"No."
Beatrice's response was immediate, flat, and utterly devoid of emotion.
"No?" I turned to stare at her, my mind refusing to process the single syllable. "What do you mean, 'no'? She's right there, summoning the world-eater or whatever the fuck that Ouroboros thing is, and you're saying 'no'?"
"I mean, we can't kill her," Beatrice clarified, her gaze locked on the lamia priestess. Her crimson eyes were narrowed, her mind clearly working, calculating, analyzing the situation with a cold, detached precision that was starting to piss me off.
"She's the conductor. The conduit. Killing her now would be like cutting the power cord to a bomb that's already counting down. It wouldn't stop the explosion. It would just make it… unpredictable."
"Unpredictable?" I gestured at the bubbling blood lake, at the glowing runes, at the sheer, tangible malevolence that saturated the chamber. "Beatrice, this whole place is the definition of unpredictable! How could it possibly get worse?"
"It could get directed," she said, her voice dropping even lower. "Right now, all that power is being focused inward, building, coalescing. If we kill her, that energy won't just vanish. It will lash out. It could level this entire fortress, it could tear a hole in the fabric of this dimension, it could… it could do a thousand things, and none of them good. We have to disrupt the flow, not sever it completely."
"Disrupt the flow," I repeated, tasting the words. They were bitter. "And how do you propose we do that? Ask her nicely to take a lunch break?"
Before she could answer, the chanting stopped.
The sudden silence in the chamber was more deafening than the chanting had been. The blood in the lake stopped bubbling, settling into an unnaturally still, mirror-like surface.
The lamia priestess slowly turned her head, her serpentine eyes locking onto us.
"Ah, more guests. Hisss," she purred, her voice a silken, venomous caress. "I was wondering when you would arrive. The 'uninvited' ones. Your interference has been… noted."
She didn't seem surprised to see us. She didn't seem angry. She seemed… expectant, as if we were simply another ingredient in her monstrous recipe.
"Your pets were an amusing distraction," she continued, her lips curling into a small, cruel smile. "But their souls were… bland. Lacking in complexity. You two, however… You smell different."
'Pets?' I glanced at Beatrice. 'My wraiths?'
The lamia's forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air between us like she could sample our very thoughts.
"Different," she repeated, savoring the word. "One reeks of fresh damnation… newly fallen, still warm from the original sin. The other…" Her slit pupils dilated slightly as they settled on Beatrice. "The other carries the perfume of very old blood. Royal vintage."
"Flattery will get you nowhere, snake," Beatrice snapped, her wings flaring slightly. A shimmer of pink energy danced around her fists. "End this now, or we'll end you."
"End me?" The lamia threw her head back and laughed, a high, musical sound that was utterly at odds with the horror of the chamber. "My dear General, I am not the heart of this ritual. I am merely the hand that guides the needle. To kill me is to stop the stitch, but the wound is already open. The bleeding has already begun."
She raised a slender, scaled arm, gesturing to the blood lake.
"This is not just any blood. This is the offering. The collective suffering of the failed experiments, the harvested organs, the pain of a thousand souls condensed into a single point. It is the key. The key that unlocks the door. The Red Baron provides the doorframe, but I… I provide the key."
As her words faded,
Ding!
A familiar sound echoed in my mind.
…
[Quest Updated: Stop the Ouroboros Ritual
New Objective: Disrupt the Ritual Conductor
Description: The lamia priestess is the conductor of the ritual. Killing her may cause the ritual to become unstable. Find a way to disrupt her control without severing the connection.]
…
'Damn, this quest is getting more and more complicated,' I inwardly cursed. But at that exact moment, the system fed me new information about the ritual.
From the red cultist that I devoured, the system managed to pull an extremely important piece of information.
The blood lake in front of us wasn't the only one. There were twelve in total, with twelve lamia priestesses.
They were all connected to each other, forming a massive magical circle that covered thousands of kilometers.
"We don't have to kill her," I whispered to Beatrice, my mind racing, the new information clicking into place. "This isn't the only ritual site."
I swiftly shared the new information with her, and surprisingly, Beatrice flashed a wide smile.
"Well... then things got more interesting," she said, her crimson eyes gleaming with a new light. "It makes it easy for us."
Before I could ask her what she meant, she took a deep breath and let out a series of high-pitched, musical notes.
