sort of thing you found in what was once an old torture chamber. All the torture devices had been cleared out and replaced with aisles of arcade cabinets. Despite the castle basement’s dank darkness, this chamber was lit with proper electric lighting and warmed by heating vents. Small antechambers that once contained iron maidens, racks, and breaking wheels were instead changed into a modern kitchenette and attached bathroom with a Jacuzzi. A lowered section of the room was converted into a lounge where the edges had been changed into one big, long sofa in a half-circle around an enormous TV and impressive stereo system. Carpet covered the floor and kept one’s feet warm, and the air smelled faintly of cinnamon and cannabis.
\tCarmine glanced around the chamber. With no one there to greet him, he called out, “Milkette? Hey! Milkette! Where you at?”
\tEmerging out from beside one of the many arcade cabinets was not Milkette, but instead a pink dragon with silver hair, dressed in a maid’s outfit complete with feather duster, apron, and headdress. The black and white ensemble was decidedly too short, showing off too much of the dragon’s stocking-clad legs and stuffed panties. They approached Carmine at the door, and Carmine offered him a little wave.
\t“Hey Fagon, where’s Milkette?” Carmine asked.
\tFagon, manservant of the mistress who resided in that chamber, responded with professional indifference that betrayed his words. “Princess Funbags is hiding away in her room,” He said, gesturing over his shoulder with a jut of his thumb. “No doubt she has her nose buried in one of her anime mangos, or whatever she does in there when she’s not trying to send some poor boy through her bed.”
\t“We are talking about Milkette,” Carmine grinned, “Not Milkie?”
\tFagon swooned, gripping his duster in both hands. “Alas, no. Prince Charming hasn’t graced us with his presence for a good, long while.” His expression then soured, “Though that will happen when he can’t get away from his girlfriend.”
\tDeciding not to get into that, Carmine nodded. “Cool, thanks. Oh, by the way, have you seen Siege?”
\t“Not nearly as much as I’d like,” Fagon answered, “Why do you ask?”
\t“Don’t worry about it,” Carmine said, “Milkette will probably know. Just in the back then?”
\tFagon bowed his head in a low nod and made a sweeping gesture to invite the bangaa to venture deeper into the strange arcade. He weaved his way around the air hockey table and past the well-stocked, home made bar to a door at the very back that was plastered in so many video game, movie, and anime posters that the wood beneath was completely covered to the point where some of the posters wrapped around the edges. Glow-in-the-dark spray paint was stencilled over it to read “Princess Jezebel” and “No Entry, Unless Hot.”
\tTo his credit, Carmine did knock. He just didn’t wait to be let in, immediately opening the door, and stepping into Milkette’s bedroom that the boss let her shack up in whenever she felt like it. Her room was “high-end mansion meets gamer goblin pit.” Literally on one side of the room there was where she slept: an utterly massive bed of stone frame and gold trimmings, silk from corner to corner. It was the most comfortable, most expensive-looking thing most people would have ever seen.
\tThen on the other side of the room you had the multi-monitor set-up of an otaku shut in. The expensive-looking decor was boldly disrespected by tacked on posters featuring artwork from Milkette’s favourite video games. A powerful PC with five separate monitors - one large, four small - was supported by a messy, disorganized desk. At the desk in question, in an expensive “gamer chair” was the lady of the abode herself, Milkette Souris; sat cross-legged in a too-big jersey and no pants, smelling of dank smoke.
\tThe boss liked to spoil her, pretty much to a fault. He’d have had Carmine believe that it was because of her good looks, and that wasn’t without a good argument. For being a five-foot-tall mouse girl of brown and biscuit tones and some of the biggest glasses you’d ever see, she was attractive. Of course, that girl-next-door face was helped along by her curve-hitting-curve body. She was a doughy little thing, but you’d hardly be able to tell with how her breasts dominated her little round frame. Then, round hips meet big thighs and a big “badunkadunk” to top it all off. If the boss had to buy those kinds of looks, it wouldn’t come cheap.
\tCarmine knew of course that the truth of the matter was simply that she and the boss were clones, or something like that. It wasn’t as much of a stretch to suggest that the boss just has a soft spot for people like that, being that he is one.
\tIf you think about it, that would make her wanting to be called “Princess” make sense. Only, she was never the coddled or doted-on kind of royalty.
\t“Hey, hey,” The mouse-girl shouted at Carmine as he rudely entered, turning in her chair to face him. “Didn’t you read the signs on my door?”
\tCarmine gave her a smug retort. A single, punctuated, “Ha.”
\tMilkette chuckled. “What do you want?”
