FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 9: Summoned

Tuco glared through the invisible wall of the summoning circle at the Brother who'd captured him. The little monk was scarcely two-thirds Tuco's height, and less than a fifth his size, and Tuco was strapped with muscle, fangs, horns, and spikes, but far from being cowed, the little man was practically giggling with glee.

"Let me out of here!" Tuco roared, slamming both fists against the wall. He could no more budge it than his old self could have moved a wall of stone.

The Brother was not cowed, however. He rubbed at his chin as though stroking a non-existent beard. "Hmm, let Sathanus out... Let the Prince of Darkness out of the spiritual prison that is the only thing keeping him from tearing his way into our world, killing me, and wreaking havoc with the lives of men... No, I think I'll keep you safely in the binding circle where you belong."

Tuco's tail lashed in irritation, thumping against the far side of the circle. "Listen to me. I don't know how you managed this, but I'm not Sathanus. And you're lucky I'm not, too. The last Brother who summoned him got eaten."

The little monk's eyes narrowed. "I ordered you not to lie. You ought to be compelled to obey."

"I'm not lying! I'm really not Sathanus!"

The Brother stalked up to the edge of the circle, an aged and greying piece of parchment in his hand. "Then explain to me, demon--"

"Devil," Tuco corrected him automatically.

"Devil, then. Explain to me why this summoning spell that names you as Sathanus conjured you up in my circle!" And he held the parchment aloft, near the border of the enchantment, but not so close as to risk crossing it.

Tuco peered at the page. He still could read only with difficulty, and his Latin was almost non-existent, but buried among the Latin words were two that stood out: TVCO VITSIVAENVS. A prickle ran down his back. Tuco Witchywine. The parchment was greying and aged, the ink faded and flaking. How could his name be written on a page that must be centuries old?

"Well, demon? Explain it!"

"I--I cannot," Tuco admitted, mystified.

A smirk spread across the monk's face as he lowered his arm. "Then Sathanus you must be, and answer my demands you shall."

"We'll see," Tuco muttered. "Who else knows you've summoned me?" He glanced across the room and only then noticed the hunched figure of an apprentice cowering against the back wall, hiding his face. A flicker of Tuco's tongue brought him the scent of Hhalbor, but he hardly needed the scent to know him; the young man's jutting antlers and spiny body were immediately recognizable. Tuco felt a sudden moment of disorientation as he remembered his first summoning here, when Brother Melvin had summoned Sathanus and Tuco had been the terrified apprentice reading the incantation. He remembered all too well his own fear, and he could taste it coming in waves off of Hhalbor.

The Brother who had summoned him seemed to have no fear, however; all Tuco could taste off of him was excitement and desire, desire to be elevated above his fellows, to have their respect and admiration. The Ninth Temptation: The Temptation of Position.

"You do not ask questions of me," the Brother sneered. "You are my servant now, and you answer my questions. First: when is the Apocalypse due to occur?"

"I don't know. No one does but the One Above."

"Yes, so it says in the Scriptures. But you are the Prince of Darkness, surely you rally your forces in preparation."

"No," Tuco said wearily. "In point of fact I have recently unrallied them."

The monk scowled in suspicion. "I command you to tell me when the Apocalypse is coming."

Tuco felt as though he had been gripped by the air itself, frozen as his mind sifted through his thoughts. Then his tongue spoke of its own accord: "I cannot, for I know it not."

"Then, Sathanus, tell me what we must do to prevent the Apocalypse from occurring."

Tuco tried to tell him he didn't know that either, but again his tongue spoke without his bidding: "Four signs of the Apocalypse there are, and four seals: The Guardian Blinded, The Warden Slain, The Seraph Corrupted, The Beast Ascended. When all signs have passed, and all seals have been broken, then the gates of the Abyss will open, and devils will walk the earth. Prevent any of the signs, and you prevent the Apocalypse."

"Yes, yes, I know about the seals," snapped the Brother irritably. "How do I prevent the signs from occurring?"

"The Guardian has been blinded already," Tuco's mouth answered. "Guard the Warden, protect the Seraph, or slay the Beast, and the Apocalypse will not come to pass."

"And the Warden?" the Brother asked. "Where is he?"

"The nature of this sign has not been revealed to me. I cannot answer."

"The Seraph. An angel, I suppose? How might one be corrupted?"

Tuco thought uncomfortably of his dreams, of using his incubus powers to seduce the hosts of heaven. "Temptation from a devil of high order. Or from a righteous man."

The Brother scowled. "Not terribly helpful answers."

Tuco snorted. "Thought you that averting the end of the world ordained by the Almighty Himself would be easy? Your Brethren have studied here for centuries seeking answers, and you thought with a stolen ritual and a devil-may-care attitude you'd find that which eludes even the angels in Paradise? Perhaps you will take up your butter knife and slay the Beast yourself." The words seem to boil out of him; they were his own, but they felt ancient, and blazed with an outrage that surprised him. "I can taste your soul from here, human. I know your petty hunger. You long to be greater than the other monks. You fancy yourself their leader. In your heart you wish them to admire you, look up to you, even revere you."

"And why shouldn't they?" the Brother snapped. "I'm far more intelligent than most of them, you know. I studied at university before I came here. I can read and write eleven languages. I've traveled across the sea and seen foreign ports. I know mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and they--they laugh at me, and call me Pockface, and have never once allowed me the chance to perform my own summonings. Well, now I have showed them all up! I've summoned the Prince of Darkness himself, and bound him, and forced answers from his forkéd tongue. And now, before I banish him back to the Pit from whence he crawled, he will raise me above them. Sathanus, slave to my command, I bid you make me greater than all of them!"

