Chapter Seventeen: Asmodeus

Chapter Seventeen - Asmodeus

The royal harem, a gilded cage of meticulously cultivated diversions, typically thrummed with a languid, cloying heat and the practiced whispers of pleasure. But tonight, a dissonant stillness gripped the air, sharp as a honed blade. It was a tension that didn't merely exist; it actively suffocated, curdling the perfumed haze with the raw, lethal power emanating solely from him.

Around him, exquisite demons, their skin slick with glistening oils, huddled together in the shadows, their forms sculpted for sin. The Lilim, with hair like spun silk and lips stained berry-red, usually beckoned him with languid smiles. These smiles, crafted for pleasure and conquest, he had stripped from them.  Before him, the colossal onyx bath, steaming with perfumed waters, lay untouched – its seductive invitation lost in the palpable dread that choked them all. Their fear was a dull, irritating hum, a failure to anticipate his mood, to soothe him. A chorus of terrified whimpers from a handful of succubi, who dared to approach the chaise with hesitant, trembling hands, quickly stifled as Asmodeus's cold, inquisitive gaze swept over them. They melted back into the shadows, their bravado extinguished by his glacial contempt, leaving only the cloying, mocking scent of their unspent allure in the heavy air.

“Worthless.” His voice, a low growl that vibrated through the very foundations of the Malsheem, made the fine silks on the chaise shiver. A raw surge of frustration made his muscles ache. He swatted a stray piece of fruit from his chest, the delicate peach splattering against a nearby obsidian pillar like a burst organ. “All of you. Pathetic failures at your purpose.”

Basileus, ever the precise one, moved with practiced grace beside the basin of rosewater. The boy was skilled, certainly. He picked up a fresh silk to dab at the beads of sweat on Asmodeus’s brow, his touch light, unobtrusive. “Your Majesty has been… displeased, it seems.” The tone was carefully neutral, a silken thread of placation. 

Displeased? An understatement.

Asmodeus’s head snapped up, his gaze sweeping over Basileus's form, inspecting him as if dissecting a particularly fine specimen. He noted the sheen of sweat on the boy’s pale skin, the slight tremor in his hands, the way his slender throat pulsed with a frantic beat. His own blood stirred, a dark, possessive heat low in his belly, a chilling echo of the hunt. 

"Displeased?" he hissed, the word a razor’s edge. "My future, my very reign, has been irrevocably tarnished by this… betrayal!. Her light, the celestial grace that would have bound the Infernal throne to the Heavens, to my will, gone!" He slammed a fist against the polished bone frame, the chaise groaning under the force. The obsidian, cold and unyielding, cracked beneath his knuckles, a hairline fracture spider-webbing across the dark surface, mirroring the fissure in his control. His anger, a potent vintage, he allowed to steep, savoring its bitter depths, for even his fury was a testament to his singular, unmatched will.

Basileus’s slender frame stiffened imperceptibly, a flinch so subtle it was almost swallowed by the oppressive air. Yet, his mask of practiced deference never slipped. Asmodeus observed it all: the faint tremor in the boy’s posture, the sudden, desperate focus in his eyes. This was not merely fear, but a promising, calculated compliance that stirred a flicker of dark satisfaction in Asmodeus’s gut, a taste of dominion. His wrath, when riled was a force of Infernal nature, a whisper of imminent annihilation. Gadreel’s betrayal had been paid for in blood and gore. The congealing tapestry of crimson on the harem floors shimmering under the dim light like spilled rubies, offered to the altar of their king’s rage, seemed to pulse with a malevolent light of their own.

"Majesty," Basileus murmured, stepping back, his hands clasped before him in a gesture of profound submission. His voice was a quiet rasp, imbued with a carefully manufactured ignorance. "I confess my sin. I don’t understand the worth of the loss you suffered, the queen’s light was fading even upon her arrival. You yourself observed it." 

He cannot grasp it. 

“Gadreel…” The name, once spoken with affection, felt like a curse upon his lips, a bitter acid. He snatched a nearby goblet, its gold cool and yielding in his grip. With a surge of pure, violent contempt, he squeezed. The precious metal shrieked, buckling, then violently imploded, collapsing inward with a satisfying crunch. Crimson wine and warped, glittering gold shards rained onto the slippery stone beneath his feet. His gaze, indifferent to their fear, flickered to the cowering concubines, who instinctively huddled closer, their terror a palatable perfume. "That greedy fool!"