\t“Have you seen Siege?” Carmine asked.
\tMilkette looked confused. She quickly looked around while trying to remember. “Uh, no, I haven’t,” She met his eyes again and shrugged, “Should I have? Wait, he didn’t just wander off again, did he?”
\t“Yeah, he did.” Carmine nodded. Milkette nodded as well, then paused for a moment.
\t“I assume you checked around the corner?” Milkette asked, making an ‘around the corner’ gesture.
\t“Uh huh,” Carmine said, “Way before checking with you.”
\t“Ah, so that’s why you’re asking me,” She said, “You think he’s, ah...” She thumbed over to what looked like a big mirror in her room. It was built right into the wall in an obsidian frame and reflected perfectly with a polished shine.
\t“Yeah.” Carmine nodded. They’d had this kind of talk before in the past, enough that they could skip any buttering-up or idle chat.
\t“Right, well,” Milkette said, “I meant it when I said I hadn’t seen him. I can keep an eye out though.” She made the motions to check her watch, though she quickly realized she wasn’t wearing one. She darted back to her computer screen, leaning in over her chair’s arms to check the time in the corner of her main display. This flashed Carmine a cheeky glimpse of her panty-clad ass, so he was fine giving her all the time she wanted.
\t“Actually, shit, I planned on heading down there around now,” Milkette said, quickly then returning to Carmine. “I’ll see if I can’t hunt him down. Someone’ll have seen him if he went down there at all.”
\tCarmine was trying to hide the fact that he was staring at her ass, except not very well. In fact, it was more accurate to say that he was pretending to hide it poorly, hoping she’d catch on to his shenanigans. She seemed neutral though, so if she did notice, she kept a solid poker-face. “Okay,” Carmine said, “I’ll leave that to you then. Seeya when you get back.”
\t“What, that’s it?” Milkette puzzled. Carmine just shrugged.
\t“I’m not worried about him, he’s a big boy,” Carmine said, “It’d just be nice to know where he’s at, since he’s not so great at keeping in touch. Seeya around!”
\tWith that, Carmine turned and left, leaving the mouse to her own devices. Deciding that she didn’t have any time to waste, she dropped whatever YouTube video she was watching and prepared for a trip down into the depths of the underworld. That was the “down there” she had so casually mentioned to the bangaa - actual Hell.
\tThe first thing she did was change. Literally, she changed. It wasn’t just her clothes that she changed, but her body as well, transforming with a flick of her fingers igniting a sudden flash of blue flame. It engulfed her entire body and some change, then dissipated just as quickly. In that flash of time, her little, round body sprung up two feet taller, lost much of its colour, gained deep, black claws on her then-larger hands, and her hair was replaced by a wreath of blue flame flickering from her skull like a candle.
\tHer clothes changed from the casual bum to a spandex dominatrix with rubbery clothing that covered little to nothing at all. A blue strappy top opened almost completely at the front to let her breasts stick out, all but for too-small cups at the front that grabbed and hefted her chest. Then bare but for the scantest of thongs, leading down into long leggings and tall blue boots with a heel made for strutting. Her eyes had turned pitch black with icy blue rings, and a small crown appeared on her head amidst the flames.
\tShe was clearly anything but mortal. At that moment she resembled some sort of undead vampire or something. Whatever it was, it wasn’t alive. She lacked all the vibrancy of the living, turning her browns pale and grey and seemingly only kept living by the unnatural blue glow that visibly coursed through her veins in some places - though not in any way like she had a heartbeat.
\tThis new form exuded a magical aura of oppressive cold that would give most people pause and a growing, inexplicable feeling of dread. Her very presence washed the colour out of her bedroom, from all but the most vibrant areas. This made the mirror and its dark stone frame stand out as if it were a window letting in cool moonlight. Approaching it and waving her hand activated dark runes carved into the individual stones that made up the mirror’s edge. With a few more gestures from her long claws, the runes darkened and lit up in a sequence that seemingly “unlocked” the mirror.
\tWith a flash, its odd glow had turned into a blazing light, and the mirror’s surface swirled, waved, and rippled. Satisfied with these results, the undead mouse lowered her hand and observed the surface of the portal briefly before drawing in a breath - not that she breathed - and passing through.
\tDescending the Nine Circles was something that got more difficult to do the further down you went. Fortunately, Milkette’s portal meant there were multitudes of entry points into the lower circles for anyone who looked hard enough. She’d searched for a good while, rewarding her efforts with a fast-track to her deepest delve: the Fifth Circle, Anger, and the River Styx.