Tuco sighed inwardly. How could these Brothers not know what the demonic influences here could do? This one didn't seem to realize that if he wanted to change, all he need do was allow himself to be tempted by a nearby demon; surely that was enough. Tuco waited for the change to come over the Brother of its own accord, but instead found himself gripped by that invisible force again. A terrible feeling came over him. It was as though a ghostly hand--not cold, not chilling, simply a power--reached into his chest and then deeper still, into the voidsea within him, where the millions of lights of his soul-hoard floated.

What are you doing? The words went unspoken, and he was helpless to stop the hand as it dipped down into the sea and collected lights, no, souls within it. Three or four of them were caught in the invisible power, and as Tuco gazed at them he could see their whole lives: a fisherman, a local governor, a scholar, a housemaid. All their little crimes of desire twinkled within them, and then their lights dimmed as the force stole its power from them. They were not destroyed, but they were certainly reduced, dropped by the invisible hand to float within the voidsea once more, confused and lost, missing parts of themselves.

Tuco had been told that devils fueled their magic through souls, but he had not imagined that the souls could be drained in the process. And now this snivelling monk had taken his souls and used them as kindling for some petty desire. Tuco bared his fangs, fury filling him, but still he was caught in the grip of the invocation. He felt the power flowing through him, through his arms and fingers. Desire could change a man, certainly, but this was something different. Tuco stretched out his claws unwillingly and wove a new shape for the Brother, forcing it on him without consideration for his desire.

Almost immediately, the monk began to grow, his cowled head rising. "Yes," he breathed in excitement, and began to laugh, his voice deepening as he did so. "Yes!" His robes lifted off the floor, exposing a pair of pale, skinny legs, but these were already thickening with muscle. The monk pushed his cowl off his head, baring a balding pate that was beginning to sprout new hair. His robes spread as his chest barreled beneath them, meaty pectorals pushing the brown cloth apart. "I will be a champion among them. A demigod. They will look upon me and see the one who did what none of them could: summon the archfiend himself!" He looked up at Tuco, his milky-eyed gaze gone clear and brilliant green, and gasped. "My eyes! Is this truly how others see the world, in such sharp edges? I never even knew." His pitted, pocked face was beginning to smooth, as it seemed years fell away from him. As he grew past six feet in height, he found his robes too constricting, and tried to shrug out of them, but already his shoulders and arms proved too girthy to remove from the sleeves. Laughing, he lifted both arms and flexed, hunching his back, and the brown fabric tore away from him.

He lifted his hand and ran fingers through the thick, curling black hair sprouting from his scalp, then ran them in wonder down his still-growing body. He was already an Adonis, distractingly handsome, but there was an odd coldness to his beauty. He did not seem natural or real, for unlike everyone else who had been reshaped around Tuco, his form did not come from his own desire, but from seized power, and this had molded him from the outside instead of in. He was handsome and impressive, but as a statue might be, not as a living person.

Such distinctions, if he noticed them, did not seem to bother him, however. He looked down at his undergarments and, with no thoughts for modesty, tore them away. "Yes!" he said through his delighted laughter. "Oh yes, finally." Between his legs swung a pendulous, thick cock, perhaps a foot in length, propped outward by a prodigious set of balls that might well have flattered a horse. "No more mockery!" he crowed. "No more Pelly Littledick, no more Pockface. Now they will learn to respect and admire Pellinore, master summoner!"

His growth finally ebbed, leaving him standing over eight feet in height, and more powerfully muscled than any human Tuco had ever seen--unless he counted himself. Pellinore flexed both arms before him and watched the snakelike veins bulge under the skin. "Oh, well done, Sathanus, well done. I feel as though I could tear a city down with my bare hands. I could fight off an entire army with one fist. I want to go out and conquer the world. I will not be tempted by evil desires, no. I will use this strength to thrash only the wickedest of men; I will grant the gift of my cock only to the women who earn my love."

He furrowed his brow. "But how am I to travel? Must I be mercenary with my power, serving as a sellsword or a cocksmith? No, it is indecent to suggest. Sathanus, another demand I make of you. Talents, skills, abilities. I want them."

"Which talents, skills and abilities?" Tuco asked uneasily.

Brother Pellinore ran his fingers through his shoulder-length mane of black hair and smiled. "All of them."

Again, Tuco felt seized by that power. It did not feel like it came from Brother Pellinore, or indeed from himself. It lacked that radiance he'd expect from a celestial source, and it lacked the insidious seduction of the Abyss. The forces that moved him felt like walls, like the boundaries of all creation forced him to act. Some kind of immutable law, as undeniable as the fact of heat from fire, or the downhill flow of water, forced him to surrender his souls as power to fuel Brother Pellinore's wishes. Again, that ghostly hand dipped into his voidsea to harvest the lights of the souls within his demesne as fuel for the monk's perverse demand. Soul-lights were drawn to its grasp--one of them Henley, the woman he'd changed into a willow tree.

Not her! he cried in desperation into the void. She was nearly innocent; she did not deserve to have her light harvested by this selfish, grasping monk. To his surprise, the force moved away from her light, toward others.

So, he thought, I can control it somewhat. Hurriedly, he focused within himself, trying to find the most vile, abusive souls within him, those that deserved neither peace nor continued existence, because they had denied such to others in life. This one, he thought emphatically over the soul of a serial rapist. Instantly the power moved toward him and pulled that soul up and away from his trove. He raced to find another, a child abuser. This! That soul too, drawn up into the power. Several more lights he selected: a greedy patron who stole works of art from sculptors and left them to die of starvation; a slaver who worked dozens to death beneath the whips of his overseers; a farmhand who tortured his livestock for his own amusement.

All these souls were drawn up into the power that fueled Brother Pellinore's wishes, and when their lights dimmed, Tuco was not sorry. He would prefer not to decide who was punished and who was not, but if he must make the choice, then at least here it was easy. Tuco had no idea how to use this power to answer Brother Pellinore's command, but beyond his ken some infernal sense took all of it and twisted it, surging it into the monk's body, and his powerful back arched, his eyes lighting with an internal glow as the secrets of every craft and skill unraveled themselves for him.