The truth, stark and vile, crystallized in Asmodeus’s mind: Gadreel, not content with his exalted station, had dared to covet. He’d envied Benzosia’s place at his side, and sought to dim the very light that made her valuable to him. It was a betrayal. And a gross miscalculation on my part. He surged to his feet, a caged beast unleashed once more. His vast, terrible obsidian wings erupted, tearing at the static air, flaring with an uncontrolled fury that twisted the flickering lamplight into monstrous shadows. These spectral forms writhed and danced on the walls, mimicking tormented souls, drawing the very heat from the room and replacing it with a bone-deep chill that made the succubi in the corners shiver and whine.

Basileus kept his gaze carefully on the floor, watching the crimson droplets spread. "The queen is still... your Morningstar," he murmured, the words a carefully measured balm. "She remains the unparalleled vessel for your heir, the mother of the undisputed claim to the Infernal throne. As such, her value is undeniable, my King." Basileus's voice, carefully measured, offered a subtle correction, a balm to the fury. "Even without her celestial light, My Lord, she remains useful."

He does not understand. Of course he didn’t. Basileus, for all his keenness, was only a demon after all, incapable of comprehending the true depths of Asmodeus’s own brilliant, wicked orchestrations. He wasn't merely a king; he was a grand strategist, a manipulator of patterns spanning eons, ensuring that only what served his will flourished. He clenched his fists, a faint tremor running through him, a phantom limb aching with the loss of what could have been.

"She was a perfect vessel for my purpose!" Asmodeus's voice ripped through the opulent chamber, raw and tearing reality. "The reason I held back from siphoning her light, her celestial grace, was to pass into my son, binding Heaven itself to my bloodline! A celestial heir with undisputed claim to both realms, a unified throne under my absolute reign—a feat not even Lucifer could attain! But now—" His voice broke, a profound, unadulterated rage that clawed at the very air. "Now she can birth only a creature of Hell, a child with no ties to the Celestial heavens! A monument to my thwarted will! A bastard of my purpose!" The thought of the celestial heir—a child with undisputed claim to both realms, a unified throne under his absolute reign—burned in his mind like a phantom limb, a dream lost to Gadreel's petty jealousy.

He clenched his fists, a faint tremor running through him. The thought of the celestial heir, a child with access to the heavens, one who would easily spread his corruption through the tedious Triad, a unified throne under his absolute reign—a feat not even Lucifer could attain—burned in his mind like a phantom limb. The very concept of his glory being diminished, of his grand design being circumvented, was an intolerable affront.

“The Morningstar bloodline is an invaluable resource, a key to absolute dominion.” Asmodeus’s voice, a low rumble, filled the void, laced with the casual arrogance of one who saw beings as mere components in his grand design. “Lucifer and his siblings boast rare parentage among our kind; their mother was Asherah, a goddess in the old times. Our father siphoned her divinity, as he did with all of his children’s, but the blood of two gods still flows through Benzosia’s veins. As such she is a conduit to power, Basileus, not merely a means to an heir.”

Basileus's slender form, so artfully presented, so poised, drew Asmodeus's eye. The boy's lips parted slightly, breath catching in a faint, seductive gasp as Asmodeus’s gaze lingered, inspecting him as if assessing a new, exquisite toy. A primal hunger coiled in Asmodeus’s gut, dark and proprietary. His body tightened, craving. He imagined twisting Basileus’s perfect form, not into pain, but into an exquisite, utter submission; remolding his will, possessing his very essence, until the boy’s devotion was a seamless extension of Asmodeus’s own boundless power. The air thickened with unspoken promises of domination, a heady musk of absolute control that was more potent than any physical heat. He leaned closer, drinking in the boy’s scent, a sharp, intriguing counterpoint to the cloying sweetness of the harem.

“If it is a child with strong divine blood you desire,” Basileus began, his voice a silken insinuation, “then why not simply seek out other sources of such potency? Ancient, dormant lines, perhaps? Or nascent divinities, untethered by prior allegiances?”

“Goddesses are scarce these days,” Asmodeus scoffed, a dismissive flick of his wrist. “Not many of the old pantheons survived the rise of Christianity. And even those who did exist, their power is fleeting, insignificant compared to my own. I do not wish for my heir to be a god, Basileus. I will be the one to unite the throne of Heaven and Hell, a singular, unrivaled dominion.”