\tPast the misty haze of Limbo, past the chill winds and warm bordellos of Lust, past Gluttony’s snow-smothered trenches, beyond the tightly cramped bureaucracy of Greed, lies the Fifth Circle of Anger. A place often described as the Mouth of Hell where the murky shallows of the soul-sucking swamps of the underworld lead straight into molten and brimstone. On either side, demons driven by rage and fury wage war for souls. Raiding and pillaging were common for those who somehow manage to scrape a tribe together amid the madmen that fill the place. They very much resembled plundering pirates, moving around a massive reserve of souls by stealing it from one another in an unending cycle, while committing violence for violence sake.
\tIn mere moments, Milkette found herself in this unforgiving place. She stepped out of her portal into a vista where the soggy, foggy, dullard sky of the swampy underworld was pierced, shanked, and impaled by jagged obsidian coves that swallowed up the dirty waters on the opposing shore and spit out flames and lava in return. The air around the far banks was wavy with heat as steam rose from the bubbling waters, making the next step down seem impossibly daunting. Milkette had fought her way through the first four circles, and she couldn’t deny that the distant Sixth Circle was a massive step up in terms of the “Doom Factor.”
\tShe could hear the Mick Gordon guitar shredding in her head as she scanned the landscape, which on her side was a murky swamp of deadened, bloodstained reeds, ruined stone walls, destroyed structures, crumbling statues, and corpses. No one has a home in the Fifth Circle for long. No one except the most wicked, anyway.
\tIt didn’t take long for her to find trouble. A few steps down the trodden path she’d flattened out in the muck and she was ambushed by demons - devilish imps, maddened thralls, and hell-dog beasts aplenty. Milkette had become familiar with them after numerous excursions, and how to deal with them. Summoning two swords made of ethereal blue flame, she cut down the monsters that were hiding in the dead grass in a practised struggle. They were strong, but she’d taken her licks before and learned from them. After a short battle, smears of red and black were spattered over her body as her enemies lay lifeless at her feet.
\tEach defeated demon granted her soul power. Demons often reaped mortal souls, which in turn empowered their own. Milkette wasn’t the sort of person, undead or not, to inflict herself on mortals like that. Instead, she would kill and take the power from the denizens of the underworld. After five realms, it was getting difficult for her to travel. Her reputation preceded her. The stronger she became, the more desperate the Underworld was to take her souls.
\tIt was thanks to that strength that she felt ready to travel to the other side of the Styx. To do that, she needed to enlist the aid of Stygian Boatman, Charon.
\tShe fought her way up the coast to where Charon docked at an old, dilapidated river port. The entire thing had been destroyed, with storehouses reduced to rubble all around. Only the dock itself was perfectly intact and well-maintained, all thanks to Charon.
\tTo onlookers, the boatman never did anything to protect the place. He’d never leave his little chair where he sat statue still, a lantern hanging from a pole suspended from on his back, boat oar in his bony hands. He remained mostly hidden beneath a dark cowl and tattered, dirty black robes, looking every bit the pauper; and yet he was given a wide berth. Even when Milkette discovered demons and errant souls locked in a battle among the ruins, none dared disturb Charon. He just sat there next to his little dingy, and he waited while the damned slaughtered one another not ten feet away.
\tWhatever curious strength Charon had was both a mystery, and something known by all, despite no one living long enough to tell it. Rule number one of the Styx: don’t mess with Charon.
\tSummoning an ethereal bow and arrows in the same way she did her blades, the mouse matron whittled down the battling demons from afar before finally getting in close to clear them out. The battle lasted several minutes, with Milkette emerging the bloodstained victor once more. With that cleared, she stepped onto the dock. As soon as one of her high heels clacked onto the wood, Charon stirred. He rasped something incomprehensible, then held out his gnarled hand with an open palm.
\t“Hello, Charon,” Milkette said casually, despite knowing the boatman wouldn’t answer, “Hold your horses, I have your coin right here.”
\tShe had no pockets on her skimpy spandex attire. Rather, with a snap of her claws, she summoned the currency she needed - a soul coin. Made to look like an ancient Greek obol, they weren’t exactly easy to come by outside of the Styx. Worse still, Charon charged per-ride, and only operated one-way. Once someone lands on the other end, there’s no going back - though Milkette herself was capable of simply dying and being resurrected at her phylactery. Even so, Charon expected one coin, even if she’d already paid him once before.
\tCharon’s fingers slowly curled around the coin when it was dropped into his palm, clutching it like a miserly old crone as he drew it back into his robes. He then rose with eerie grace, climbing into his ferry and loosing the rope tying it to the dock. He beckoned her with a rasp but waited patiently for her to climb inside. The rocking and swaying of the boat in the murky waters, and the way their combined weight made the dingy dip rather deep, didn’t seem to bother the boatman, so Milkette tried to pretend it didn’t bother her either.