"Herbalism," he muttered as if to himself. "I know the secrets of medicine now, and the names of every plant. Metallurgy, the secrets of tempering iron and bronze, of beating them on the anvil. Carpentry, music, algebra!" He turned rapturous, glowing eyes toward the ceiling. "All the mysteries of the world unfold themselves before my mind! And my hands--what can they not accomplish now? Look!" The monk crouched and took from his summoning kit a handful of knives. One by one, he tossed them up in the air and caught them, sending them spinning back and forth in a dizzying pattern, from one hand to the next. "I can juggle as well as any acrobat. These fingers could strum a lyre and bring forth such melodies as would make the Muses weep. I could defeat the champions of the world at tennis." And then he hurled the knives he was juggling across the room, one by one, just past poor cringing Hhalbor, to embed the first perfectly centered in the doorframe, and each subsequent point in the haft of the prior. The chain of knives quivered for a moment, then clattered to the floor. "Or darts."

Brother Pellinore grinned a coldly perfect grin at Tuco. "Or even swordplay, or warfare. What an astounding command I have given you, devil. Other foolish summoners have asked for a single gift--that of skill with painting, or the secrets of alchemy, or woo-making. Small-minded, simple creatures! For in one masterful stroke, I have surpassed them all! No endeavor on Earth can defeat me now."

"Nor challenge you," Tuco answered thoughtfully. "What is the point of doing anything if it comes so easily as to take no effort?"

"To best the other man, of course. To be better and greater than them all."

"And yet it has cost you your soul."

The monk curled a handsome lip in a sneer. "I made no such bargain. You did not demand my soul before obeying my commands."

"And yet your soul was mine, the moment you summoned me," Tuco said quietly. "That is always the cost. Search your mind. You are now the greatest summoner in the world; you will know the truth of what I say."

"That--that--" Brother Pellinore made a little strangling noise in his throat. "But no, the monks would have told us. They would never have formed this monastery to--"

"A sacrifice. That must have been how it started," Tuco said, feeling certain of the words as he spoke them. "Holy men giving up their souls in order to save the souls of others. What more noble sacrifice could there be? To surrender eternity to save paradise for many?"

The monk narrowed his dark eyes. "A queer perspective for a devil to affirm. And yet your claim shakes me. If my soul indeed belongs to you, then I deny it to you forever. For my next command, I want you to make me--"

"Wait!" Tuco shouted--and it came out as a roar, one that shook the stones of the room and made even Brother Pellinore falter. "Do not wish never to die. Have you no sense at all?"

The monk swiftly erased his shock with a supercilious smirk. "Of course you would advise me not to, for then you will never claim me."

"And you will suffer an eternity worse than any I would devise for you in my demesne," Tuco answered. "One lifetime with no challenges to keep you from boredom is one thing, but a thousand lifetimes? You'd go mad."

The monk scoffed. "Hardly."

"And what of beyond that? What of when this world, as must all worlds, end? You will not end with it. You'll be doomed to wander a wasteland alone, the only man undying. What will you eat when the crops are gone? How will you protect yourself from the sun and the snow when the plants die away? What of the earth wreathed in fire, or drowned in blood? What will you suffer endlessly in the Apocalypse, and beyond that, when nothing remains but you, lost in the darkness that falls upon the surface of the deeps?"

Brother Pellinore's ivory face went even paler. "Perhaps, indeed, I ought to rethink such a wish. I am thinking too big, too soon. Why, with the skills you have instilled upon me, I shall soon have the world at my feet, but why hasten my victory and have it over so quickly? No, as you said, the challenges of the world will soon grow old to me. I ought to savor every moment of them. Dominion over the countries of the world can wait." His dark eyes glittered. "For now, I will master this abbey. Those who mocked and dismissed me shall soon regret their errors. They will be at council now. Come, fiend. Let us show them what I have made of myself."

Tuco pressed himself up against the invisible wall of the binding circle. "I cannot follow. You have bound me."

The monk cast a scornful look in his direction. "I command thee, fiend, to draw thy binding within twelve cubits of me at all times, as is your explicit capability." With that, he turned and stalked out of the room.

Tuco stared after him for a couple astonished moments before, all on its own, the circle encasing him began to move toward the wall. The monk had already started walking down the hall, away from the entrance to the room. He'd waited too long! "Hey Hhalbor," he managed, as he made a dash toward the door past the shocked-looking apprentice.

The circle moved with him, but only in an arc, still dragging Tuco closer and closer to the wall. There was no way he was going to be able to reach the door. He growled a curse under his breath for Brother Pellinore, but after all, why should a holy monk worry about the well-being of a devil he'd summoned? He braced his hands against the edge of the circle, trying to push it back--perhaps the thing worked both ways, and he could stop the monk's progress. His toe claws dug into the floor, tearing furrows into the stone as the moving circle dragged him backward. He had just time to look up into Hhalbor's astonished face as the circle squeezed him up against the wall, the stones pressing against his muscled body tighter and tighter.

"Tuco?" Hhalbor breathed, his quills bristling, and then Tuco burst through the stone wall into the corridor beyond, masonry raining down around him. It hadn't hurt; he'd barely even felt the pressure of the stone, and now he slid backward down the corridor, staring at the giant hole he'd left in the wall of the abbey.

He turned, tail whipping, and bounded after Brother Pellinore, who gave him a withering stare. "Do try and keep up. It will be your task to repair the wall before I am finished with you." Tuco had no choice but to lumber after Pellinore, and if the monk noticed that the visages of the Gasen glaring above each archway never shifted, never uttered a scream, he said nothing. Before rounding the corner, Tuco cast one glance over his shoulder and saw Hhalbor's antlered head watching him from the hole in the crumbling wall of the summoning room.

