The full student body of the Wendelton Academy was out for this ceremony, and a hapless groundskeeper was moaning in ecstasy as he was ritually flensed and bathed in oils, his agony and joy blinding him to his coming death, only the pain and pleasure filling his weak little mind.

The girls in their prim uniforms looked on raptly, the powers of the Warp embedded deep into their minds, sparking their desires and lusts. Madam Hyiota had had years to prepare the grounds and buildings to magnify the influence of Amourae on their young and growing minds, and the students fell rapidly and fully once they came to live here now. They were taught well, and their minds and wills were concealing the Summoning from those without even as they contributed power to it happening –

The skinless man on the altar screamed in final rapture, and Kacowrie came out of him in an ejaculation of gore, feasting on his soul as the Portal opened.

The Dancer rose above them, her six arms weaving silks of pink and sky blue and soft yellow, a haze of sparkling perfume spreading across the room and heightening every sensation with the slightest sniff, sending the girls into rapturous abandon as they stared at the inhuman, veil-shrouded beauty concealed by mists and silks-

Who was abruptly yanked down out of sight, gone in an instant with barely a squeak.

Hyotai, about to step forward and greet the demon, froze in shock. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The Portal was still open, what, was something else-?

She had a bad premonition, and then two great clawed hands grabbed the sides of the Portal, perfect arcing talons of silver-edged jet heaving it open wider, and the demon rose from the Warp.

Hyotai’s eyes went very, very wide indeed.

Kacowre was torn into four parts hanging from four claws, burning with an odd white flame that seemed strangely plain...

The face without eyes, the glowing eye in the forehead, the curling horns, the wings that snapped out to cover the entire chamber; a dragon’s lower body, six arms, a great pair of pincers, a third pair of wings even larger than the first two, four great dancing stingers, and a glowing tail, six great taloned feet bracing the Portal, ebon skin, multi-colored scales, a rippling pincushion of glittering spikes, whipping thirty-foot silver snakes for hair...

This... was no butcher of Klaw! This... was something much, much worse!

==============

Well, I suppose I should have expected something I didn’t like, but what looked like a girl’s school held in rapturous damnation wasn’t exactly it. A Dancer of Amourae... I was expecting more a group orgy in a drug parlor, with a few thousand participants.

My Null and Interdiction exploded out.

Ho! Now I know what all those Valences were for!

My Interdiction blasted out like a looming mountain, smashing across the Veil and locking it down. My Null filled the whole room and beyond, snuffing the Warp energies in the air, sending the girls staggering, and the Portal naturally slammed shut with a sheepish protest beneath me, how dare it impinge on the mortal realm here?

The one in charge of this whole thing was obviously the woman in very revealing clothing there, and a soul that wasn’t supposed to be in her skin.

She obviously knew that something was wrong, but it was a bit too late to matter.

Electrum killing waves of light filled the room, swept through the weeping runes on the walls, the altar, the seals and pentagrams on the floor, and cut through anything and everything. I avoided the support walls, but the rest were punched through like taffy, and naturally nothing in the room escaped the cuts. The girls collapsed, clothes severed but skin untouched, receiving the Merciful damage equivalent of being chopped in two and dropping instantly.

My stinger-tentacle-tails snapped out, coiled around the neck and waist of the body-stealer thirty feet away, and brought her up before me.

She was shivering in terror, trying not to look at the glowing eye on my head, or my eyeless face, and trying to not see the terrible beauty that would kill her instantly if she got a good look at me, or if I moved my cloaking, serpentine hair too much.

She was a Ten by choice, potentially a Fourteen if she didn’t want to hide her Aura. She probably kept the higher chunk of her power Sealed so that it wouldn’t be detected by those watching. Post-Tens were like tactial nukes; a lot of people wanted to see what they were doing, ALL the time.

Naturally I wasn’t going to let her unseal that power, useless as it might be, or get away to be reborn as a servant of Amourae.

My tentacle stingers drove into her skull, and pumped out a dose of my venom each. 2d6 Wisdom damage, secondary effect d4 Energy Drain, poisons that could affect the very soul. My dragon’s tail came over and politely tapped the back of her spine, leaving the sealing sigils behind with every touch, as ~28 points of Wisdom damage against a save DC of 54 removed her as a threat, sending her falling into oblivion.

I opened up, and disposed of her hapless self.

My throat was lined with vivic runes, and yeah, a portion of my physiology dealt with brain-reading, stolen from cerebrovores and a Greater Doppleganger masquerading as a drow matriach that I’d fed to my Marks. My stomach was lined with Compression Runes at high order, and the combined heat, lightning, and acid in there was enough to render her down in seconds, extracting memories stored in the stolen brain, while the tainted, sin-heavy soul being dissolved by spiritual poison burned and went away forever, never to receive its promised rewards.

The wages of sin suck when it comes time for severance pay...

I shunted all the incoming memories off into the Akasha, having no desire to make them Mine, as it were, and with several dozen thought-streams leafed through them quickly.

These girls were doomed. The infections on their souls had set in deep and grown quickly. Even if all of them were brought away, the cost of trying to fix them was just too high. Any psion trying to excise the influence was effectively opening himself up to them, because these girls were all basic Sorceresses of the Warp now, and Amourae could reach out through all of them to seize the minds and psyches of those who would try to save them.

As at least some of their families most likely would, if they weren’t promptly purged by the authorities.

I inhaled air swept clean of cloying, hallucinogenic incense, and felt out.

The world, mortal reality, was reacting too heavily to my presence. The solidifying of reality around me was continuing apace, my influence on the area spreading rapidly. This area was basically going to turn into a Null zone very quickly.

It wasn’t that Reality was rejecting me, it was that I was just too heavy to stay here like this. I was reinforcing Reality so hard that it was getting strong enough to kick me out as being Holy Shiznit too strong Batman!

But to all things, there are solutions. I looked at the fallen girls, sighed, double-checked that there was no way to save them, considered that I wouldn’t have much time before some Psensitive noted the massive weight on the local mindscape, and started working.

===============================================================================