\tFrom there, the boat ride was silent save for the distant sounds of the never-ending battles being waged on either shore, as well as the gurgled, drowned moaning of the damned souls stuck in the river. Their dead hands would reach and grasp for anything that came near, practically creating a sea of hungry souls all on their own. They even pawed at the dingy now and then, rocking it in an attempt to capsize them. Charon commonly stopped rowing to smack the hands away with his oar, commanding a presence that forced the drowned away and created a gradual, unclear path that only Charon knew of.
\tMilkette knew that the hollowed faces of those plunged in the muck were those who unsuccessfully attempted to cross without Charon’s help. They served as a warning to any others who would try. She spent her time helping bat them away from her end of the boat, since Charon wasn’t known for his hustle and the ride was quiet otherwise.
\tThe silence of the ferry only emphasized the constant battles being wages along the banks. For as far as the eye could see and the ear could hear, skirmishes broke out all up and down either side. On the marsh side, thralls and demons slew one another for their souls. On the fierier side, devils and imps terrorized the poor sods who had managed to make it to that end, sometimes flying them back over and invalidating what progress they made toward further descent. All that, with the constant droning of the drowned in the river, made “silence” a very relative term.
\tThe ride carried on as such until about halfway, when Charon suddenly stopped rowing the ferry and seemed to perk up. The boatman lifted his head and looked out into the distance, fixating on something upstream. Milkette curiously looked but couldn’t see what Charon was suddenly so interested in, and the silent boatman wasn’t about to tell her what was going on. It could have been any number of battles up the riverbank, but she couldn’t be sure.
\tSuddenly, the drowned souls began to part several leagues upstream, noticeably being pushed aside by a risen tide of swampy water that cut through. Milkette sprang to her feet, shakily keeping her balance on the small, rocking dingy as the water became restless. Whatever was beneath the surface continued to rise, making the water bubble upward and causing a shaking rumble that threatened to capsize the small vessel she was on. Charon watched this with silent indifference, even as the emerging being drew closer and closer to the boat.
\tJust before the dingy could be beaten aside and undoubtedly destroyed, Charon suddenly jammed his oar into the waters and shoved the boat away with supernatural strength, causing Milkette to tumble to the floor of it as Charon threw his vessel out of the way. This was done just in time for a second, much larger vessel to cut through the water’s surface and rise into the air, breaking submergence and crashing onto the river, sending high, rolling waves to crash over the banks. It appeared to be a strange ship, looking like it was made of stone, but designed similarly to any common galleon.
\tThe stone ship bore black sails and a black flag, each drawn with a jolly roger. The white skull and crossbones on the black cloth made it clear that the vessel belonged to honest-to-goodness pirates - something few saw along the Styx. It was said that damned pirates from bygone eras waged naval combat on the river, but few had ever seen them with their own eyes and lived to talk about it. The pirate ship sailed on by, rocking Charon’s dingy by cutting through the drowned souls like a knife through butter. Milkette looked on in awe of the spectacle - it wasn’t every day a pirate ship came out of nowhere like it was a natural occurrence.
\t“What the hell,” Milkette said, only to have her attention stolen by a ruckus happening on the ship. However, it was possible, there was a clear battle being waged on the deck of the previously submerged ship. The blood-lust cries of demons and thralls rang out over the stale air, accompanied by the discharge of firearms and the clatter of clashing blades. Milkette watched as pirates were thrown over the side of the ship by an unseen force, sent plunging into the swampy depths and dragged under by the drowned.
\tClearly a battle for souls was underway, and that sounded too good to pass up. Spying that the ship bore a boarding point in the form of rungs up the ship’s port bow, Milkette addressed Charon. “Charon, get me to that ship,” She said, “I have to check this out.”
\tCharon rasped some kind of reply, evidently a positive one, because he did what she asked. Perhaps it was because he knew she would butt into whatever fight was happening on that ship, and Charon was intent to punish the arrogant captain that dared to nearly ram him off the river. Whatever the reason, Charon kept pace with the ship with unbelievable oar speed, approaching and keeping his dingy steady despite the larger ships danger of tossing them aside. The undead mouse didn’t waste any time climbing aboard.