They proceeded through the central cloister to the monk quarters. Other apprentices, spotting them, darted into rooms, and Tuco could taste the acrid flavor of fear on the air. He couldn't blame them; once, he'd have run too, seeing a tall, naked monk striding through the cloisters with a giant, circle-bound devil on his leash. Down into the residential cloister Brother Pellinore strode; in his haste, Tuco struck his head on a transom and his horns tore gouges out of the wood there, but his captor did not even look around. He stalked up to a pair of polished cherry wood doors that Tuco had never looked behind, and dramatically flung them open. The baritone hubbub of scholarly chatter died as, nude, Brother Pellinore stepped into the room and called, "Brothers!"

Tuco paused just outside the door--if he didn't have to reveal himself to all of the Brothers of the Abbey, he wouldn't. He realized that some part of him was still thinking that this would all end somehow, and that eventually he'd be back studying summoning and taking scholarly lessons with his friends, that everything that had happened: his changes, the devils hunting him, the threat of the Apocalypse, were all just bumps in the road toward his having a normal life. He was still trying to hold onto it. Brother Pellinore was just one man, and he was clearly mad. Whether his ambitions took him beyond the walls of Abyssus Abbey or elsewhere, his days were surely numbered. And none else had seen Tuco but Hhalbor, at a distance. But if Tuco entered that room, and all the monks saw him, a devil, bound in a circle and summoned by one of their own, there would be no chance of ever returning to his life in the Abbey.

"Who the devil are you?" a voice from the room demanded, as general murmuring rose again. "Are you some errant apprentice? Where are your clothes, man? And how did you get in here?"

"No, don't you see? Look at his face!" another cried. "It's Brother Pellinore!"

Exclamations rose from around the room. "Pellinore? No! It can't be!"

"Well what in God's name happened to you, fellow?" the first voice said again. "Have you fallen prey to some demon?"

Brother Pellinore's golden voice rang out in the room, tolling through the cries and exclamations. "Yes, indeed it is I, Brother Pellinore. He whom you scorned and set aside. He whom you denied right of access to ritual and supplies, claiming that I needed more prayer, more study, a more wholesome and scholarly attitude. You, Brother Fastidium, with your scorpion claws and hunchback. You, Brother Sackworth, with two noses and a filthy trail of slime. All of you who have fallen to temptation time and time again, you dared to judge me? And yet it is not I who have fallen prey to a demon, but a demon who has fallen prey to me. Nay, no demon, but a devil. And not just any devil, but the Prince of Darkness himself, the dread Sathanus."

A loud outcry of protests, horror and disbelief mixed, echoed from the stones of the corridor. Tuco pressed himself up against the wall and took slow breaths. It wasn't over. Anything could happen now. Brother Pellinore could be censured, or--or forcibly expelled somehow. Desperately, he sent out a fierce pulse of lust, hoping to distract or overwhelm everyone, but he felt his power crash like a wave against the edge of the circle and ebb. Bound like this, inside the sigils and spells that enclosed him, he was helpless. He could not even extend the toe of one claw beyond the edge of the runic circle that followed him, flowing over the stone floor of the abbey like light cast through stained glass.

"Yes, my brethren, I dared what you did not; I summoned the Enemy. I found the ritual, I gathered the ingredients, I studied the incantations, and succeeded where everyone else failed. Bound within my circle, he is not so fearsome as one might expect--more a frightened child than a bogeyman. From him I have gained knowledge and ability, and more will I garner. I will stride through history with his power at my beck and call; I will rip the secrets of the Apocalypse from his tattered soul, and use his power to turn all the armies of the world against the forces of Hell. It is I who will stop the end of the world now, and when the Almighty sees my service to Him, He will draw me to his side, and redeem my soul from any tarnish it may have accrued. I did this, Brothers. The one you mocked and sneered at. Me, Brother Pellinore. What say you now to this?"

For a long moment there was only shocked silence. Then, an elderly voice: "You're mad!"

Brother Pellinore sneered, "Think you that I have not accomplished what I claim?"

"It is plain that you have not," a deeper voice answered. "For already you have been corrupted. Listen to yourself! Your voice rings with spite and vanity. Surely you must have contacted a devil, for the Twelve Temptations cry out from your voice, and your body has become something... dreadful."

"But not, I think, Sathanus," the older voice put in. "Had you truly called up the Prince of Darkness, the Abbey would be crashing around our ears, and the skies raining blood."

"So certain are you? Then behold! See for yourselves that I, Pellinore, have surpassed all of you! Come forth, Sathanus, and reveal thyself to these unbelievers!"

Well, this was his cue, then. Not waiting for any arcane force to propel him, Tuco stepped into the room, his head crashing into the transom again and taking a huge chunk out of the wood. Embarrassed, he kept looking downward, worried that some of the Brothers might recognize his face or build from classes or Masses. He was abruptly grateful he'd taken the time to clothe himself in his demesne before having been summoned into a room filled with holy men. Shocked gasps echoed around the room.

"Hello," Tuco said, waving a hand, the thundering timbre of his voice somewhat offset by the meekness of his tone.

There was a long pause, broken only by the clearing of throats and the shuffling of sandaled feet. "You there." The elderly voice from before finally broke the silence. "Devil, if so you be. Do you claim to be Prince Sathanus, the Lord of Darkness?"

"No," Tuco boomed.

A series of chuckles passed among the gathered Brethren. "He says he isn't the Prince of Evil, Pelly," someone called.

"You've been hoodwinked!"

"Tricked by a devil!"

"And what be thy name, Fiend?" the elderly voice asked.

Tuco panicked, casting about for a name to tell them, but Pellinore had bound him to speak no lies. He shook his head.

"Come now, vile creature. Give us your name. Pellinore, compel him to tell us."

