8486/Ave, Maria

Ave, Maria
Date of Scene:	30 October 2021
Location:	The Griffin
Synopsis:	A meeting between demons ends up in explosions! The horror! it wasn't here though so no harm no foul.
Cast of Characters:	Ree, Satana Hellstrom

---

Ree has posed:
One can't be too careful when attending a big event in New Yolk. It's rare to even want to, but the city always surprises. Luciano Pavarotti is performing, and the man's famous presence draws powerfully.

The violins are testing their strings. The chorus is making noises and tuning their libidos. The crowd is being let in, and the man himself is not yet on stage. He would not come out early.

It's the kind of event that even the ancient would attend. And Satana has box seats, a gift from an admirer.

There's an energy in the air, and even the humans can feel it. Power. Intensity. The taste of someone who has power, even as a mortal. And it's not just the one, the crowd is filled with humans of influence. Beautiful people, gathered to see and be seen.

There IS a bit of something odd in the air, a taste that shouldn't be there. But it's got HORRID timing.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Entangled as she was with her admirer, teasing him into a state of mortal sin in preparation for damning him permanently to Hell, Satana was about to administer her lethal kiss when...

...powerful magics she did not expect in such a public place start to gather. She pauses, seemingly as a tease, lethal lips mere millimetres from her besotted target straining to close that gap, before she pulls back.

"This is wrong."

"But Satana, my darling, nothing could be righter!"

"Not you, not us, my little Frederic," she reassures. "Something's wrong here. In this place. I can almost smell it."

She starts to unstraddle the gentleman, winking at his wife next to him who is staring at the pair in open disgust. (Someone's going to have a long talk about divorce soon, it seems.)

"Better luck next time, Sandrine. No thrills tonight. Unless maybe I show up at your home and share him with you there."

Sandrine opens her mouth as if to speak, but Satana's force of will freezes her in place.

"I can see the appeal," she muses, eyeing Sandrine up and down. "It's the age thing, right, Frederic?"

Frederic, similarly frozen, says nothing naturally.

Gathering her gown about her and straightening it out so it is merely scandalous instead of openly displaying the parts she's not allowed to display in the opera house, Satana leaves the box to go hunting for the magister foolish enough to start doing things in her domain.

Ree has posed:
Horrid timing, indeed! While the singer may have been a minor element in the show, it still doesn't do to interrupt when the act is about to seal the deal. Not that Frederick is exactly going to go back to his wife and 'everything will be alright'.

He bought the tickets, after all.

There's less power than Satana figured at the time. Heat of the moment being a bit distracting, and honestly the boy was quite decent at being what he was. You know, lunch. But when you get called away, you simply must attend to it!

This won't wait.

Shifting nearby is something demonic. Brimstone, yes. That's Azazel's flavour. But not him. Beleth perhaps. Well, there's truly only one way to find out for certain.

Not far away, an idiot is flinging demonic energy like party favours.

"Go high!" the thug yells, his bat missing his target by inches. She's ducked backwards, almost a limbo position, and let the bat go past her. Then he feels his knee buckle, a boot kicking it out. "Gwah!"

His friend, a girl in a heavy jacket, leaps over them both. She comes down and finds that the bat has been propped in a most uncomfortable position, and she ends up on the ground right next to her boytoy. Crotched on a bat, owchie.

"Nice try, y'all," the red skinned girl says. "I mean, seriously. But I'm gonna have to steal your pants."

Then she steps forward, preparing to strip both of them so she can dress herself. She's not the one tossing demonic energy. So who is?

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
The search for the magics takes Satana throughout the opera house, leaning toward one side in the search until she comes to a fire exit. Shrugging she opens the door to exit into the alley in which the battle is transpiring. A quick flick of the hand and a few magic words and the alarm doesn't ring. (That this has permanently disabled the alarm and thus added significant risk to people attending operas doesn't register as important.) Stepping into the alley as the final blow is delivered, Satana leans against the rough brickwork and watches.

As Ree steps forward to steal clothing, she hears behind her lazy clapping.

"Well done, little one. Now who summoned you and why is your summoner not here to be chastized?"

Ree has posed:
The girl, with the other lady's pants halfway down and in the midst of stealing so she can cover herself, is indeed a devil. But there's no way this *sniff* level of devil was the one who was able to create such a disturbance. There's more involved here.

She freezes. Her eyes slowly shift, slowly lift, and stare at a Lord of Hell right in front of her. The squeak that manages to escape her is pained.