A languid smile, chilling in its calculation, touched Asmodeus’s lips. He reached out, not for Basileus, but for a delicate, crystalline vial resting on a nearby table. It contained a shimmering, iridescent liquid, the color of captured starlight. Asmodeus swirled it idly, the liquid clinging to the glass like fine oil. “To siphon divinity requires either blood ownership or godhood, as you so shrewdly observed. But there is a third path.” He met Basileus’s gaze, a predatory gleam in his sapphire eyes. “One that predates the Titans. One that demands a unique offering, a precise alchemical process.” He paused, allowing the weight of his words to settle. “It would involve the meticulous extraction of a divine spark from a living deity, a process that requires absolute control, impeccable precision, and a vessel of unimaginable purity to contain it without shattering.”

Basileus’s breath hitched, his eyes widening. “A living god, My Lord?”

“Indeed. An old god, perhaps. One forgotten, but not entirely faded. Or a nascent divinity, untethered by ancient oaths.” Asmodeus’s gaze drifted to the great onyx bath, its steaming surface suddenly appearing less inviting, more like a crucible. He then let his eyes sweep over the cowering, beautiful forms of the harem, each one a potential sacrifice, before settling back on Basileus. "And it requires a conduit, Basileus. A hand both capable and utterly devoted." He tapped the vial against his chin, the soft clink echoing in the unnerving quiet. “Find me such a list. Goddesses, gods, nascent divinities. Anything that could serve as a source. And understand, Basileus, this is not merely a task. It is a path. A path to a power greater than any I have yet wielded. A path to securing my ultimate conquest.”

A dangerous, feral light ignited in Basileus’s eyes. He dropped to one knee, his head bowed, but Asmodeus noted the tremor in his shoulders, the barely contained excitement. "It shall be done, My Lord. I will scour every forgotten tome, every shadowed corner of the realms. Your will shall be done. And I will ensure it is a path to a greater conquest."

Asmodeus smiled, a slow, predatory stretch of his lips. Basileus’s slight tremor affirmed his excitement, a promising sign of his future Herald’s zeal. He ran a hand through Basileus’s golden hair, a proprietary gesture. The boy, for all his cunning, was still a creature of pure, unadulterated ambition. And that made him delightfully pliable. "I would show my gratitude in ways you’d most appreciate." He grabbed Basileus’s arm and yanked him down fully, lips clashing in a frenzy of a kiss, rough, deep and wet, the way he most preferred.

The sudden scent of jasmine, cloying and out of place, pierced the moment. “My King,” a voice purred, sultry and undeniably female.

Asmodeus broke the kiss with a sharp, annoyed pull. He turned his head, annoyance prickling, only to find himself staring at Benzosia. He scrambled to sit up fully, a rare flicker of surprise at her sudden, unbidden presence. Beautiful. Even without her light she was more radiant than anything in this damned realm- even him. He took in her flushed face, her too-bright eyes, and then, the tell-tale slight tremor in her smile. Basileus's soft click of disapproval beside him had him looking closer, dissecting the image. The eyes were wrong. Too vacant. Too eager. This was a Succubus, a mere harem attendant, playing a dangerous game to win his attentions, mimicking his queen.

“I am your willing slave, my king.” The succubus advanced, her hips swaying with an over-practiced mimicry of Benzosia's grace, her voice a syrupy sweet echo that grated on Asmodeus’s nerves.

“I love you.” At some point, her devotion had become a lie. Benzosia’s disgust of who he was overcoming the love he had nurtured within her all those centuries before. He’d been surprised to discover he resented its loss.

A summer’s day in Stygia would bloom before his true Queen ever submitted so thoroughly, so mindlessly. The awareness soured his mood, turning the sweet victory to bitter ash in his mouth. Her insolence, her pathetic attempt at imitation, was an affront to his possessiveness, to his dominion.

“Get rid of her, Basileus.” His voice was flat, devoid of emotion, a dangerous calm that held the weight of absolute command. “Then we shall continue.”

Without hesitation, Basileus lunged for the succubus. His fist snapped her head to the side, a sickening crunch that echoed in the luxurious chamber. She dropped to her knees, reducing her to a mewling heap on the ground. Basileus pummeled her relentlessly, his blows precise, brutal, and utterly devoid of mercy.

Asmodeus let out a deep sigh, a sound of profound disappointment rather than satisfaction. Basileus climbed back onto his lap, awaiting praise like a good pet. “I merely meant for you to escort her out, Basileus. Now there’s blood on the floors of my bath too.”

“Apologies, my lord.” Basileus lowered his head, trying to hide the flash of excitement in his eyes. Feral little piece – I'll have to keep his leash short.

“I suppose you want a reward for being my good pet?” Asmodeus tapped Basileus’s chin with his knuckle, the boy’s breaths turning to frantic pants.

