Liv walked beside the horse that the Golden Git road on and rubbed her finger along her slave collar.
“How can the same shit happen to the same person twice?” she muttered.
The Golden Git looked at her. “Huh?”
Liv scowled at him. “Nothing,” she said. Then, smiling brightly, she said: “So, I don't suppose you want to tell me all of your plans, goals, aspirations, troop movements...”
The Golden Git chuckled. “If I told you anything, Liviana of Sparta, you cannot possibly hope to trust that it would be anything but a lie. Unless, of course, telling you the truth would serve my purposes. You know this – and I know this. Thus, by the unavoidable dictates of the logic that you Hellenes so tirelessly forced into the world, you would be forced to disregard everything that I say as useless. Or worse than useless. And so I suggest we cut to the end result and not even bother.”
“Do you just really like hearing yourself talk or do you want to impress me?” Liv asked, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Yes,” the ugly lizardman leading the group said.
Liv knew their names – she could meet a new squad and affix their names in her mind without a moment's hesitation. That didn't change the fact that she wasn't about to give them the consideration that it took to use them, even in her thoughts. The ugly lizardman was the ugly lizardman, she wasn't about to get him confused with the big lizardman, or the lilin.
She shot a glance back at the lilin. She was leaning half out of her saddle in an impressive feat of horsecraft, her legs hooked around the broad belly of the beast, her hand on the saddle horn as she plucked rocks from the dirt path that they trudged along. There were a lot of rocks and scant else – the Basilisk Desert had given way to the foothills surrounding the Barrier Mountains. Boulders were strewn here and there, but many of them had been shattered over the epochs of Purgatory into a fine collection of pebbles and rocks. What wasn't covered with pebbles had dirt. The only respite from the desolation were a few shoots of plant life that emerged here and there, and even that was closer to gray than green.
“Vazt,” the Golden Git said, his voice holding an edge of warning.
The ugly lizardman shrugged.
“How long has my father been working with your god?” Liv asked.
“Two years,” the Golden Git said.
Liv frowned. She did some mental math.
“It was my God's idea-” Liv could hear the capital letter there. It chilled her and she wasn't sure why, until she realized it was how Liam referred to his Christian god. “-to start the war between Sobek and New Athens. Why do you think your father sent you after Megara the Messenger in the first place?”
“He's a war god,” Liv said, shrugging. “Seemed to be enough reason.”
The Golden Git snorted. “Athena is a war god. Ares is just an infantryman who couldn't manage to seduce Aphrodite and can't stand the sight of his own blood.”
Liv bristled. The fact she had thought and felt the same thing about her father didn't change the fact that the Golden Git had no right to speak about him that way. She started to imagine how nice a golden scale coinpurse would look but then her senses screamed at her: danger. She narrowed her eyes and looked around. Elves were natural born predators. Heightened senses, vision that picked out patterns and identified them better than even humans, and minds that could remain cool and calm in the face of even sudden danger. Immortality, also, had a hand in it. When you lived forever, you could get actually good at a task, not merely acceptable, as humans considered it.
“What is it?” the Golden Git asked.
“There,” Liv said. Yes, he was a bastard and his lilin had clapped her in a slave collar, but they were so far off the beaten path that anything unfriendly they ran into was more likely to eat her than free her. Her chin jerked towards a boulder that looked like it had been sheared in half in some ancient battle. She had seen a hint of movement there. Looking close, she saw another hint.
“Vazt, Anix,” the Golden Git said.
The ugly lizardman and the big lizardman drew their swords.
The first weapon that flew from behind the boulder took Liv aback. She had expected spears. Crude ones, but spears nonetheless.
Instead, it was another rock. Not as big as the boulder, but still large enough to turn her head into mush if it contact. She sprang forward, wheeling off one palm as the rock hit the dirt where she had been standing moments before. Earth and pebbles went flying as a volley of other rocks came sailing out from behind the boulder. The two lizardmen spurred their horses into motion, moving carefully and slowly despite the pressing need of battle. The ugly one, at least, had his shield on his arm before he started moving. The big one was slower, trying to guide his horse, move forward, and get his shield off his back all at the same time.
Liv rolled her eyes, then shot forward. She sprinted across the pebbles, darting to the side to avoid other projectiles, and then brushed past the big one. Distracted by his shield, he barely realized she had his sword.
“Oi!” he shouted.
The Golden Git, though, didn't countermand her.
The ugly lizardman, seeing her making for the boulder, scowled, then swore in his native language. He swung off his horse, lifted his shield, and started forward on foot. He kept up the cursing as a rock smashed into his shield, causing the metal to dent with an ugly, unmusical sound. Liv, though, had reached the boulder and skirted around it. Behind it were-
“Ugh!”
