Asmodeus closed his eyes before Lumina's body dropped beside him, her black legs cutting through the snow, silently gliding over the frost.
"That magic…" she whispered, all eight eyes glistening a ruby red. "It wasn't blood. It wasn't yours."
Her words caused Asmodeus to tremble, but he didn't answer.
However, Lumina's eyes remained fixated on him as if not accepting his silence.
She puffed out her cheeks, leaning closer thanks to her huge spider body. Her face pressed close to the throbbing sigil that beat along with Asmodeus's heart, sniffing it.
Sniff... then she recoiled, a spark of dark red light.
"No. Wrong, that's not... right."
She looked up at Asmodeus, who looked back with a bitter smile, his eyes clear and sincere, as if he knew. The pair gazed into each other's eyes before Vinea landed beside them with a thud.
"Asmodeus, we've wiped out their central flank completely, less than ten casualties."
Lumina still puffed out her pale cheeks, fluttering her white eyelashes in worry, before Asmodeus extended his hand and rubbed her hair, ruffling the glossy strands between his fingers with a bitter smile on his lips. "Don't worry, the sigil is mine... at least now it is."
'I cannot worry them.'
Although his magic changed during the battle, it also allowed him to understand the sigil and spell cast by the demon queen better, and now he could harness at least a fraction of this bizarre power that ca from the ice queen herself.
"Can you lend a hand to Levia? Her enemies are the strongest."
But even as he spoke, he could feel the stain on his hand.
Not pain or exhaustion. More like sothing, soone was holding his hand tenderly.
Just… a presence.
Like sothing else had looked at the battlefield with him.
And for a brief mont, it smiled.
Because the central flank collapsed, the stragglers spread between the left and right flanks, with most of them choosing the left flank, where only Levia and her shield knights fought.
—
anwhile, inside the frozen throne.
Riel's Point of View.
—
Zar'Kaleth's once beautifully sculpted interior seed disturbed. The air was still with a frigid and foul wind, snow drifting from the shattered stained glass windows. Her throne distorted and layered in fine frost, the demon queen's breath now visible.
The beauty began collapsing because of her powers.
Magic channelled from her body into the fortress walls, although still hers, but now there was sothing fierce, different in the depths... and it throbbed deep within her chest.
It was his power, ferocious and wild. The opposite of hers.
Riel wore a black and white dress, with a frilled design, a low-cut neck and A-line style. She gazed down at the kneeling demon with sharp eyes.
He was an advisor, reading the latest report on the battle while trembling from her overwhelming power and aura.
The advisor shivered on one knee, not from the cold but from her presence.
"My Queen... the enemy has halted. But they've pushed past our outer threshold. We've lost over two thousand in less than an hour.
The demon queen gazed down, a picture of calm with her emotionless face.
"I know."
Her words disturbed the advisor, stuttering, he continued. "The wind has stopped near the southern ridge. Sothing is interfering with the defensive blizzard... It's not ours anymore."
This ti, the queen scoffed and leaned her head back, closing her eyes as she curled her lips into a smile.
"It was never the blizzard. It was ."
Riel's words caused the entire room to chatter and fill with voices, so in awe and others concern with how emotionless and dull their queen acted to their situation.
"Enough, prepare a way to fight back, load the walls with the remaining demons and arm them with crossbows, and poisoned black bolts."
"Y-Yes, My queen!" The advisor trembled and saluted as the queen clapped her hands.
Her actions were a sign to clear the room—the audience was over.
Monts later, the entire castle beca still... all demons ordered and rushed to the outer walls while the demon queen walked through the abandoned icy halls alone. She touched the frost-lined columns, sensing the magic shifting.
The blizzard still raged, but it began fracturing, like cracked ice, as it reacted to sothing. It responded to the pulsing sigil inside Riel's chest, fused with her heart.
Fiery, aggressive, passionate, loving, determined...
Riel stood gazing up at the deford pillars with sharp icy spines, like fangs. Her lips curved into a faint smile as she murmured. "So it reaches even here... Your warmth."
However, there was sowhere to visit.
Her bare feet tapped on the cold floor, and with each step, she traversed the distorted hallway, reaching the war room.
The great arched doorway parted the instant Riel appeared. Her eyes flashed gold when she stepped inside—this was the heart of the keep.
Riel peered around with a faint smile, looking at the glowing crystal maps which detailed the location of Asmodeus and the various kingdoms' warriors and key points and her troop's movents in real ti. Her final elite demons, a handful of high-ranking generals, all knelt upon her appearance.