\tShe had to run a demon pirate through first thing when she climbed onto the deck, one having run up to stop her from boarding. She raked them with her claws and threw them overboard, jumping up onto the deck to get a handle on what was going on. She was rushed by two more, who surprised her enough for her to take a slash across her chest, then her back, before she rebound and took them down with a brutal display of bone-snapping might. Her cuts didn’t bleed, as she had no blood, but they seeped with soul energy that fizzled out of her like a burning smoke for a short time before her wounds closed. From there, she took cover behind some munitions boxes that were placed on the ship’s deck.
\tIt didn’t seem as if the pirates were fighting in a boarding like she expected. Rather than seeing two rival factions going at it, it seemed as though all the demons, imps, devil-hounds, and thralls were singularly focused on dispatching one enemy. With cutlasses, fireballs, pistols, and raw demonic ferocity, they dog-piled a lone individual who, somehow, some way, was fighting them off. The longer Milkette watched, the more corpses were added to the growing mound of them on the deck, while some were disposed of overboard and left to drown.
\tMilkette had fought large groups of demons before, but an entire pirate ship’s crew felt like too great a challenge. Even so, one lone stranger was murdering them all with extreme prejudice. She couldn’t help but feel impressed, and intensely curious as to who or what this lone warrior was. Keeping out of sight, she watched, eyes trying to follow the flurry of motion that sent ribbons of streaming blood flying, painting the ship’s deck with crimson streaks and splashes.
\tIt was there amidst the carnage that she saw him: Siege Longshot.
\tWell, speak of the devil, and he will appear.
\tSiege Longshot may have had a ridiculous-sounding name, but it was apt to his purpose. On the surface, he appeared to be a bronze dragon. Scales of brassy yellow made his flesh look like armour over his statuesque physique. Tall, muscular, and imposing, he looked capable of crushing someone’s skull if he had the inclination. All that raw power alone would make the average person shudder in fear, but beneath that he was something much different. Siege, as his name implied, was a weapon.
\tThe crew cut of his blonde fauxhawk made him look like any military man, but his bones and organs... no one really knew how much of him was actual flesh and blood. He didn’t have the yield of a mortal, and he didn’t bleed like one either. He bled more than most, actually, if only to add to the grotesque nature of his battles. Much of the blood gushing into the air was his as blades sliced open his scales, but it didn’t slow him down any. As unarmed as a man with an arm-blade built into his anatomy could be, he tore through each approaching enemy swiftly. He grabbed, ripped, tore, impaled, sliced, and broke each one no matter its relative shape or size to him. That was why Carmine wasn’t particularly worried about his safety earlier.
\tSiege had been putting in so much work, it was difficult to see the colour of his scales beneath the blood spattered over his body from head to toe. Yet his boots didn’t slip in the stuff as he carried on, a crimson cloud following his movements, swirling with dark, soul-infused blood magics that made him next to invincible in battle.
\t“What the hell is he doing here?” Milkette asked herself, “Who pissed him off?”
\tA shot rang off the deck, and the bullet passed expertly through the amassed dog-pile around Siege to connect square between his blood-red eyes. This knocked flat on his back, as getting shot in the head would do to just about anyone. Milkette followed the trajectory of the shot to its source: the ships captain, Edward Teach, otherwise known during piracy’s golden age as the infamous “Blackbeard.”
\tBlackbeard was a particularly powerful soul, legendary for his cruelty in life, and would-be ruler of the Fifth Circle. He was the one pirate who stood above all the others, amassed the most soul power, and caused the most suffering for those unlucky enough to be trapped on the Styx for all eternity. Rape, pillaging, plundering, Blackbeard did it all in its most horrid fashion and inflicted it on those who lived with such anger in their lives that the fates decreed they deserved no less as punishment for their sins. It was difficult to call Blackbeard a force for the Underworld, however. He was far too chaotic to attribute to any singular purpose.
\tThe dread pirate stood on equal footing with Siege in stature. His open naval coat showed the rippling musculature and gross circularity of a monster with deadened, purple skin. His characteristic black beard, braided as told in the legends with lit fuses tied in and fizzling away, wreathed his pure white, sinister eyes and tri-cone cap in black gunpowder smoke. In one hand he held a jewelled sabre, and in his other outstretched hand he aimed a flintlock pistol at where Siege once stood. His yellowed teeth were borne in a snarling grin as his landed head shot created an opening for his crew to descend upon Siege, where they began desperately tearing him apart.
\tOr they tried to tear him apart. Even from flat on his back with a bullet hole in his forehead, Siege fought them back like a cornered animal. Whatever effort they made to rip him to pieces, he returned tenfold. Blackbeard didn’t seem at all concerned by his crew’s failure to subdue the monolithic dragon. If anything, he looked delighted.