But Pellinore's alabaster face had gone red with fury. "He is Sathanus as I told you! As is proven by my perfected body! I master all skills in the world! Would you have me sing to you? Perform algebra, the science of manipulating numbers? Perhaps I shall paint a fresco worthy of Michelangelo, or perform tumbles for you better than any court jester! Would that finally amuse and please you, Brothers? Or perhaps I shall manipulate the Empress to imprison you, or," and now his voice had become an infuriated roar, "perhaps I shall lead an army against you, and all this Abbey, and tear its stones down around your ears!"

"That's quite enough, Brother Pellinore," the elderly monk said, in sad and gentle tones. "Well you know that the stones of this Abbey have been layered with endless enchantments of protection against the Abyss, and none of fiendish origin may harm it."

Pellinore turned toward Tuco. "Sathanus." He hissed the name so sharply that Tuco looked up and saw the monk's eyes slitted in fury. "My next command. Give me the power to rule this Abbey. Show them who is the true master here! I want to make all of them do my bidding!"

More gasps echoed around the room, along with cries of, "You're mad!" But already Tuco could feel that dread compulsion. The runes of the circle around him seemed to burn into him, as the power of the command drew on the souls within him, and desperately he sought to direct the vilest and most contemptible toward it. The power of a devil lay in reshaping, and once more he felt his magic reaching out to twist and change Brother Pellinore. The monk cried out, his eyes going wide. He arched his back as though in the throes of agony or ecstasy, and then hunched forward, clutching at his sides with both hands. His taut, muscular back stretched, and then bulged, and then erupted in scores of fleshy tendrils rising from him, writhing like tentacles as they grew. Brother Pellinore looked up, his face lighting in an expression of erotic joy as all the tendrils extended, flailing and whipping about, coiling and wriggling around each other as they lengthened. He stood upright, spreading his arms wide, and as he did, the tendrils splayed around his back, fanning out in a fleshy corona, and then each surged forward toward one of the monks in the room.

Shocked, clamoring in fear, the monks fell over each other in an attempt to get away, but their efforts were in vain. The tendrils met each of them with the speed of striking snakes. They planted themselves on monks' chests and backs, arms and legs. Many found gasping mouths and slid in. Others traveled up their robes to find more intimate places. Where they struck, they adhered, the tendrils melding with the monks' flesh in an instant, and when they struck, the Brothers went abruptly still and slack, their eyes glassing over.

In less than ten seconds, the room had gone from terror to stillness. Brothers stood in mid-run, their arms hanging at their sides. Others still sat; others lay where they had fallen on the floor. Their mouths hung open. In each of them was planted a tendril, alabaster white, pulsing from tip to base as though feeding on them, as though swallowing all that made them who they were.

Brother Pellinore still stood with his arms wide, his tentacled back arched, his eyes darting back and forth, barely seeing. "Incredible." It was not he who spoke, but every mouth in the room, in his exact tones, in perfect synchronicity. "I can feel every mind at once. I can see through every eye. I know our thoughts, our dreams, our plans. I remember our childhoods, our first kisses, our secret indiscretions, our shames. But our wills... no, these shall be destroyed. There is only my will. My wishes! I am the ruler here."

Tuco had seen fewer sights more terrifying in his life, and he had met Sathanus and been to the Abyss. He pressed back against the edge of his circle. Brother Pellinore turned to him, and so did every face in the room. Scores of eyes stared at him with the regard of one single, enslaving mind. Tuco could sense the souls inside each of them, terrified, battering helpless against the prisons of their own bodies like moths trapped under glass. He had to save them somehow, save the Abbey, but for all his power, within this circle, he was helpless.

"Come, devil." With forty fingers, Pellinore beckoned him forward. His tail whipping in panic, Tuco slunk to the center of the room, his head bowed so as not to score the ceiling with his horns. The eyes of the Brethren stared at him from all sides, but there was no humanity in them--only a terrible, pitiless regard. "Now, Sathanus, Prince of Darkness, I command you to bow down before me. Bow before the master of Abyssus Abbey."

And Tuco had no choice. A terrible pressure bent his knees to the floor, pushed him forward. He prostrated himself before the mad monk, before the gaze of his helpless prisoners. The fleshy tendrils connecting Pellinore to the other monks throbbed in time to a single heartbeat.

Eighty eyes lit in fervor, watching him bow. The voices rang in unison from every mouth. "And with all this knowledge, I can summon a hundred demons, a thousand, bend them all to my will. They will be my fiendish army, and together, it is we who will stop the Apocalypse, don't you see? What chance has the legions of the Abyss against its own?" The same smirking grin twisted every face in the room. "What say you now, creature?"

Tuco clenched his fangs and pushed himself to one knee. He looked up at Pellinore. "I think you're mad. You'll never avert the Apocalypse. But you just might be the one to cause it."

"Of course your treacherous kind would say so. But what if I should?" Pellinore breathed, his wild eyes widening. The tendrils sprouting from his back wriggled as if in excitement, and then lifted him from the floor, his bare toes rising off the stonework as though he hovered in mid-rapture. "What a world I could make with all my talent!" He spread his powerful arms. "With all my knowledge! A greater world! A better one! All of humanity united in one common vision! And you, Sathanus, the dog at our feet that made it happen, your power turned to serve us for--"

He broke off, looking puzzled. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. And then his chest sprouted the bloody point of a sword. Bewildered, he stared down at it, touched it with one alabaster fingertip. He spluttered blood. And then he dropped to the floor heavily, falling on his side.

Behind him stood Brother Gabriel, his jaw set, his eyes cold. "Begone, foul perversion," he growled through clenched teeth as he wrenched his gleaming sword from the body of Pellinore. All around the room, the tendrils connecting Pellinore to the assembled monks began to flail and writhe, and screams rose from every mouth in unison.