It was a language I had never heard before, but it felt… ancient. Primordial. The very air around us seemed to vibrate in response to her call.
The lamia's eyes widened in shock.
"You… you can still speak the Mother's Tongue?" she stammered, her composure finally cracking. "That's… impossible!"
"The Mother's Tongue?" I repeated, my confusion growing.
"A language that only the pure-blooded lamia can speak," Beatrice explained, her gaze never leaving the lamia. "Aza, can you keep her distracted for a few minutes? I need to concentrate."
"I can do more than that," I said, a feral grin spreading across my face. "I can make her scream."
"Good." Beatrice closed her eyes, her hands raised, her fingers tracing intricate patterns in the air. "Do it."
I didn't need to be told twice.
I leaped forward, my body a blur of motion, the flail whistling through the air. But the lamia was fast. Her serpentine lower body coiled like a spring, launching her sideways with impossible speed. She didn't retreat; she flowed, a ripple of muscle and scales that brought her around the edge of the blood lake, her movements fluid and utterly silent.
"Foolish little demon," she hissed, a complex gesture with her left hand causing the blood at her feet to rise, shaping itself into a dozen crimson, razor-sharp tendrils that lanced toward me. "You think crude metal can harm the vessel of a god?"
I twisted in mid-air, my flail a spinning shield of death. The spiked ball connected with the first tendril, and instead of splashing, the constructed blood solidified, shattering like black glass. Shards flew, embedding themselves in the stone walls.
"Your god is a snake with an eating disorder!" I roared, landing in a crouch. "My power ends things!"
I slammed my free hand onto the stone floor.
"Rise!"
The stone cracked. From the fissures, my Cinder Wraiths clawed their way into existence. A silent legion of blue-flamed skeletons, their sockets blazing with cold fire, surrounded the blood lake. They didn't charge; they simply stood, their presence a silent, burning mockery of the lamia's crimson constructs.
The lamia priestess's serpentine eyes darted from my wraiths to Beatrice, who was still chanting, her body glowing with a soft, pink light. A flicker of true fear crossed her beautiful, cruel face.
"Charge!" I roared.
The wraiths moved as one, a tidal wave of bone and blue fire. They crashed against the blood tendrils, and the chamber became a storm of clashing energies. Shards of solidified blood rained down. The cold blue flame of my wraiths hissed as it met the unholy blood, consuming it, erasing it, leaving behind nothing but scorched stone and the lingering scent of ozone.
The lamia snarled, her concentration broken. The blood tendrils faltered, dissolving back into the lake.
"You meddlesome insects!" she spat, her hands moving in a new, more complex pattern. "You will drown in the very blood you seek to defile!"
The entire surface of the blood lake began to churn, not bubbling, but swirling, forming a massive vortex. From its depths, something began to rise. A skeleton, far larger than any of my wraiths, forged not of bone but of congealed, blackened blood, its ribcage a cage of hardened gore.
"ROAAAAR!" The Blood Golem roared, a wet, gurgling sound that shook the very foundations of the chamber. It raised a massive arm, formed from countless fused skulls, and brought it crashing down toward the nearest wraiths.
BOOOM!
The impact was deafening. Several of my wraiths were shattered, their blue flame extinguished.
"Tsk... should I just use my sword and slice her to pieces?" I wondered, my hand itching for the long sword sitting quietly in my inventory. "But killing her would be bad..."
Then, an idea.
Devour.
If I devoured her, would that count as killing? I could just keep her alive in my belly until Beatrice finds a way to cancel the ritual.
'Yeah... that sounds like a good plan.'
I switched back to my succubus form, my flat, muscular chest blooming into a pair of round, perfect breasts that jiggled with every movement. My hips widened, my waist narrowed, and a long, slender tail tipped with a spade-shaped blade sprouted from my lower back. A pair of magnificent, leathery wings erupted from my back, cracking like thunder.
"Surprised?" I taunted, winking at the lamia. I swayed my hips, my movements designed to distract, to entice, to disarm. My tail slithered across the stone floor, its spade-shaped tip tapping a seductive rhythm. "Don't be shy. Come closer. Let me show you what a real woman can do."
The lamia's serpentine eyes narrowed. For a moment, I saw a flicker of something in them. Not lust. Something more primal. Hunger.
"You... you are a paradox," she hissed, her forked tongue flicking out, tasting the air. "My god demands your blood."