\t“Just how much more fight have ye?” Blackbeard’s gruff voice chided, “How deep does ye magic go? Ye must be getting tired, lad!”
\tSiege only responded with a blood-curdling cry of rage. Understandable, Milkette thought. She wouldn’t be one for conversation either in a situation like that. She wasn’t watching the events unfold with much concern either, though. The normal reaction would have been to worry for Siege’s safety, but she knew better than that. In fact, it wasn’t even the first time Siege and Blackbeard had butt heads. It suddenly made sense why Siege had disappeared for as long as he had. If Milkette had to guess, he’d probably been fighting with Blackbeard since the day he left. Without stopping.
\t“Gyahahaha!” Blackbeard bellowed, “Rip ‘em to shreds, men! Let’s see him survive being torn into tiny pieces! Then we’ll tear his pieces into pieces! And then his pieces pieces into pieces!!”
\tMilkette sighed and shook her head. She rose from her hiding place and strode out into the open, catching Blackbeard’s attention. The pirate turned his malicious gaze onto her, and his sneer curled into a snarl. “You!” He shouted, “When did ye board me ship, devil-wench?!”
\t“What are you doing, Ed?” Milkette rebutted. Her words caught the attention of more of the crew, peeling them away from Siege as they stepped up to attack her at their captain’s command. They lined up, teeth gnashing, snarling, hissing at her to threaten her. She didn’t so much as flinch. “Are you trying to kill Siege again? How many times does this make it?”
\tBlackbeard fired his pistol into the air to command the respect Milkette was not giving him. He growled, “Mind ye business, ye cock-monger! Toss yourself overboard and save me the trouble, lest ye face the might of me and me crew!”
\tMilkette glanced over as Siege twist a devil’s neck around like a bottle top. “Yeah,” She said, “They look like they’re doing a great job.”
\tThe pirate captain trained his pistol onto her, pulling back the hammer. “Today’s the day I send the both of ye to the deep!” He roared, “Turn this undead whore into a smear on the poop-deck, boys!! An obol to the one that finishes her off!!”
\tThey rushed her like they’d heard a starter’s pistol, all at once. In a flash, she threw out her hand and shot a magic ray from her fingertip. It connected with one of the demons and struck it cold, freezing it in place. She then summoned her blades alongside an ethereal crescent like a guillotine’s blade affixed to the end of her tail, and when the pirate crew met her, she unleashed a flurry of slashes to all sides to cut them down. Now she was in the thick of it too, with Siege not far away brutalizing demons and thralls without mercy.
\tMore blood, more frost, more blue flames all danced through the air among viscera and corpses as Siege and Milkette cleaved through the opposition, with no real mind to where the other was. Through the natural motions of battle, the pair were pushed closer and closer together, forced into new positions by the seemingly endless crew of demon pirates and their slaves.
\tMilkette took a glancing blow to her shoulder, causing her to step back quickly. It was there that she met Siege, bumping her back into his. They both turned around with a start, Siege’s sentient, serpentine tail taking a swipe at her with a hiss when she turned to face him. She dipped back, forced back into combat with the pirates, cutting them down and nearly getting bit by Siege’s tail again. She stared hatefully at the thing as it waved about in slithering motions, tongue flicking out from the tail’s tip.
\t“Ugh, I hate it when his tail does that, it’s so weird!” Milkette groused, “Hey! Knock it off!”
\tFreshly finished bloodying his knuckles over a demon’s skull, Siege whipped around and shot Milkette a crazed glare, and she realized her mistake in the moment. He was on murder mode, and she looked every bit the monster as everything else did down there. He wasn’t going to be able to tell the difference when he was seeing red, and that was proven when he lunged at her to grab her throat. The blade implanted in his forearm thrust out at once to try and behead her, and she just narrowly avoided the lunge. Throwing her body back at his, she shoved him away from her to get distance. Of course, she couldn’t forget about the pirates...
\tOne of the hell hounds on the ship jumped her from behind and sunk its skeletal fangs into her thigh, chomping down on her leg as hard as it could and tearing at her deadened flesh. She cried out in pain swung down, severing the beast’s head from its body, leaving it lock-jawed in her leg. She barely managed to keep in step as a fireball whizzed past her, having to keep moving to pick off some crafty demon pirates who thought it was a good idea to take pot-shots at her and Siege from afar. At the very least, it distracted Siege as well, taking the murder-man’s attention away from her briefly.
\tIt didn’t last long, however, as with a few well-placed frost rays from her, and Siege’s unstoppable might, they made short work of the peanut gallery. Then, before they knew it, Siege was coming at Milkette again. She saw him coming from behind and quickly hunched down to avoid a desperate grapple, where if he’d gotten his hands on her, he undoubtedly would have broken her neck like a twig. She stopped him in his tracks by thrusting her rear back at him, smacking into his groin as hard as she could.