"Devilry," breathed Brother Gabriel, and he swung his sword in a great arc, severing every tendril from Pellinore's back in a single, sweeping blow. The tendrils went limp and lifeless in an instant, and every monk fell over.

For a single, dread instant, Tuco feared they had died, but then he heard the moans, cries, and coughs of the Brothers, not in unison, but from many different throats, at many different times--the voices of the confused and frightened. And the lights of the runes encircling him flickered and went out.

Tuco rolled his shoulders back, feeling tall and strong again, feeling the desires of every man there. Granted, most of them were just hoping for safety and rest at the moment. They shuffled around on the floor, sorting through their bewilderment, getting to their feet. One looked up at Tuco and his face went white with panic. "It's loose!" he howled, pointing in Tuco's direction.

Brother Gabriel looked up, his sword canted toward the floor, blood running down the blade to spot the stones. "Where?" he demanded. "Where is the fiend?"

"In front of you!" the monk howled. "Can you not see--"

Before he could finish, Tuco let loose a powerful pulse of lust that sent the monk hunching toward the floor in surprise. Others writhed in their robes where they stood, and even Brother Gabriel's knees buckled as he felt the impact, his arousal evident beneath his own robes. The monks around the room lifted their eyes to gaze at Tuco in a mixture of awe and desire, but Brother Gabriel only strode forward, lifting his sword.

He couldn't see Tuco, but the way he swung, he didn't need to. His first sweep of the blade went far wide, as did the second, but the third connected, thumping against Tuco's side. Brother Gabriel stared wildly back and forth, trying to see what he had struck.

The sword blade had not, as far as Tuco could tell, even nicked his scales, though it had cut deeply into his jacket and left a slash there. The senior monk lifted his arms and swung the weapon again, and this time, Tuco caught the blade in one hand. "Desist at once," he boomed. "You're ruining my clothes."

His hand seemed uninjured, and he gave the blade an experimental squeeze, his forearm bulging and threatening to add another tear to his clothing. It resisted like cold butter in his hand. In mild surprise, he plucked the sword out of Brother Gabriel's hands and bent the blade. The metal shrieked as it curved, but Tuco's scales were impervious to the sharp edges. With both hands he wadded the weapon up into a malformed ball of tortured metal--it broke several times as he did so, but he simply squeezed the shards back into the mass as he worked it. The metal heated dramatically as he bent it, until it was too hot to hold, and he dropped the useless remnants of the weapon. It landed with a clank at Brother Gabriel's feet.

The monk, trembling, knelt to poke at the metal, and jerked back his finger from its heated surface. "The sword of St. Basil the Crusader," he said, his voice breaking. "Destroyed!"

Tuco grinned at him, though he knew Brother Gabriel couldn't see it. "Now if you don't mind, Brother, I have things to do. Thank you for freeing me and the others. Brother Pellinore was mad, but it's a pity what happened to him." The thought immediately sobered him; he felt ashamed for grinning when a man had just been slain in front of him, even though he hadn't done it, and even though the man had almost certainly needed killing. And now that he thought it, he realized that he could feel Brother Pellinore within him now, the light of his soul sent to Tuco's demesne, burning all the brighter with all the power he had stolen from other souls. Tuco supposed he would have to devise an appropriate fate for the man--something to teach him the virtues of humility.

Now that he had seen the afterlife, death seemed... terrible still, perhaps, like having to leave your childhood home forever... but less terrible. People weren't gone, they just went somewhere else. Another step--the last step, perhaps--in their journey.

Still, it was sobering to walk past the twisted body that had once held the soul of Brother Pellinore, hot blood spreading across the floor. Tuco still gave the stricken Brother Gabriel a thump with the side of his tail as he left the room and went, finally, to seek out his friends.

---

He kept his head down as he moved through the clerical cloister, but soon realized he was going to have difficulty maintaining any kind of discretion. The most likely place to find Pike, Etreon, and Braxus would be in the watch room down in the Throat, but he couldn't risk leading any of the monks to their secret hiding spot. Already there was a clamor behind him as the Brothers collected themselves and readied their pursuit. Tuco couldn't linger here, but when he tried to run, the heaviness of his footfalls thundered through the hallways at a volume surely anyone could follow, and two of his loping steps actually cracked the stone tiling. He'd be leaving a trail straight to them. Moving truly silently seemed to be an interminable crawl. He paused in the main cloister, looking back and forth with a rising sense of panic.

There is no need for you to fear, a nagging thought whispered in the back of his mind. You could destroy them easily. As easily as you destroyed that sword. Tear them to pieces, or send them mad with lust. What are such fragile mortals in the face of a Baron of the Abyss? He almost laughed at the idea when it occurred to him. He wasn't a murderer. Or a... whatever you called someone who forcibly inflicted uncontrollable lust on people.

You call that an incubus, and that is exactly what you are.

"No," he said aloud. "That summoning spell didn't summon Sathanus. It summoned Tuco Witchywine. I'm still me. I will always be me."

"I thought it was you," said a voice from behind him, and he nearly jumped out of his scales.

He whirled to see Hhalbor standing behind him, and pressed his hand to his chest to try to still his heart from pounding. "You startled me!"

The stag-antlered boy gave him a disbelieving grin. "I startled you? Well, come on, you look like you're trying to hide. This way!" And he turned, his porcupine tail click-clicking across the floor, and darted up the main stairs.

Tuco was about to protest, but saw the torches of the monks coming from around the corner and followed as swiftly as he dared, crouching low on the staircase, trying to keep his shoulders in and his tail still as he followed. The choice had been a fortunate one--no sooner had he squeezed his bulk around the corner of the staircase than he heard the slapping of many shoes below, and then Brother Gabriel snarled, "The beast may be trying to escape back to the Abyss through the Throat! Go!" The sounds of several footsteps descended. Tuco wasted no further time in hurrying up the stairs, moving on hands and feet for stealth.