"Lord, forgive me," she says. A mimicry of the ancient ritual of Christians, but appropriate given the situation. She clearly had no damn idea she was intruding on ...SATANA.

She also is unaware of the tracking sigil dead center of her back, or the lines of force which trail from it. The spell is calling down power, and she's the locus. How she got here is unclear, but she's clearly being used as a focus.

An Imp. She probably can't even fly.

"Lord, I was dropped in Earthrealm. Just days ago. Please forgive my indiscretions."

And her hands keep moving, stealing the pants off of the girl's legs. She doesn't cover herself, knowing she has no right to clothing. Not without permission.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Satana eyes the imp before her, frowning. As the imp continues in the theft--approved of--she gets a thorough appraisal as Satana walks in a circle around her.

"You're a tool," she decides. "Someone is using you. From this."

A nailed finger pokes Ree in the back, right on the sigil that is the focus of her power emanations.

"Either someone is trying to trap me using you, or someone is using you to power themselves."

A little incantation follows, making the flow of the energy visible. Satana studies it with interest.

"It doesn't matter which, really. The expedient solution is the same either way. Kill this form and your wisp goes back to Hell." She smiles encouragingly. "Don't worry. The pain won't last long and you'll be graduating into an imp in no time, in eternal comparison. Now hold still."

Satana's hands burst into that peculiar variant of flame of hers: soulfire.

"You'll be gone shortly and won't have to worry about who did this to you for a long time."

Ree has posed:
Oh yeah. That's the feeling she was expecting. Impending doom. You know, normalcy back home, any time anyone of THIS power even glanced your way. There's a certain pattern to things, and the appropriate response is to kneel..

She does.

And to take a deep breath, and hope that the Lord is in a bad mood. Bad moods mean they'll be quick about it. Less of the slow burning that really tends to suck.

On her knees, Ree realizes something. She looks down, manners dictating that she not go out of her way to piss this one off. She's an Imp. She's nothing.

She has status.

"Azazel rescued me personally from Brimstone. He has his eye on me." She answers the question that was originally asked, and takes a moment...not to pray. Prayer would not help, it never helps anyone, ever. But you know, to hope.

"He said I was his child." Not a lie. I mean, she didn't -believe- it, but right now, any port ina storm.

Stupid saying. You don't take any port in a storm. You ride that shit out. Get a life, sailors.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Satana pauses at the invocation of the name Azazel.

"Azazel."

She doesn't quite pronounce it like it's a curse word.

Quite.

The hands continue to flame as Satana stares at Ree with an enigmatic expression, sucking her teeth thoughtfully.

"If you are lying, little one, I will personally ensure you wind up in my own domain surrounded by my accordion and bagpipe band."

The flames go out.

"But these enchantments, these are not Azazel's. Who placed this sigil upon you?"

The fingernail pokes the sigil again, none too gently.

"And if you're going to get dressed, do so quickly before the mortals see you and raise a hue and cry!" This is added with a cuff behind the ear. "Now explain to me from beginning to end, how you were taken from Brimstone and how you came to be here with a sigil of power on you."

Ree has posed:
Deep breaths are great, but when you let them out through your teeth they tend to hiss. She bites it back when she realizes she's doing that, and says, "I wasn't even aware of it!" as she takes this instant to try to see the center of her own back. Her head doesn't twist that far, and the urge to make it do so is probably stifling.

Reminded about the nudity, she gets to her feet and pulls on the girl's jeans. They tear a bit more, but it's not a bad look. Then she steals some more clothing, kicking the two humans in passing. A moment later she's holding a decent outfit, even if it likely won't pass in an opera setting.

"Thank you for your wisdom, My Lord," she says. Her horns shift noticeably, arching back over her head. Odd, horns don't normally do that. Move.

A slice with her fingertip opens a hole in her pants, and her tail comes out to play. Her tongue flicks out slightly. Ridged. She probably got some use out of that once in a while.

She doesn't look up, doesn't look into Satana's eyes. Too new. "How may I help you to remove this stain on my corporeal form before it ...probably explodes, knowing my luck." Wait, was that sardonics? She isn't totally broken then.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"You could start by not worrying about it exploding," Satana chastizes the imp. "You won't die. You'll just be sent back to the Domains. You've worked your way up once already. You'll be able to do it again."

While talking, Satana's fingers and arms are in motion in contorted mudras from Hell. (Literally.) A few eldritch syllables drip from her tongue and ...