The creatures were hideous. They looked as if some bored deity had taken chunks of animals and pressed them together without care for function, form, or fashion. Fur melded with scales, while jointed arms ended in writhing tentacles that seemed more at home with beasts from the depth of the Platonic Sea. Eyes were mismatched and often wildly out of proportion and wrong – both in placement, size and quantity. But no matter how ugly the three beasts looked, they were ferociously strong, considering they were ripping chunks out of the boulder – not picking them off the ground.
One flicked his tentacle and sent a boulder flying at Liv. Liv ducked under it and sprinted forward. Her sword plunged, tip first, into the center of the tentacled beast. The bronze bit, but sluggishly, and even with all her weight and all of her strength put into the blow, she only felt the blade sink a few inches in. Bright purple blood and orange puss spurted from the wound as she jerked backwards, whipping her sword to the side to get some of the gunk off of it. The ground between her and the beast hissed and the sword started to smoke.
“Oh wonderful,” Liv muttered.
The ugly lizardman chose that moment to save her life. He sprang from around the boulder and, with utter economy, cut into the arm of one of the other monsters at the narrowest joints. The arm hit the floor, still holding the rock that it had been about to chunk at her head.
Liv didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, ducked a fist, then slashed at a monster's face. She cut at the forehead, the cheeks, the fingers. She didn't try and go for any flashy finishing blows – she just wanted to disable the thing. The faster it was blind, deaf, and utterly maddened by pain, the better. Soon, her sword had lost the first inch of blade, the bronze crumbling away under the monster's blood. But the creature was flailing around wildly with what limbs it had left. It's good arm smashed into the side of another creature's head – pulping it with a sound not unlike a melon being dropped from a rooftop.
The ugly lizardman, she saw, had the same idea. They both stepped away from their horribly wounded enemies.
Looking at each other from across the battlefield, their eyes met.
The ugly lizardman nodded at her.
She nodded back, smiling slightly despite herself, her breath coming in short pants.
Then the big lizardman crested the boulder, holding one of the thrown chunks of rock over his head. He grinned. “My turn!” he bellowed, then threw the rock down as hard as he could. It struck the creature the ugly lizardman had wounded right in the center of their head. Said head crumpled inwards, sloshing orange blood and black, viscous goop onto the ground. The critter writhed, then hit the ground. The last one fell over – bleeding to death on the ground.
“Well,” Liv said, quietly, “That was fun.”
The Golden Git came around the boulder. “Are you insane?” he asked.
“No,” Liv said, turning to look at him.
“You disarmed one of my best men!” the Golden Git said. “And you charged an entrenched position wearing light armor, without a shield!” He shook his head. “Do you know what your father would do to me if you died?”
“No edged-” Liv started.
“They were throwing rocks!” The Golden Git bellowed at her. “That blessing doesn't matter one whit if you take a thrown boulder to the face!”
Liv smirked. “Nothing is more precious than a soldier dying for a cause.”
The Golden Git blinked. Then he frowned, his surprisingly expressive lips making the expression all the more foreboding. He wheeled his horse around, waving with one hand. “Give up the sword to Anix, slave. And never do that again.”
Liv's fingers opened of their own accord. She didn't have time to resist the urge, but once it was over, she felt the simmering anger she had been holding in check – barely – burn through her. She started to walked forward, her fists clenched. The ugly lizardman rode up beside her, snapping his teeth and cracking his tail near her nose.
“Shut the fuck up,” he snarled.
“I didn't say anything,” Liv growled.
The ugly lizardman rolled his eyes, so expressive and so strangely human that it took Liv aback. She remembered the look they had shared across the battlefield.
“Your face was speaking louder 'n anything else, you dumb chit,” he said, using the insult as casually as if he was breathing. Oddly, it made Liv feel less insulted, rather than more. “The General, he don't like it when people die who shouldn't.”
“To be fair, if I die while under his protection, Ares will shove his fist up his ass,” Liv said, sweetly.
The ugly lizardman blinked. He shook his head. “You think as twisted as the General does sometimes.”
He muttered under his breath as he started to knee his horse away, fully expecting Liv to follow him. Liv wondered if her collar would let her get far. If the Golden Git hadn't ordered her to stay by his side, then the collar wouldn't interpret her as disobeying him.
But then she looked down at the hideous monsters. She looked away, at the foothills that they had climbed to reach the Barrier Mountains. The vastness of the desert spread out there, broken only by the very faint glint of movement that showed where the basilisks that gave the desert its name moved.
She turned and hurried to catch up, leaving a hilt and a corroded blade on the ground behind her.
It would have to do, as a tomb marker for the monsters.