These sharp-eyed monsters, all marked by a number tattooed on their flesh with frost.
"You've done well to maintain calm, my elite."
Suddenly, with the snap of her fingertips, a series of small scrolls appeared in the air, floating to each of the elite five with the wave of her hand.
"You will not speak my na again unless I fall. Your job is to protect this fortress. Mine is to destroy the man trying to take it."
The leader, with the number 'one' etched, burned into his cheek, knelt with his arm across his chest, almost trembling with his four arms. "My Queen, you shouldn't—"
Riel ignored the general's words, cutting him off. "He's reached the gates not because you failed—but because I kept you here." She stepped forward, her foot stepping onto the general's thigh, digging into his flesh with her sharp heel.
The demons seed to realise that this was her choice and desire.
She faced them with an icy, determined gaze.
"We were never ant to sit behind walls. We were born to rule from the front. To crush with brute force!"
"Yuzuha, help wear my armour."
The only female demon, Yuzuha. Once a weak demon carrying a sliver of arachne blood, whom Riel saved during her rampages in the past before gaining sentience.
A Female, wrapped in a graceful dress/cloth style exoskeleton with sharp nails that produce black thread. Her marking a small pair of 5s on her plump ass.
"Glady, Your majesty!"
"Leave." Yuzuha hissed at the other mbers, who all grumbled but looked at the queen's resolute face and nodded, even though she was the weakest—they trusted her most.
Riel spread her arms as her ice shattered, revealing the most pristine and glossy brown skin, aty hips different from the past, her rounded hanging breasts perky and blemish-free. Then her buttocks, soft, bouncy flesh that jiggled with the slightest movents.
Yuzuha first fitted the silken black underclothes, a sleek black thong, an undershirt and then a layer of black armour that covered Riel's body. The wobble of her chest and slap of her cheeks echoed as the tal clasps sealed them tight, squeezing the at into its form. Then, a magically enhanced white silk robe wrapped over the thin leather armour.
Snap. Her fingers reached into the air, before distorting space and creating a pure white halberd, made of eternal frost nad Mythral'ra.
"My Queen... May I have the honour of placing your crown?"
Yuzuha blushed at her queen's beauty.
Not a sexual attraction but a re reverence for her saviour and what she believed to be the most beautiful creature in existence.
"Very well."
The crown sat in the centre of the room, locked in a glass case... a mixture of living frost, the beautiful shining ice changing shape as if alive, with the platinum coloured tal only found in the demon mountains able to absorb and channel mana.
Riel closed her eyes, listening to the sound of Yuzuha's exoskeleton rubbing against her skin, the tap of her feet before the cold and rumbling power of the crown flowed into her body.
"Asmodeus… you're the first man to make walk into a storm. Let's see if you're the last." she whispered to herself in an expectant tone.
—
In the end, the highest gate in Zar'Kaleth, a tall white sculpture of ice, magic and demon-steel, slowly opened with a rumbling force, causing the ground to quake. A snow-white mist poured out from the opening, as the demon queen stepped out, slowly, as if each step was precious, like she was attending her wedding, and not a battle.
Imdiately, her army parted with the shout of the demon general Lagun.
"All Hail Her Majesty! All Hail Our Queen!"
The soldiers, warped but loyal to the death, fell to one knee and began to hum a deep, distorted yet hauntingly beautiful hymn... as if praising her beauty, her power and elegance.
Riel, a graceful queen, remained silent, walking through their procession with her head held high, focused on the distant mountain.
"..." With an inaudible sigh, the blizzard shifted.
No longer wrapped around the entire territory. It condensed, intensified and enveloped Riel's body, curved around her like a wedding veil of eternal frost. The ice and snow beneath her feet flattened and spread apart, forming a natural path for the queen.
In the distance, she could see him, feel his gaze...
Asmodeus watched her with a sharp, fiery gazed, his eyes narrowed. They watched each other, away from everything, and prepared as the throbbing in their chests increased.
"Finally..." He muttered
She then answered as if in response. "I'm here."
Riel stopped at the edge of the battlefield, her cape and robes fluttering in the silent howling winds. She grips her halberd and raises it once, before slamming it down and planting it into the snow, cracking the ice beneath her in a wide radius.
Then she bellowed in a cold and clear tone.
"Let him co!"
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