"OK, I see. This does two things. This part here..." Her fingernail traces a burning path along the imp's back. "...drains mana from you. This other part here, this gathers mana from your vicinity. Together it's using you rather like a vacuum cleaner."

She steps back in front of the imp. "I can remove it. If I do it wrong, though, it will hurt a little."

Unspoken: If I do it right it will hurt a lot...

Ree has posed:
"Oh, is that all?" Ree looks up, still kneeling, then her little eyes get an evil look in them. Not the evil look that they normally have, but the one that was enough to let her earn a place as an imp. She had to have done something truly awful for that promotion. Something that'd make her forever changed.

"I mean, not that I'm against pain. Adds spice to life. But, what would it take to do something a little more annoying? You know, like, say, tainting the flow? Really pissing him off by tipping holy water into the feed."

Now that, that'd hurt. She has to know that pouring holy water into her energy matrix is going to suck serious balls. Even suggesting it is insane.

Girl might just like the idea of it going into an asshole's main feed line enough to suffer through it though. Or, Satana might have another idea.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"I will NOT use the Enemy's weapons!" Satana says hotly, angrily cuffing the imp behind the ear, not holding back the physical strength. Readying another backhand for Ree's recovery and return, she pauses instead and ponders.

"What I can do, however," she says, calming herself as a wicked glint matching Ree's appears in her eyes, "is make you the focus of an enormous whirlpool of mana. It's going to hurt even more than what I was thinking for simple removal. You may just give up and let your soul slide back down to Hell to stop the pain. But it will definitively fuck up your assailant."

A cruel grin is added to the evil glint. "Are you strong enough?"

Ree has posed:
She tumbles. Not a controlled tumble, this wasn't a gentle hit. She has the grace to bleed, Satana's hit taking her hard. But she lowers her eyes again, the lesson being taken. You're not free, you will never be free. This is still entrapment, it's just less directly horrible.

"Yes, Master," she says softly. It was a lovely dream while it lasted. But then, as she's kneeling once more, she hears the 'however'.

It's clearly much more than she'd expected, and terrifying. She lifts her eyes, her heart racing. She can't swallow, but she tries. This body is remarkably human. Well made, a shame to destroy it.

Then Satana might notice the pendant around her neck, shining. It wasn't there a moment before, as if it had been hiding from her eyes. Something designed to hide from demons, on a demon. Which lets itself be seen at this specific moment?

"Well, i-if I can't, he'll still get a thorough ass r-reaming. Right?" Her smile is sharp, if bloody scared. "I've ne..never hit back be..before. Got to start sometime."

The stutter isn't feigned. It's also a yes.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"This sigil here, that drains you, is connected to the sigil that drains the mana from your environ," Satana explains as Ree returns to her proper place and behaviour.

The pendant? That's coming up later.

"I can change some of that flow without detection. I think. And if I do, I can have the feed amplified by diverting some of the return flow back into feeding and draining. This will cause an excess of mana to build within you. More than you've ever felt. More than you'll ever want to feel."

The facial expression of reassurance is as false as a porn star's chest.

"More than I'd ever want to feel, truth be told," she adds in a conspiratorial voice, paired with a wink. "And once it's reached more than any mortal being can expect to safely control, I cut loose the bonds that redirect it into that feedback and ... well ... it all goes through in a single pulse that will hopefully fry every synapse of the brain of the fool that touched one of ours."

Satana steps up to Ree, pulling her up to standing with a finger under the chin. A clawed finger. Settling in uncomfortably close she regards Ree's eyes carefully.

"This will hurt you too, however. The pain might be maddening. But if it succeeds and the bolt flies through the aether to strike your tormentor, I can promise ... pain reduction thereafter."

A different glint is in her eyes. And her tongue washes down her lips. Signalling, likely, the source of the pain reduction.

Ree has posed:
If Satana was expecting an easy response, a 'do it' or a denial, she'd be disappointed. Instead Ree whimpers. Images in her of the pain she's experienced flood her mind. She's been to Hell. She had creatures inside her guts, eating their way out. She's lived the worst that some of the darkest imaginations in creation could conceive.

She clearly knows that if it's worse than that, she's not ready. And she's not insane, so she's terrified. She wets herself, glad that she's not standing. Because legs don't work after a certain point.

"Thank you," she stammers out, assuming that this is going to happen now, and there's little to be done about it. But then, her face changes. Looking up into Satana's eyes, she sees the concept of something greater than pain. Something that only a veteran of pain could possibly understand.