* * *
Liam looked out of the second story window of the small, smelly, roach-infested apartment that they hadn't so much rented as squatted in, and then shook his head. Everything spoke to him. The looks on people's faces. The hunched shoulders. The muttered conversations. The glances at the occasional patrol of guards that marched through the streets. “This is a city about to explode.”
Meg nodded. “And thanks to Maurice and his endless fuckups, I know just what an explosion looks like.”
Mary frowned, looking up from the crude map of what she knew of the city that she had drawn on the floor using some charcoal rescued from an open firepit. “The fact the artisan who made the godkiller apparently destroyed his own laboratory is not a comfort to me.”
Meg shrugged, as if to say: What can you do?
Liam shook his head and looked back out the window, watching the people walking by intently. Getting into the City of the Dead had been a nerve wracking affair. They had marched down from the valley, past the Forest of Woe, and came to the gates. They had been as impressive as the fortifications erected around Faiyum Falls – more so, in fact. Taller, wider, with better crenelations, and regularly placed rectangular towers that had heavy siege weapons permanently mounted. The fact that they were barely patrolled seemed almost ancillary to their size and their girth.
Of course, a single set of siege guns could pound them flat in a weekend.
The gate had been surrounded by a large tent city, filled with merchants. Many of them had a desperate air to them, and several were near to starving. Only a scant few had been allowed into the city, while lizardman guards patrolled the whole area with a censorious eye. Liam had seen what the scaled brutes had done to any who looked even slightly troublesome.
The four of them had come to the gates themselves and been accosted by an equal number of lizardmen guards. They had been dressed and armored in brutal, practical looking gear – leather and bronze that looked fairly uniform and covered their vitals, but little more. Their weapons had been short spears and shields, and they had demanded what Liam and his friends wanted.
Liam, fortunately, had come up with a fairly good story.
“We're here,” he said, “To make supplications to the true God of Purgatory, of course. We were sent by the Anzin tribes to pray at the temple.”
The lizardmen had muttered to one another, then sent a messenger back to some higher up. The messenger had left, returned, and Liam and his friends had been welcome into the city. Praying at the temple hadn't taken more than a few minutes, and none of the guards seemed to care what they did once they were inside.
“Ah!” Liam slapped the wall to get Meg and Mary's attentions as he saw a familiar, short form hurrying in from the crowds, dressed in a concealing robe. Tethis came to the room, panting softly as she closed the door.
“I never knew being a child would make me so invisible,” she said, adjusting the robes. They had been thick enough to conceal the fact that, for a 'child', Tethis was amazingly stacked, and the hood concealed her green skin. She still looked hot, sweaty, and disgusted. “But Mary's intelligence hasn't changed. There's a major slave market out by the front of the Palace of the God. It's not like any slave market I've seen before – they don't just use collars, and the people aren't just criminals. Whole families are there.” She shook her head. “It reminds me more of the chattel slavery you talked about, Liam.”
“It doesn't make any sense,” Meg muttered.
“Why not?” Mary asked, charcoal sketching a deeper circle around the slave markets on the map. Now that it was confirmed, she could mark it. The map was showing more and more confirmed landmarks every hour.
“Well,” Meg said, “When you occupy a city, you tend to want the citizenry to not immediately hate your guts.”
“Not if you're the Nazis,” Liam said, quietly. “Or the Assyrian Empire. Or Rome, sometimes. Let them hate, so long as they fear and all that.”
Meg frowned. “Even the Persians didn't force gods out of their temples...”
Liam lifted his eyebrows. To hear a Hellene say that? He shook his head.
“We're dealing with a deranged god,” he said. “Rules of morality are out the window.”
“Still,” Tethis said, “The prettiest and most effective slaves are brought into the palace. M-Male or female, any race.”
Liam rubbed his hands along his face. “Christ, I wish you hadn't said that.”
“Why do you say Christ?” Mary asked, her brow furrowed as she continued to scribble on the map.
“Why, er, don't I say Christ?” Liam asked. “We're both Christians.”
“No,” Mary said. “You're Christian, from Earth. I am a follower of Mary. She was, and will be, the true bringer of the messages of god. Justice, equality, suffering.” She smiled slightly. “Or do you not have that gospel on Earth?”
Liam blinked a few times. “Oh my god, I wish I had a week to sit down with you and just write down everything. Like, okay, do you know about the-” Meg, who had stood up, walked over and slapped the back of his head. He shook himself. “Not the time. Right. Plan Shitty is a-go, I suppose.”
Meg frowned. “I don't like the fact you called it that and none of us disagreed with you.”
Liam smiled, then knelt down as Tethis stepped over. She slipped a thin band of cloth around his neck, tying it tight, then touching her fingers to his skin. His skin darkened a few shades, until the cloth and his skin were nearly the same color. “If this works,” she said. “Then I'll have a sympathetic connection when they use the touchkey on the collar. I'll be able to make my own, and we can free you.” As she spoke, Meg tied a far redder cloth around Mary, whose finger touched the collar.