\tSiege tumbled over her, and she flipped him onto his back on the ground. He quickly tried to get up, but she jumped down on him and wrapped him in a hold, crushing his neck with one arm while the other tried to bat away his swinging arm-blade. Her hold pulled his head into the valley of her cleavage, smothering most of his skull and muffling his frenzied grunting and panting. The act made his horns dig uncomfortably into her chest.
\t“Siege! Siege!” Milkette shouted at him, “Calm... down, would ya?!”
\t“Kill! I’ll kill you!” He snarled, suddenly throwing his head back and bashing her. He clipped her chin, and she responded by punching him in the head. They wrestled together on the deck for a short time while the pirates watched on, since it seemed like they might just kill one another.
\tThe mouse sighed in frustration, and that motion caused her fiery blue hair to extinguish back into the long chocolate tresses she was known for in the waking world. Colour returned to her fur, and the dark pools in her eyes faded to proper white embedded with deep blue irises. She fought with him to grab his head and pull it back, forcing him to look up at her face. When he saw that she looked different, he paused. Milkette could see the murder-mode turn off, and almost unceremoniously, Siege was himself again.
\t“Milkette??” He furrowed his brow at her, then his attention wandered to the surroundings. He saw that he was on a ship possibly for the first time despite being on it for who-knew-how-long. He took note of the pirates surrounding him, and the many more corpses of pirates that were strewn around the deck. He noticed his scales soaked in blood. Through all that, he saw Blackbeard standing back and watching alongside his crew. “... How did we get here?”
\tBlackbeard burst out laughing. “Yarrharhar!! The scourge doesn’t know friend from foe!”
\t“... Ah,” Siege responded with unflinching composure. It was a complete contrast to his previous, wild behaviour. “I’m not sure what happened, but I’m sure it’s his fault.”
\tWhile one could assume that Siege’s adrenaline had been keeping him going despite his wounds, the way he carried on as if he weren’t hurt at all while he was calm made it clear that whatever pain he felt, it simply did not register as a problem. Milkette released him and he stood quick to catch the charging pirate crew, who jumped in as soon as it seemed the tables were turning against their favour again.
\tWith no less brutality, but far more control, Siege met his enemies and crushed them into dust alongside Milkette. Together, the two of them put down what remained of Blackbeard’s crew, leaving only the captain himself to take care of. Beaten, battered, bloodied, with a hound’s severed head still latched onto Milkette’s thigh, the pair turned on the lone pirate and stepped forward to take him out.
\t“Come ye scurvy dogs!” Blackbeard growled, “Face the mighty Blackbeard and know death.”
\tHe took one swing of his sabre and faltered, Milkette getting in behind him and quickly grabbing hold of his arms, twisting them back and up into a full nelson hold. This exposed him to Siege, who began pummelling the pirate with left and right hooks to the face, chest, and gut. Blackbeard’s bones were snapped one by one, his body was bruised and beaten beyond recognition, and when he was finally released his lifeless corpse collapsed in a pile on the deck.
\tA rather anti-climactic end, but it wasn’t the first time Siege had put Blackbeard down like that. He could almost have set a watch to it.
\tHe and Milkette fell back against the ship’s mast together, taking a little breather as Blackbeard’s soul power flowed into Milkette’s body which flickered back to its greyed, blue-flamed form. Siege had no need for such power, so she was welcome to take it all.
\t“Ha...” Siege breathed, “Well, that was something.”
\tMilkette didn’t commiserate with him. “You’ve been gone for about two days now,” She said, “You know that don’t you?”
\tThe look on Siege’s face said that he did not know that, because as far as he knew, he’d been gone for quite a long time. It sure felt longer, anyway. He only seemed to give that a moment’s consideration before shrugging it off. “It happens,” He simply said, “I guess ol’ Blackbeard thought he could try something.”
\t“I don’t think that Blackbeard thinks,” Milkette snidely added. “So, you calmed down now?”
\t“Yeah,” Siege said, “Sorry if I, you know... tried to kill you. Force of habit.”
\t“Y’know, I came this close to just killing you back,” Milkette said, pinching her claws together to show him just how close she was to it, “Just this once, you know?”
\tSiege just laughed, though doing so squirt blood out of an open wound on his chest, so he stopped.