The idea that it'll be so much worse for the asshole on the other end. And that they'll know she was part of that, and this is a power she can grasp on her own. Something she can do, to take charge of her fate. Which isn't something she's felt in a long, long time.

"Thank you," she says again. But it's not the same words. Not even remotely. And she licks her lips, eyes still scared but able to look back now.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Satana clearly relishes the fear and anticipation she's causing. She's a demoness, after all, and one of the top of the breed.

But she's also a human and one who really doesn't want much to do with her kind. She's fickle that way. She lets the fear and anticipation run its course, but she nods with ... is that approval? ... at the final decision. The change in demeanour.

Ree gets it.

"I hate being a pawn too," she says to Ree matter-of-factly. "If you think that ends when you go up the hierarchy that's ... well ... I have bad news for you."

She tilts her head and regards Ree with something that seems almost like ... understanding. Sympathy, even.

"But you can still tell the fuckers to get fucked," she adds. "The higher you climb, the more you can tell people to go to Hell. I'm near, but not at, the top. I get a lot of freedom."

And then she smiles triumphantly as she reads the reaction to that final word.

"You'll go far with that attitude. Keep it up. Now brace yourself."

There's not much time for bracing. Cobra-like Satana's fingers are at Ree's back, tracing the two runes again to get the lay of the land, then lancing pain from her soulfire starts to score the demon's flesh as she burns in some slight alterations, holding Ree steady and immobile against her as she does her work.

Eldritch syllables flow like a stream from her mouth as the stabbing pain turns to an all-encompassing ache. It feels a little like being a soul's wisp in the pit, only not as strong.

Yet.

Because it strengthens. And strengthens more. And strengthens even more. It rapidly exceeds the unenhanced Pits. It rapidly exceeds the 'being eaten by maggots from within while fully conscious' gag. It starts to reach the heights of 'does existence even mean anything after this?'.

And while this builds, Satana takes a very large, very healthy step back. And watches, knees trembling as Ree's suffering causes a reaction inside of her. The kind of reaction that will need a change of her now-sticky clothing.

Ree has posed:
The pendant is gone again, and any searching for it would be in vain. It's something that just isn't there, but it's far from the most interesting thing happening. Yes, it can wait.

Ree's horns shift as well. They grow smaller as she feels less control, becoming no more than two little stubs atop her head. Their vanishing almost matches the shrieking that her voice box gives before it gives out, unable to express the sheer agony in the body attached.

She'll be unable to speak for a week, if she actually manages to survive.

It's looking unlikely. Cells in her body are literally exploding now. She's bleeding freely from eyes, ears, and her nose and mouth. She remains rigid only because Satana made it so; noone could withstand this. The fact that she's clearly having orgasms at the same time...pure talent, it seems.

There's no sight left. She can't hear, she can't see. Her brain is exploding. The energy has overrun her internal stores, and she can't hold onto it. Her own energy was swept away in the first wave. She's just not enough. She's dying.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
It's a calculated gamble that Satana is taking. Gambling, of course, with someone else's existence.

She's a demon. Look it up!

It takes a lot of power to do what she wants to do. It takes power FROM HER just to keep it in check and in the feedback cycle. The power that's disrupting the very potential existence of Ree. (It would also, if unleashed in an uncontrolled way, have serious detrimental effects on the physical surroundings.)

And just at the peak, microseconds before the power mounts to the point of total erasure of all but Ree's soul wisp, Satana utters two syllables. Two syllables she'd built up in the control spell to be the trigger to unleash.

"Fuck. You."

The pressure in Ree is released in an instant and piped down the channel that some smartass developed to use Ree as a cheater's pipeline. (They're demons. Look it up!) Tearing out a gobbet of Ree's flesh where the sigils were and smashing them into brick so hard they turn into a greasy smear, the power flows down the conduit slightly faster than the conduit's collapse (essential for backlash prevention).

And then it's over. The pain. The disintegration.

Well, it's over here. In Mephisto's domain...

"And this, Beleth, is the group who's operating your 'escaped' slave's mana conduit. Arimanes. Oscuram. Herlequin." Mephisto towers over his agents as they work the mystic machinery they used to store the mana in two crystals: one for Beleth, one for Mephisto. "Thank you for sharing the resource," he adds with a gleeful, malicious grin. Like Beleth had a choice.

The earlier brief drop in return was handled quickly. The operation proceeded smoothly for almost a minute thereafter. Then...