“I'm not going to be captured,” she said, quietly.
“Yes, but these people are raving psychopaths,” Meg said. “Better safe than sorry, right?”
Mary nodded slightly, bowing her head to Meg.
Liam stepped over and squeezed Meg's shoulder. Despite Mary's newfound conviction that this was a false god, part of him still worried that when 'Plan Shitty' went off, he'd learn that he had spent his whole life believing in and praying to a petty, amoral sociopath. It was a concern he had had a few times before, when life had been cruel and hard. But he had never before had so much contrasting evidence to worry himself over. Meg, seeing his expression, leaned in and kissed him. That kiss, that moment of connection before danger, filled Liam with a tingling warmth. His hands cupped Meg's ass and she leaned into him, molding her body to his. Her breasts were firm against his chest, her nipples hard enough to cut glass. Liam felt the rest of his body responding and Meg had to push him back before he kissed her more.
“Later,” she whispered. “After we kick ass.”
Liam nodded. Smiled.
Then he turned and he and Mary walked out of the apartment and into the city streets.
They walked together in silence for a time before Mary asked: “So, are you going to marry her”?
Liam looked at her.
Mary shrugged. “You seem to love her a great deal.”
Liam's jaw worked. He looked down at his hands and he laughed. “Is it insane that the main reason why I have delayed is because I, I... I want her to meet my Mom first?” He smiled slightly. “I love my family and my friends. I miss them a great deal. If it weren't for Meg and Tethis and Liv, I think I'd have gone crazy here just out of pure loneliness.” He sighed. “God, I hope Liv is okay.”
“Mary protects,” Mary said, smiling.
“Okay, I gotta ask: Why are you named Mary, if you worship Mary?” Liam paused. “Actually, wait, a load of people in my world name their children Jesus. Though, they pronounce it Hay-zoos.”
Mary smiled. “Well, to be fair, I pronounce Mary as Mary.”
Liam blinked, cocking his head. “That sounds the same.”
Mary reached out, touching his shoulder gently. “Liam, you are using a translation spell,” she said as if speaking to a child, her lips having a ghost of a smile.
Liam closed his eyes and wondered who had taught her to use that tone of voice with him – Meg or Tethis. “Right. Right. What language are you speaking?”
“Koinapunic,” she said, her tail lashing from side to side.
Liam laughed. “I don't even know what that could possibly derive from. No wonder I'm missing pronunciation.”
Mary smiled. Then, quickly, she drew her hand back and looked away. Liam noticed that her red cheeks seemed slightly deeper red. He remembered how just being near her, smelling her, had tweaked his lusts to a low simmer – he wondered if lilin had the same instinct when they touched others. He sighed. It would explain why they had been banished to Purgatory by fundamentalist Christians in the third century AD. A race of all female sex goddesses whose very touch could arouse someone to a furious fuck-frenzy?
Huh, he thought. I wonder if it works on straight women. Or asexual men. Or gay men! Oh! Or asexual women!
“So, what is the Church like back on Earth?” Mary asked, pausing as she and he waited at a cross street for a trio of heavily laden carts to pass by, their wheels kicking up a fine cloud of dust in the air. Each cart looked filled to the brim with spears and swords. Liam tried to not think about how many metalworkers this city had, workers who were all toiling to arm a false god and his army of barbarian lizardmen. Instead, he murmured to Mary,“Well, it all started with the Ecumincal Councils...”
Liam continued as they made their way further and further into the City of the Dead Gods. It took them the better part of an hour to finally reach the heavily patrolled inner sections of the city, near the palace. The palace itself was just as Tethis' scouting had described it: shockingly austere. It was merely a large stone building with an open front patio that was supported by heavy stone pillars and filled with guards. The windows were made of glass that glittered in the morning sunlight – and suddenly Liam realized it wasn't austere at all. Those windows were the true wealth on display. They weren't the utterly smooth, perfectly clear windows of Earth. Each one had tiny imperfections, even when seen from a distance.
Each one had been hand crafted.
The courtyard before the palace looked broad and flat, with a low dais about the size of an American football field taking up the majority of space. In the center of that dais was a newer wooden platform, ramshackle and thrown together. On that platform stood a collection of bedraggled men and women and some children, while a burly lizardman with a large whip walked along the front, shouting out to the crowd – mostly prosperous looking people calling out bids. A whole string of men were sold for a few gold coins to a valkyrie merchant, the lizardman auctioneer gesturing them off the block. Liam tried to not feel sick. He looked at Mary, who looked both sad and furious at the same time, her tail lashing from side to side.