\tMilkette pat him on the shoulder and left her spot to stride to the side of the ship and look for Charon, who had long since disappeared. No doubt the boatman made his way back to the docks, which was an official invalidation of her ride over. If she were to carry on, no doubt Charon would somehow be waiting for her on the other side to do... whatever it was he did with those who dared to cross the Styx without paying for a FULL ride. “Aw, man,” She groaned, “Charon’s gone.”
\t“Charon?” Siege considered for a moment that he likely didn’t pay Charon to get out there, which could have presented a problem. Since Charon wasn’t there now, however, Siege thought to solve that problem later. “Well, how do we get back?”
\tMilkette looked around the blood-spattered ship, tapping her cheek with her claw. After a moment’s thought, she looked to Siege. “You ever drive a boat?” She asked.
\tTogether, Siege and Milkette commandeered Blackbeard’s ship. It was difficult with a two-person crew, but they managed to run the ship ashore back on the swampy side, leaving the magma-spitting entrance to the next circle in the distance for another day. Their beaching was anything but graceful, essentially running the ship to ground at full speed. The number of demons they crushed was... excessive. Once the ship finally came to a stop, they disembarked.
\tFrom there, Siege took up the role of protector. Whether Milkette needed the help or not, Siege was first in line when a demon showed up to attack them on their way. It was more than a little chauvinistic, Milkette thought... but Siege was just that sort of guy when he was calm. There wasn’t any point trying to convince him to stop. This wasn’t the first time she’d pulled him out of Hell, and it wasn’t going to be the last. Siege had his stubborn habits that made the trips easier.
\tThey fought their way back to the portal Milkette took to arrive in that place. Like always, it seemed to flicker in Siege’s presence, his blood magic interfering with the portal’s own. Once he saw his reflection in the glass, he collapsed right there on the ground. His wounds had caught up to him, and that meant a wave of exhaustion hitting him all at once. Again, this was nothing new. Milkette rudely stepped over him to redo the magic on the runestones, and to reinforce it against Siege’s natural interference.
\t“Come on, get up,” Milkette ordered him to his feet once the portal shone brilliantly again, “Don’t make me have to carry you. I’m, like, half your size you know... normally.”
\tHe tried to get up as if she were serious, and she didn’t let him. She hauled him to his feet and dragged him through the portal, the two of them arriving back in Milkette’s chambers in an instant. Siege collapsed out the other side onto Milkette’s soft carpet and found the surface agreeable to him. Warm and soft, he was plenty happy to nuzzle up into it.
\t“Oh, come on...” Milkette clicked her tongue, returning to her normal, short, plump, living form after being engulfed briefly in a vortex of blue, magical flame. She was even back to wearing her jersey, like she’d never left... only now she had the bloody carcass of her friend crumpled up on her floor.
\t“Fagon!” She shouted, “Fagon!”
\tHer bedroom door opened, and the pink-scaled rainbow dragon servant stuck his head in. “Yes, your majesty?” He answered with all the sarcasm he could muster, but upon seeing Siege, his tune changed. “Oh! You found him, did you?” The dragon dressed like a maid pranced into the room, collecting Siege eagerly and helping him to his feet. “You look like hell, honey,” He said, squeezing and fondling Siege’s biceps as he pretended to look over the bigger man’s injuries, “Let’s go strip you down and get you a nice bath going...♥”
\t“You’ll want to check in with Carmine, too,” Milkette said, “I think he was worried about you. He said he wasn’t though, but he was. He totally was.”
\t“Did he send you after me? Is that why you were down there?” Siege asked, leaning on Fagon for support. The smaller pink dragon was nearly crushed, but he didn’t seem to mind in the least.
\t“Ehhhh...” Milkette threw her hands up in a shrug, “I mean, I said I’d get you if I saw you. You’re lucky I did! I could’ve just kept going like it was no big thing.”
\tSiege chuckled. “Ah, right. I’m in the princess’s good graces today then. I suppose I owe you one.”
\t“And don’t you forget it!” Milkette grinned.
\tSiege pat her on the head, which got blood in her hair. She grumbled and swatted his hand away, and he just smiled. She may have been playing hard-to-get and grumpy, but he knew better than to take what she said at face value. “Thank you,” He said.
\tMilkette bowed her head... mockingly, somehow. “You’re welcome.”
\t“Alright,” Fagon said, “That’s enough about her. Let’s go throw you into her Jacuzzi.”
\t“I think first aid might be a little more important than that...” Siege said as he was marched out of the room by his friends.
\t“Nonsense,” Fagon said, “You’re getting naked whether you like it or not!”
\tMilkette saw them to the door and let them leave together. She watched Siege limp off and shook her head. “What would these doofuses do without me?”