He smelled rain on the air, and thunder shook the Abbey. He emerged on the rooftop into a heavy shower; the night was dark, and though darkness was of no concern to him anymore, the curtains of rain made it difficult to see far beyond the walls of the Abbey.

"They won't look for you up here," Hhalbor said, blinking in the dark and the rain. He held one hand to his forehead to keep water from streaming into his eyes. "Come, we can get out of the storm at least a little over there." He motioned toward the other end of the rooftop, where a large, angelic statue stood, its huge, stone-feathered wings open and offering some scant overhead shelter. Tuco followed, eyeing the storm uneasily. He might be able to stop a sword blow with his scales, but he doubted very much that they'd offer much resistance to a bolt of lightning.

"I'm glad you were in that hallway," he said, once they were at least partly out of the shower. Hhalbor shook all over, droplets of water flinging from each of his many needle-like spines.

"I was fairly certain it was you, even though you... look different every time I see you. The scales are new." Halbor reached out and ran his fingers over the back of Tuco's red-scaled hand. "Smooth. What is it like, being like this?"

"I doubt I could explain. I feel so strong sometimes, and so helpless other times. And there are all these urges, I--" Tuco broke off. "I don't think I could put it into words. But what of the Abbey? Are my friends all right? Pike, Etreon, Braxus? And the rest of the apprentices?"

Hhalbor shook his head, droplets flinging from the points of his antlers. "Your harem is all fine still, but--"

"My what?"

Hhalbor shrugged. "Erlin and some of his friends started calling them that and it just kind of stuck."

Tuco groaned. The wasp-winged Erlin had been one of Walstein's cronies and had been nasty to him ever since he'd arrived, but more so since Walstein's disappearance. "They're not a harem," he growled.

"As you say, but they all do sleep with you, do they not? Whenever you wish? And they stay in your quarters, or in... some other place you've made for them, so they can lie with you at your desiring?"

"That doesn't make them a harem. I don't own them," Tuco protested, and before the words were even out of his mouth, he thought of the uncountable souls that were his treasure, his hoard in the Abyss. And Pike, Etreon, and Braxus each belonged, in part, to that hoard as well.

Hhalbor shrank back a little. "If it displeases you, I can--"

"Yes, don't call them that," Tuco said. "Please," he added upon seeing Hhalbor's expression.

"I shall not, then. And so far, they are all right, despite the teasing--which, I might add, plenty of the lads are envious of. Many confess they wish to be in your har--er, among your favorites, too."

"Including you?"

Hhalbor's cheeks reddened and he looked down. "But I can't. None of us can. It isn't safe. Even though your friends are untouched yet, many have been sent to the Throat. Most apprentices have asked to resign and surrender their stipend, but none are being allowed to leave. Brother Gabriel claims corruption rides in all of us and he dares not let it out into the world. We are all demon-touched, he says. If I were seen with you, I'd be thrown into the Throat with the rest of them."

"That's horrible," Tuco said. "It was very brave of you to help me, then."

"I didn't!" Hhalbor turned away fiercely, staring out into the storm. "I didn't help a demon, you understand? If anyone ever asked me, I'd say you chased me up here. Tried to attack me."

"Oh, Hhalbor, you do know I'd never hurt you, don't you?" Aside from a few accidental sips of his soul, you mean? He hushed the jeering voice in his mind and put a hand on Hhalbor's shoulder.

A wave of surprise traveled in a ripple down Hhalbor's spines, from the top of his head to the tip of his tail and the backs of his calves. He turned back to Tuco, eyes wide. "Didn't--didn't that hurt you?"

Tuco smiled and waggled his fingers at Hhalbor. "Scales. I caught a sword earlier tonight. Didn't even scratch me."

The stag-antlered man stepped closer, blinking his large chestnut eyes in the rain. "Could you--could you run your fingers through them?" he asked. His breath shook with hope.

Tuco slid his fingers around the back of Hhalbor's head, the spines clicking together like quills. They sprouted from coarse, dark brown fur, warm as he sank his fingertips into it. The apprentice let out a shuddering sigh and leaned his cheek into Tuco's palm. Tuco slid his hand down Hhalbor's back, and the man arched under his touch, leaning into him. Tuco could taste the storm of his desire on the air as surely as he could taste the rain on his tongue.

"You can touch me," Hhalbor breathed in amazement, and Tuco stripped away the makeshift apprentice robes that were all the spined man could use to clothe himself. He had not seen Hhalbor naked before. The man was leanly muscled, almost skinny, but the thicket of spines sprouting from his shoulders, neck, and the backs of his arms gave him the appearance of greater bulk, as well as a dangerous wildness that Tuco longed to answer. The dark brown fur spread farther than his spines, layering his chest and belly, thinner around his erection, which jutted already thick and proud between them. Tuco slid his fingers gently down that pole, so hot with need that he was surprised the rain didn't steam away from it.

Carefully, so as not to tear them, he tried to extricate himself from the fine clothes he'd brought from the Abyss, lamenting the absence of a valet to help him properly remove them. With his bulk, he couldn't manage to remove his spiked elbows and shoulders from the finely tailored sleeves, and so he knelt on the roof and told Hhalbor, "Undress me."

Shaking with excitement, desire, and no doubt a bit of chill from the rain, the apprentice did so. Twice, Tuco thought, he almost came just from the thrill of running his fingers over Tuco's arms and shoulders, but he managed to control himself. He looked up in surprise as Tuco's own shaft was revealed--rapidly stiffening once released from its cloth bindings.

"Oh, I--I thought you had two down there? When last I held myself against you..."

"I can. Would you like me to?" Tuco asked pleasantly.