“This used to be the debate forum,” she hissed, quietly. “Where anyone who could vote could come to bend the ear of the Free Lord.”
Liam nodded. “So, are you ready?”
Mary sighed and turned to him. “Yes.”
Liam licked his lips, glanced back at the slave auction, then at her. “You're sure this will work?”
“Getting cold feet, Mister Vanderbilt?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Well, yes,” Liam said, smiling nervously. “There's a reason we called this Plan Shitty – we don't have many other options if we want to actually get inside the palace. But we are relying on invading soldiers to be moral, when even cops on Earth don't take it seriously.”
“It will work,” said Mary. “The sentence fits the crime - we don't need them to be moral, just greedy. That's why the stakes need to be so high..”
“Right.” Liam rubbed his hands together, then reached out. He grabbed Mary's wrists and shoved them over her head. She gasped and flushed as he leaned forward and licked her neck. His cock surged to life, hardening, then straining against his robes as he pressed himself fully to Mary's body. Her breasts were smaller than Meg's, smaller than Tethis' even, but she was so pliant and soft. Her smell and her taste filled him with fire as he bit down on her neck, growling, his hands sliding from her wrists to her shoulders. He grabbed her robes and tore them apart, exposing her delicious breasts to him, save for her straps.
He could taste her sweat and her eagerness and-
And he barely managed to hiss. “M-Mary. Struggle!”
Mary, who had been standing there with an open mouthed gape, blinked. Then she squirmed. “N-No, stop!”
Liam tugged one of her straps down and those breasts bounced free. Perfectly shaped, brilliantly red, and so perky that he swore he could wedge a pencil between them and have it stick, they were too tempting to turn down. Liam leaned forward, sucking roughly on one ruby red nipple. Mary bit her lip hard to keep from moaning, then managed, at last, to scream.
“Stop! Rape! Help!” She slapped at his head, weakly at first, then harder. Liam drew back, then clapped his hand over her mouth. From the excited blaze in her eyes, and the way her tongue swirled against his palm, she wanted it. Liam couldn't think of anything but her wanting it.
Then the guard walked around the corner.
For all the fact that he was six feet tall, scaled and had a long tail, a crest of feather-like scales along his scalp and was colored bright blue, the character that the lizardman guard reminded Liam of most... was Barney Fife from that old TV show. He looked relaxed, slightly incompetent, and rather than charging forward to break up what was clearly a rape, he just ambled forward.
“Thissssss man bothering you?” he hissed, his accent thick even through the translation spell.
Mary shot the lizardman a furious look, her fingernails digging into Liam's scalp. Liam drew back from her and turned to run, though he deliberately went as slowly as he could while still looking like he was trying to run away. The blunt edge of the sickle-sword that the lizardman had strapped to his hip wrapped around Liam's neck and casually pushed him to the side, smashing him into the alleyway wall across from Mary.
Liam groaned, his eyes closing.
“Rape isssss punisssshment by ssssslavery,” the lizardman said, grinning brightly. “Unlessssss you hassss a way to make me look the other way?”
Liam blinked.
And felt a rush of cold shoot along his spine.
He had brought his coin purse. As naturally as breathing. He had a good fifteen or so gold coins in there – quite an amount. He kicked himself, hard. How could he explain the purse and also not bribe the guy? The lizardman grinned at him.
“No pursssse?”
Liam looked past him at Mary, trying to glare at her. “Let me go, I done nothing wrong!” he said. “Lilin bitches are made to get dicked, we all know it!”
“Yesss, true,” the lizardman said, shrugging. “But, you know, lawssss and ssssuch.”
“Fiend!” Mary exploded, then charged forward. She slapped at Liam's face as he was pinned against the wall. He felt her tail caress his side for a moment, then a dizzying sense of relief filled him as he felt the weight of his coin purse leave him.
“Hey!” The lizardman snapped. “No asssssaulting a prissssoner without my permissssion!”
Mary flushed. “H-He called me a bitch!”
The lizardman scowled at her.
Then he looked at Liam, then at Mary. A light went on in his greedy, bright red eyes. Liam felt his heart sink. He looked at Mary, trying to tell her to run with his eyes.
It didn't work.
As they both stood behind the auction block, Mary's hands tied behind her back, Liam whispered. “I'm so sorry.”
“Just shut up and be glad your lover thinks ahead.”
“Shut up, slaves,” the lizardman who was attaching collars to the people brought up to the auction block most recently said. He stepped over to the two of them, casually snapping the slave collars around their necks. He touched a small touchkey made of crystal and wood to their necks and Liam felt a magic surge rush through his body. He closed his eyes and prayed to God that Tethis had gotten the pulse from both him and Mary. Then he opened his eyes and saw the slave master eying them.