“Please, my lord…”

Hell is mine.  But he wanted, needed, more. And Basileus, for all his savage eagerness, understood. 

A sudden, sharp sound—a choked gasp, raw and unmistakable—pierced the cloying stillness. It was from the doorway. Asmodeus’s head snapped up. There, framed against the opulent arch, stood his Queen. Not the pathetic succubus who had mimicked her, but Benzosia herself. His eyes devoured her: the golden hair, slightly disheveled; the white gown, stark against the dark, blood-splashed floor; and the sheer, unadulterated horror blooming in the depths of her cyan eyes as her gaze swept from the crumpled, broken body of the succubus to Basileus, then to him. A chilling beauty. A terrible, exquisite sight that made his blood hum.

Regret, sharp and fleeting as a lover’s sigh, pierced him. Not for the violence, no. But that she had witnessed it, destroying more of her precious innocence. Yet, beneath the regret, a deeper, more twisted satisfaction coiled in his gut. Her horror was a testament. It was a visceral understanding, a wordless acknowledgement of his absolute dominion. And in her wide, terror-stricken eyes, he saw a reflection of his own unchecked power, intensified, amplified. She saw him. Truly saw him. And it was glorious.

****

Taking a breath that felt like swallowing broken glass, Benzosia stepped through the archway. The steam of the bathhouse was a physical presence, a gag of jasmine and something deeply, unsettlingly metallic that coated the back of her throat. It wasn't the clean heat of a celestial spa; it was the damp, breathing warmth of a living beast's maw. Then, through the shifting veils of mist, she saw them.

Asmodeus. Her magnificent, terrible king, poised over the splayed form of Basileus. But it was the tableau on the marble at their feet that made Benzosia’s world tear apart at the seams.

A succubus, her limbs twisted at unnatural angles, lay broken. And her face—oh, sweet, merciful heavens—her face was Benzosia’s own. It wasn’t just a body; it was a desecration of her very image. She was staring at her own corpse, a grotesque prophecy carved in bruised and violated flesh. A tremor, deep and seismic, shook her to the core. This was her future, a silent, screaming premonition of what awaited if she remained a passive doll in his infernal machinations.

This is what love looks like in hell.

Asmodeus was kissing Basileus, a rough, proprietary kiss that was less about affection and more about a brutal claiming. He held the Herald by the back of the neck, his fingers tangled in that perfect blond hair, entirely uncaring of the dead thing that wore his wife’s face at their feet. When he finally pulled back, his gaze flickered to Benzosia. No surprise. No remorse. Only a flicker of triumph and annoyance at the interruption.

“The lords have gathered and await your presence, my king.” Her voice was a raw whisper, scraped from a throat tight with silenced screams.

“Finally,” he announced, his voice a low rumble. He rose with a fluid grace, stepping over the succubus’s body with casual indifference. He paused, his hand ghosting over Benzosia’s cheek, his touch a chilling brand. His gaze scrutinizing enough to delve into the secrets she kept close guard of , secrets she would never allow him to uncover. Not the garden, not levistus, and never again her heart.

“You are looking… pale, my light. Do try to compose yourself before joining us at court.”

My light. He called her that while standing in a darkness of his own making, a darkness he invited her into every night, seeking to extinguish the very thing he named.

And then he was gone, leaving a vortex of silence and the lingering, suffocating scents of sex and death. Basileus rose, his movements sinuous, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, his blue eyes holding a cool, mocking amusement.

“He feels no remorse, does he?” The question was rhetorical, a desolate acknowledgment of the abyss that now separated her from the angel she thought she’d married. “Treating them as… as sacrifices to his whims.”

Basileus let out a low, humorless chuckle. “He sees us all as mirrors, my Queen. Some, like her,” he gestured dismissively at the body, “are shattered for his amusement. Others, like me, reflect his desires back at him. And you? You are the prize mirror, the one he keeps polished to reflect his own glory. But make no mistake, we are all just glass.”

If I am to be a mirror, I will not just reflect. I will shatter and cut.

Benzosia ignored him, the venom in his words failing to penetrate the icy resolve crystallizing around her heart. She knelt, her silk gown pooling in the sticky crimson, and gently brushed a stray lock of matted hair from her own dead face. The spine remained intact, the body unburned. A flicker of something other than despair—defiance—ignited within her. “Healers,” she called, her voice gaining a strength that surprised her, a cold command. “I require healers to tend to this woman.”

Basileus’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

“Why not?”