"No, I fear one alone might be more than I could handle. But there are no scales there. What if I--"

He broke off, and Tuco shuddered at the ecstasy of his cock changing to fit his partner's desires: the skin bulged, forming rings around it, smooth ridges that became red, glossy and hard as his scales, tapering to a point that bobbed in the storm, drooling raindrops mixed with preseed. Hhalbor reached out and touched it gingerly, as though expecting it to be hot as a stove, and Tuco let out a low rumble of pleasure; he had lost no sensation to this change. "I'm going to fuck you now, Hhalbor," he said, and lightning struck not far behind him, turning the rooftop brilliant white for a moment.

Hhalbor nodded up at him, chewing on his lower lip. "Don't grab the antlers though," he said. "Everyone talks about how they want to grab the antlers."

Tuco crouched, the rain pelting across his wide back, and lifted Hhalbor up with both hands at his waist, carrying him out into the brunt of the storm. The apprentice stiffened in his grasp as he was raised into the air, but his weight was nothing to Tuco. He held Hhalbor aloft and nestled his tip against Hhalbor's ring, waiting for the man to relax. Spines prodded against his shaft, but could not harm him. Hhalbor was tense, clenching, and so Tuco lowered him slowly, providing just the slightest pressure, enough to coax him into opening gently. And open he did, admitting Tuco's cock little by little into him. As he spread around Tuco's girth, Tuco could tell by the shuddering of his breath and the awed stare in his eyes that he had never been taken before. Tuco let him experience it slowly, at his own pace, but fed him little threads of lust, desire, and pleasure that no mortal lover could have sparked; he had no more than half-hilted in the man before Hhalbor's thick erection jumped and spat its white excitement into the rain. The apprentice moaned and clutched at Tuco's chest as he came, but Tuco was not done with him, so he fed lust back into him just as he'd done before with Pike, and Hhalbor clung to him with renewed ardor.

When at last Tuco was fully planted within Hhalbor, he flexed his shaft, and the stag-headed man threw back his head and cried out his pleasure into the storm, drowned out as lightning struck again, illuminating the two of them standing on the roof, joined in desire. They rutted in the rain, first standing, and then when Hhalbor began to shiver from the cold, Tuco lay back on the roof and held the apprentice against his warm chest, pinning him in place as his hips thrust into him. He rolled him over into the pile of admittedly wet clothes, but in time, Hhalbor seemed to warm again, and clutched at Tuco's arms as Tuco rocked into him, realizing only too late that the man's spines were probably filling his clothes full of holes. Tuco boomed out his pleasure to the storm as he climaxed, filling Hhalbor with his heat, and the storm answered with thundercracks of its own.

When he felt Hhalbor's shivering resume, he gently pulled out of him, ignoring the moans and pleas for another round--he'd been too eager to rekindle the man's lust, he reflected, and wondered how long such an effect would persist.

As he had feared, his fine clothes were completely perforated by Hhalbor's spines, and it took some effort to disentangle them. But he managed to dress Hhalbor back in his own clothes, at least, and as the storm waned, they went to stand at the edge of the roof, looking out over the valley. The moon was emerging beyond the clouds far to the east, and it glittered on the river below. Where they stood, though, a light rain still fell, and the abbey wall met the sheer cliff face of the mountainside, shrouded in precipitation and mist far below.

"I'm so glad," Hhalbor breathed, leaning against Tuco's side. "You've no idea how much I've longed to be touched by..." He trailed off, staring past Tuco.

"What is it?" Tuco turned, and saw the light of a lantern coming up the stairs to the roof. His hands clenched into fists. "Does anyone else come up here?"

Hhalbor stumbled backward from the roof edge, his spines lifting all down his back. "No!" he whispered. His face had gone white. The two of them cast about for someplace to hide, but the roof offered no shelter.

"They can't do anything to me," Tuco said, gritting his teeth as the lantern light grew brighter. "Not anymore."

Monks hurried out of the stairwell onto the rooftop, and pointed toward Tuco and Hhalbor with cries of, "There they are!"

Brother Gabriel pushed his way past the others, his eyes wild and furious. "Cornered at last!" His voice echoed across the roof and was answered by distant thunder. "Your prayer, Cantor Jacobs!"

Tuco recognized the short little man who had been the chanter at recent masses. He had shaggy arms and legs like those of a bear, but was otherwise little changed. Now in one brown-furred hand, he held aloft a silver crucifix, and his bell-like voice rang out in the fading storm. "Lux mundi!"

A light whiter and more brilliant than any Tuco had ever seen blazed away from the crucifix, turning the rooftop brighter than noonday. Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong in that light: it was not warm, but hard and cold-edged, the color of hypothermia, the shape of a migraine. It hammered into him; he closed his eyes but could see it just as brightly, and it seemed to pierce him with a million blunt needles. He felt it in his brain, in his stomach, in his heart, in every muscle. He slumped where he stood, his body suddenly feeling too weak to hold upright.

"Good." Tuco could hear the smirk in Brother Gabriel's voice. "You there. Apprentice... Hhalbor, is it not?"

"Yes, sir," came Hhalbor's timid voice.

"This creature. You helped him hide from us."

"N-no, your worship. I--I fled. He pursued me."

"For quite some time, it would seem. You must be exhausted from running around and around the rooftop."

"He tried to seduce me, your worship."

A silence in the brilliant light. "And did he succeed?"

"I serve the Almighty, not the Abyss."

The footsteps of Brother Gabriel came closer. Tuco squinted in the light, but still could see nothing. He was helpless, blinded. "You repudiate the darkness, then?" Brother Gabriel's voice was hard as polished marble. "Show me."

Through the intolerable light, Tuco could just make out the shape of Hhalbor stepping toward him, an antlered blur with sad, frightened eyes. The apprentice put his hands on Tuco's stomach. He pushed hard.

And behind Tuco, there was nothing but rain and empty air. He fell, his stomach twisting, the terrible light a blazing star above him.