“Hmm,” the slave master said. His hand reached down and he casually tugged Liam's robes up, exposing his cock and balls. Scaled hands fondled him and Liam felt shame burn through him as the lizardman hissed quietly, “Big everywhere. You fuck good?”
Liam didn't even want to know. “I, uh-”
“Answer!” the slave master snapped.
Liam coughed. “Uh, m-my girlfriend thinks so.”
“She make much sssscreaming?” The slave master grinned at him, letting his hand drop from Liam's balls. “You fill her up, yesss?”
Liam's cheeks were so red that he swore he had to look like Mary.
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
“Good. Palace duty,” the slave master said. “And you?” He looked at Mary and licked his lip. “God say lilin have palace duty automatically.” He grinned broadly, the expression made even more nasty by how many very sharp teeth he had. He gestured and pointed towards the palace. “Go in, find head slave, she tell you what do.”
Liam and Mary walked off, Mary's spine as straight as if it had been drawn with a ruler. Her tail was perfectly still. They stepped between the rows of guards who had made any infiltration save by this route impossible and came into the main lobby of the palace.
Once sure he wouldn't be overheard, Liam leaned over and whispered in Mary's ear. “I'll do my best to protect you.”
Mary glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Liam could see her measuring him. Then, subtly, she nodded as they entered into the main lobby. Liam knew that his first job was surveillance and intelligence gathering, but it took him a few moments to just touch his collar and try to feel what it was like. Liv had said that collars didn't actually do anything until an order was given, and Liam was sure that was right. It didn't change the fact that every nerve in his body screamed to get it off him. He drew his finger back, not wanting to risk tugging on the thing. Instead, he forced himself to look around.
The palace was built around the central lobby-room. Two wings spread to either side, while two staircases wound along the inner rim of the room, heading to the second floor. A vast, glittering chandelier of crystals was hung suspended over the room, catching and refracting the light from outside so that the interior as bright and well lit as the noonday sun. Slaves of every race – most of them female – hurried here and there, directed by a tall, stern lilin woman.
Liam and Mary walked to her just as she finished telling a pair of burly, handsome elven men to head to the banquet hall. The two elves bustled off and she turned to eye Liam and Mary.
“Two new slaves?” she asked. At their nods, she sighed and rubbed her temple. “Damn it all.”
Liam coughed. “Uh, what's wrong, mistress?”
“Don't call me mistress,” she snapped. “My name is Muttunbaal – you can call me Mutt.” She grinned. “And I'm just as much a slave as you are. And I am just as baffled as you are. This mansion is big, but it doesn't need fifty eight goddamn slaves. It needs forty, at most.” She shook her head, rubbing her hands together. “Ah, I don't know. Go clean the second story. Just look busy and come back to me later.”
Liam blinked. “Do you know why they're getting so many slaves, Mutt?”
Mutt shook her head. “Not a clue. But God doesn't like telling slaves – even me – what goes on in his head.” She sighed. “As you are new, I will tell you this: do not go into God's chambers unless he calls for you.”
“How can we-” Mary started.
“They're the rooms that glow bright blue,” Mutt said.
Liam glanced at Mary.
Mary arched her eyebrow.
Together, they set off and got to work. The second story of the house was filled with offices and bedrooms. The offices had been converted hastily into bedrooms, desks covered with cushions, papers stacked in piles in the corner. Lounging in most of the rooms were pairs of quartets of lizardmen and lizardwomen. Liam was actually a tad shocked to see the first lizardwoman as she walked out of one of the bedrooms wearing a loincloth and nothing else, her immense scaled breasts bouncing slightly as she stretched her arms over her head. His mouth had opened in shock as the lizardwoman looked at him, grinned, and raised the crest of feather-scales along her head.
“You like what you see, mammal?” she asked.
“I, uh-” Liam stammered.
“Tough,” she said, slapping at his hand and walking away, swaying her hips from side to side.
Liam shook his head.
“Why were you so surprised?” Mary asked him later as they cleaned an office. In truth, Liam was rifling through papers. So far he hadn't found anything but the old Free Lord's paperwork. Tax collection forms, census notes, correspondence with other rulers of Purgatory; all of it rendered woefully irrelevant by this false god and his army.
“Huh?” Liam looked back at Mary, who really was cleaning along the window with a feather duster.
“When that lizardwoman walked by, you seemed shocked. Yes, women only make up a quarter of the army, but-”
“Oh, no, it was her titties,” Liam said, shaking his head.
“...titties?”
Liam coughed. “Breasts.”
“No, I know what titties are,” Mary said, putting one hand on her hip as she pursed her lips at him. “I just didn't expect someone who respects women like you to use that word.”
Liam blinked. “What?”
“It's...” She paused. “Disrespectful. Isn't it?”