A beautiful incubus, who had been lurking in the shadows, his body gleaming with scented oils, dropped instantly to his knees before her. His face was a mask of desperate hope. “Majesty,” he pleaded, his voice trembling. “There are so many wounded in the harem chambers. My own sister… she… we have no one to turn to. Please, show us mercy.”

Basileus laughed again, a sharp, grating sound. “Mercy? Such a quaint notion. It does not exist here.”

Benzosia’s gaze met the incubus’s. She saw in his desperation a reflection of her own. Her voice, when it came, carried the ringing of steel forged in the Heavens, something more enduring than the Horrors of Hell

“Then today, mercy is born in Hell. For you shall have it from me.”

Basileus watched, his expression unreadable, as the incubus, whose name she learned was Lyren, led Benzosia from the bathhouse. They moved through corridors that were less passages and more arteries of the palace, the ornate walls seeming to pulse with a malevolent, unseen life. The cloying scent of incense and oils gave way to something far worse—the thick, coppery stench of blood overlaid with the sweet, sickening perfume of violated flesh.

The harem chambers were not the silken paradise of fantasy, but a charnel house. Bodies, both succubi and incubi, were strewn across divans and priceless rugs, their exquisite forms marred by a brutal, almost artistic, violence. A demoness with wings like shattered obsidian lay draped over a low table, her spine bent at an impossible angle. Another was curled in a corner, weeping silently, one delicate horn snapped clean from her skull. The scene was a grotesque tapestry woven from pain and despair, each broken body a testament to Asmodeus’s fleeting, violent displeasure.

At Benzosia’s command, Lyren had summoned the healers. They were not the celestials of her memory, who worked with light and soothing hymns. These were clerics of a darker faith, their patrons the ancient, slumbering evils that predated Hell itself. They moved with a chilling efficiency, their faces shadowed by deep hoods, their hands stained with the sigils of their dark pacts. They carried no pouches of gentle herbs, but satchels that clinked with instruments of obsidian and bone.

Benzosia watched, her stomach churning, as they set to their grim work. There was no comfort in their healing, only a brutal pragmatism. A warlock knelt beside a whimpering incubus whose arm was twisted, the bone protruding from the skin. With a low chant that sounded like grinding stones, the cleric grasped the limb and wrenched it back into place. The incubus shrieked, a high, thin sound of pure agony, before the warlock slapped a dark, viscous salve over the wound. The flesh smoked and hissed, knitting itself together with horrifying speed, leaving behind a scar that was a puckered, angry sigil against his pale skin.

This was the only mercy she could offer- not an erasure of pain, but a swift, brutal mending that left its own indelible mark.

After the bones were set and the worst of the wounds were sealed with their hissing salves, another ritual began. One of the warlocks produced a velvet bag, from which he poured a handful of small, smooth, black stones. They seemed to drink the very light from the room, impossibly dark, cold to the eye.

One by one, the clerics moved through the wounded. They held down each incubus and succubus, forcing their mouths open. "For the King's security," one of the warlocks intoned, his voice devoid of all emotion, "and the purity of his line." He dropped one of the black stones onto the tongue of a terrified succubus, holding her jaw shut until a sickening gulping sound confirmed she had swallowed it.

“What is that?” Benzosia asked, her voice a low command.

The cleric turned his hooded face towards her. “A blessing from the deep patrons, my Queen. It ensures no unwanted fruit will blossom from the King’s sport. The harem is for pleasure, not progeny.”

A contraceptive. A permanent, magical sterilization forced upon them after they had been brutalized. Gadreel had spoken true. The cold, calculated cruelty of it stole her breath.

As a cleric moved to Lyren’s sister, a demoness with eyes the color of faded violets, Benzosia acted. She stepped forward, placing a hand on the cleric’s arm. “Allow me,” she said, her voice a calm she did not feel. The cleric hesitated, then bowed his head, surrendering the cold, heavy stone into her palm.

She knelt before the trembling demoness. “Swallow,” she commanded gently. As the girl obeyed, Benzosia’s other hand, hidden in the folds of her gown, palmed a second stone from the velvet bag that lay momentarily unattended on a nearby table. The stone was unnervingly cold, a piece of oblivion in her hand. It felt like holding the death of a thousand possible futures.

With a final, chilling glance at the mended but marked bodies of the harem, Benzosia clutched the stolen stone. This was a weapon. A secret. A choice. In a place where she had been stripped of everything, she had just claimed a sliver of power over her own body, over the future of the heir Asmodeus so desperately craved. It was a terrifying, exhilarating, and utterly necessary act of treason.