The first sign of trouble was when the crystals glowed, in under a second, brighter than staring into the sun. From a few metres away. The glow rapidly expanded and swallowed the three operators before the crystals, infused with more mana than they could technically hold, shattered, shards spalling through Mephisto's horde, each shard releasing its store of mana into the hapless demon, evaporating them into a wisp once more.

Not to mention the dozen or so that struck Beleth who, by virtue of excessive interest, had stepped before Mephisto to see the operation more clearly, shielding that latter from any repercussions whatsoever. Beleth is made of stern stuff, but even he has large chunks of his body missing, requiring regrowth and weakening him such that he'll be tied up in supressing uprisings.

All while Satana's trigger words echo over Mephisto's domain in their arrogant, mocking tone.

Ree has posed:
Ree was hardly going to be the one to say it. If she'd known who was behind the rune, she'd probably have run. Run away so fast, so far, that even Earth would seem a dim memory. There are ways. In fact, the woman before her could have taken that route. Could have sent her away. Instead she took action, and don't tell me she didn't enjoy it. At least a little.

The center of Ree's back barely resembles flesh now. She has ended up looking worse, but never in a realm where it doesn't grow back. She lays on the ground and twitches, her body still giving that ache of afterplay that you only get from the really creative lovers.

It's just possible that Ree's concept of sex is a bit twisted.

"G...g-ggkk..kkk.." she says, managing to get out something that sounds like intentional speech. It's possible that she meant something intelligible, but with what she's just endured she's lucky to have survived.

How DID she surivive, anyway? Let's have a look.

She's not as dead as she should be. She's gathering molecules into her back. She's rebuilding. It's not the most pretty work, but with the flood of mana she's making it work. It's not long until she's coughing air instead of blood, and panting for breath.

On the ground where imps belong, still. But surviving earns her points.

Then she coughs out, "Felt that one," with bloody teeth in an evil grin.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"Oh, that was delicious..." Satana hisses in a low moan as she collapses to her weakened knees. "The pain. The destruction. The anger."

Her head lolls back as she enters her happy place for a few moments.

"You've brought me the very best in sensations, little one," she finally says as she pulls herself back together, eyes refocusing on the scene before her. The imp's travails don't spark anything in her except ... fascination. And continued physical arousal. "This beats sipping from that ancient beast that I was toying with tonight. I'm so bloated I think I'll be going without food for a week."

Struggling back to her feet, she steps up to Ree and shoves her with her foot.

"You still with me little one?" she asks. "Because if you're planning on wending your way back to the Pits as a wisp, you'll find a certain someone eager to meet you and have 'words' with you..."

Cruel, amused smile. "I smelled Beleth on you. And I heard him screaming in pain on the other end."

If that doesn't give Ree incentive to buck up, nothing will!

Ree has posed:
Ree gets shoved. She's used to that, it's like a hug where she and Satana come from. Someone showing you attention without bloodshed? Might as well be making out with each other. She's still rescuing her body parts from the damage, but she's gaining experience as she goes.

She manages to push herself to her knees again. To one knee then, the other foot planted. It's a more defensible position, and a clear assumption of privilege on her part. Likely to get her cuffed further. But she's clearly one to take risky chances.

Swallowing her own blood, tasting mana in it, Ree licks her lips again. "Well, I should...find a way to...not die then?" She asks it, but as she does she licks a little slower. Ridged tongue, one that she clearly got use of at some point in her life.

It's such a blatant offer, one has to laugh. She isn't claiming Satana's promise of pain relief, she'd never dare to lay claim to anything even if it was offered. But she's not NOT claiming it either.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"Oh, don't worry, little one. You'll get your succour and maybe a little extra as a reward for the fun you've given me," Satana says, smirking at Ree as the blatant offer is made blatant. "But first let's get you and I out of sight. Mortals ... wouldn't understand and depleted as I am now controlling them would turn to violence."

Beat.

"It's not the violence I object to," she then clarifies hastily. "It's the attention this calls to me in certain circles when it happens. I generally like to deal with them at full strength."

She takes a phone out. A prosaic thing given the intense magicks slung about this evening. A few screen taps and...

...the Lyft driver seemed almost to be waiting, so quickly did he arrive. And meticulously not looking at his customers as Satana helps Ree climb inside the Ford Taurus, the driver just waits for the destination ("Griffin Hotel") before driving off. Without looking back at all.

"And now..." Satana's purr is predatory, her eyes lit. Ember red. "Let's see if I can't help you with that pain..."

The arts of the succubus don't actually stop injury and pain. But they sure make them seem unimportant and distant...