Liam shrugged. “I mean, I guess it can be?” He shook his head. “But Meg loves it when I talk about how great her tits are. She thinks it’s cute.”
“Is that lizardwoman Meg?”
“Noooo-” Liam laughed. “You're right. Sorry. What's okay for someone might not be okay for others.” He bowed to her. “Consider myself scolded.”
Mary smiled slightly.
“Now, as for why I was shocked by her bazooms,” Liam said, standing up.
Mary threw the duster at his head, laughing despite herself. Liam laughed as well, grabbing the duster from the air. “As I was saying, I was shocked by her gazongas-” More laughter from Mary. “-because she's a reptile. Reptiles don't nurse their young with milk. They don't have mammary glands.”
“And are these lizardfolk exactly like Earth reptiles in all other ways?” Mary asked.
Liam blinked a few times.
“You know, Mary, have I ever told you I find intelligence highly attractive?”
“You're also in a relationship with another woman,” she said, shaking her head and holding her hand out. He placed the feather duster in her palm.
“Do you know what Meg said when Tethis started to, uh, show an interest in me?” Liam asked.
Mary turned away, shaking her head.
Liam cocked his head and looked down at Mary's firm, tight, heart-shaped ass. She was wearing the leather straps and only the leather straps now. The collar fit in with the rest of her get-up alarmingly well, now that he thought about it. But what he was eying now wasn't the slave collar. It was the thin strip that almost vanished between her firm ass-cheeks. His tongue slid along his lips as he remembered the way she had tasted.
“Let me watch,” he said, quietly.
Mary snapped her head back to look at him.
Liam grinned, putting his hand on his heart. “Honest. Christ strike me down if I lie.”
Mary snorted. “Mary said there's a special place in hell for adulterers, you know.”
“Wasn't she married when she had her virgin birth?” Liam asked.
Mary's cheeks flushed. “T-That's different!”
“Totally,” Liam said, sounding amused. “I'm just being annoying.”
This time, the feather duster hit him in the face.
* * *
Night came – as it always did – with a crash. Mary and Liam both noticed it only in that the lights within the mansion flickered slightly before stabilizing, and the window they were wiping down suddenly showed a dark sky.
“Well,” Mary said, “We've got a map of the place. We know where God's room is. Now, we just need to get out, right?”
“Mmhmm,” Liam said. “Why do you think we've been cleaning this window for the past hour?”
He jerked his chin.
From one of the roofs of a building about half a mile away from the palace came a flash. It blinked and winked at the two of them for a few moments as Liam's brow furrowed. The translation spell that Meg had cast on him and kept renewing with their continual contact was good. But it wasn't so good that it could translate a specialized language of flashes and darkness, used by New Athens to communicate with the City of the Dead Gods using their great lighthouse. He h'd had to memorize that in the frantic few days they had while scouting out the city.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Meg's in position, and-” He stopped. “El Em gone?”
“Those are letters?” Mary asked.
“Lizardmen gone,” Liam whispered. He picked up a silver desk mirror that he had quietly stolen from one of the bedrooms and flashed a message back to Meg.
Plenty here.
Mary stepped to the door, looking out at the hallway beyond the room, her tail stilled with the tension. Liam nodded to himself – a lookout. Good idea.
Meg flashed back.
Only two at gate, two at other gate. No patrols. Also, weapon caravan left – heading west on river. Fifteen ships.
Liam frowned.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
“What?” Mary glanced back at him.
“Every lizardman in the city is in the palace and all the weapons they've been making here? They're shipping west.” He shook his head. “They're leaving.”
He flashed.
God's chamber middle room on second level, rear area. Main lobby is flush with back wall. Unsure where to place bomb, please wait.
Meg flashed back.
Rumor army approach. Ra.
Liam frowned. “Son of a bitch.” Before Mary could ask him, he turned to her. “Ra's sending an army here. Either he's learned that the city's been taken – not impossible – or he's getting greedy.” He sighed. “So that's why the lizardmen are leaving. They don't want to hold the city – they've gotten what they came here for.”
“The weapons,” Mary murmured.
“Yeah.” Liam frowned, then started to flash back.
“Someone's coming!” Mary hissed.
BRB, Liam flashed, then tucked the mirror into a drawer near the window. The door opened and a curvaceous human girl – utterly gorgeous, with pale red hair and bright purple eyes – looked in on them. She wore only a thin white breast band and a skirt that stopped right below the cleft of her ass. She smiled slightly.
“Mutt said to tell everyone up here – God wants us in the lobby.”
Liam nodded. “Thanks.”
Once she turned to go, he pulled the mirror out, flashing.
God in lobby. Get ready. Will send signal when time.
Liam and Mary started towards the lobby. Before they even reached the stairs, Liam could hear the sounds of a great deal of voices. A lot of people, even if they were trying to be quiet, made a low, eager roar. When he came to the stairs themselves, he breathed slowly in. The lobby and most of the wings were packed. Filled to the brim with lizardmen and the slaves of every race. It looked like every member of the occupying army save the skeleton force that had been left on the edges had come here.
No, that couldn't be right…
There were only, at most, a hundred or so lizardmen here.
A cold chill filled Liam.
This wasn't an army, he thought. This was a detachment.
“I thought there were more of them,” Mary whispered.
“That's what they wanted you to think,” Liam whispered back. He could already see how it had been managed: spells, proper deployment of troops, just taking advantage of the fact that most lizardfolk looked similar to one another. It'd take a genius and an elite...
The city had been taken by a genius general, Mary had said. The lizardmen had fought like elite soldiers, Mary had said.
Liam rubbed his hand over his face. He suddenly felt very, very out of his depth.
Then, reaching the bottom of the stairs and coming into the edge of the massed crowd, he saw God.
Liam froze.
Then giggled.
Then laughed.
He leaned back against the bannister, his knees shaking as he laughed and laughed, his shoulders shaking as he let himself go limp. Mary looked at him, worried. But Liam shook his head, beaming at her. His eyes glinted with tears.
Tears of relief.
“That?” he whispered, voice joyful. “If that's Jehovah, then I'm a monkey's uncle.”
The creature who had claimed the City of the Dead Gods as its own wasn't a human. It wasn't a goblin or elf either. The closest thing that Liam had ever seen to it was an abstract, modern art sculpture. There were vague indications of arms and legs made of jagged blue crystals, and the torso was carved from the same stuff. Rather than having the crystal chunks connected by any kind of physical contact, the whole thing was shrouded with a crackling aura of lightning, which suspended the arms and legs and jagged, cubist head in place. The head had a pair of uneven eye-sockets drilled into it, and those eyes were filled with the only part of the thing that looked faintly alive: a glowing pair of red lights, contrasting with the blue hue of the rest of the thing.
The false god then stood, arms spread wide.
Except it didn't.
Rather, it went from reclining on a large collection of cushions to being in a standing position between blinks. It was like a glitchy computer animation.
Then the false god opened its crude, jagged mouth and Liam's relief turned into something else. Because while this wasn't his God, he still recognized that voice.
And that terrified him.
“Welcome - welcome - w-w-w-welcome,” the false god said, his voice skipping and stuttering. It was like four people were speaking at the same time, their words laid over one another, echoing and reverberating. “To my home HOME - I wish to to – inform keep aware, aware, aware, that there has been a victvictory-ry-ry-”
“Oh god,” Liam whispered.
Mary looked at him, her eyes wide with fear.
“It's an A.I,” Liam whispered.
That voice – he had heard it before. He had heard it in a video game. The warbling distortions. The repeating voices. The glitching out. It was the sound that game designers on Earth had used for years to represent an artificial intelligence gone absolutely, completely, irrevocably insane. He didn't know if this creature was an actual artificial intelligence or if it was some kind of intelligence born of magic and sorcery but it was clearly mad.
“Brax the Golden-” Liam furrowed his brow and started to try to parse the warbling words into just a single line of dialog. It was tricky, but he started to get better and better at it as the A.I continued his speech. “-has traveled to the Barrier Mountains, to retrieve an artifact of great power. It will reawaken your past – your power.” The god spread his hands wide. Liam wasn't sure when he started gendering it, but something about the creature's tone made him think male. “The Genetic Codec Unit 9821.”
“All right, that cinches it,” Liam whispered. “Crazy computer.”
“I'm lost,” Mary whispered.
“To activate the Codec, estrus must be artificially triggered, to prime genetic signaling receptors and activate reconfiguration of morphological pathways!” The false god spread his arms wide as if giving some great, rousing speech. The lizardmen listened, though quite a few of them were looking more confused than anything else. Liam's eyes widened.
“Oh shit,” he whispered. It took him a few seconds to remember what estrus meant.
“And so, I, your god, Sysminor, command you.” The false god's hand reached out. “Mate!”
But the command wasn't for the lizardmen.
It was for the slaves.
The collar around Liam's neck buzzed and he felt a heat swim through his body. His eyes went unfocused and the world seemed to take on a pink haze as he looked at one of the lizardwomen standing near him, his cock surging to life. He breathed in the smell of the crowd as the lizardwoman looked at him – confused. Liam stepped forward, his palms cupping her scaled breasts. He fondled them as behind him, Mary made a quiet moan as she pressed against a lizardman, kissing him hungrily.
Liam leaned forward, kissing the lizardwoman's neck, stripping what little clothes she wore off as she hissed in appreciation.
And he didn't mind.
Not one bit.