***The Infernal Plane of Lust***

***Isabella***

“You have to get him back! By the seven Planes and the thrice-cursed Lords!” I commanded Ex'Zibril and pointed towards the enemy's base while spitting curses that would have made my mother’s ears burn off.

It had taken me far too much time to rush back to base after the raiding party had fled. Had there ever been any point to defending that stupid stash of supplies? Our troops hadn’t even tried to conquer the enemy’s Anima Stone while Amon was taken prisoner for nothing.

Who knew what they would do to him? Did they have a soul mage of their own who could ensure his final death? Or some magical curse that would imprison his mind until Lust herself saw her final day? Would they break him with torture until he willingly decided to give up on all his souls?

While my imagination was awash with all the horrible things that could happen to Amon, my voice was livid with rage as I whipped the men in front of me with my words. I didn't care that I was causing a scene by storming into Ebandon's command position, or who witnessed me behaving like a spoiled demonling.

Those filthy monsters had taken from me, and that was unforgivable, so I had rushed right back here to our base as quickly as I could in order to confront those sorry excuses of demons who were in charge! Who in his right mind would steal a succubus' belongings! They would learn the rage of a scorned demoness! I would gather a legion of my own and get Amon back! They would suffer my fury and curse the day they hatched. With their last breath, they would scorn their mothers for giving them their first soul.

It would take only a little effort to twist Ebandon and Khorne’s legion commander around my little finger. Then I would have them attack the filth without holding anything back!

“Lady Isabella, please.” Ebandon seemed worried as his eyes travelled between me, Khorne's legion commander who conveniently pretended that I didn't exist, and then to Jada who was sitting on the map-laden table while polishing her claws. All the while, my sister didn’t care that she was crumpling the maps beneath her perfectly shaped butt in the process.

Ebandon turned to face the legion commander. “Lord Shamkart, please excuse her. You should know that she is just a…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “… an honorary member of my warband.”

Ex looked at his commander as if he had committed some kind of offence. “I trained her, you know...”

The warband's leader looked at his minion as if he had been betrayed in a most grievous manner.

I blushed and fought the urge to strangle that wimpy little shit. Politics and payment aside, someone like Ebandon shouldn’t suck up like that to a mere legion commander. Shamkart wasn't Demon Lord Khorne, just a mere henchman who happened to command one of the man's legions in his absence. Khorne had hundreds like him!

Also, had Ebandon forgotten that my mother was the one paying him and not this upstart of a Demon Lord?

Why, by my mother's jiggling tits, was that fuck-up of a legion commander with Ebandon anyway? Had they gambled and wasted their time with distractions while my Amon had been taken?

“Just who is she? And is there a reason for not killing her? Ebandon, having your warband assist from the rear is helpful, but this interruption is unacceptable,” Shamkart commented, almost as if he was only speaking to himself. He hadn't taken his eyes away from observing the two fighting legions. Not even when I had manhandled my way through his guards. The man was wholly engaged in guiding his troops.

The open command tent allowed him to do so without visual obstructions. To be honest, it was less of a tent and more of a camouflage canvas that prevented us from being spotted from the sky.

“Please don't kill my sister,” Jada commented without looking up from her claws. “That would cause a diplomatic incident with the Ashborn family.”

“Hello!?” I tried to gain their attention, done with being ignored. “I gave you people a command! Those bastards ran off with my Amon!”

“Who is this Amon? You are aware that I am trying to guide a legion here?” Shamkart asked and massaged his temple as if he was developing a headache. “Just get her out of here if she has no idea of actual warfare. That other commander knows all the right moves – it’s like he can foresee any action I take.”

Shamkart was a large, powerful example of a demon with deep crimson horns. He looked capable, but commanding several thousand underlings with telepathy apparently took most of his concentration. And that was despite the fact that he was also holding a sceptre that was glowing with magical energies, a sign of his station.

I had heard of those items. My mother taught me that these artefacts were used to command legions through telepathic means, enabling the commander to directly guide a number of chosen underlings. A powerful demon would get his mental abilities boosted a thousandfold, but gave up on his physical prowess. Despite the downside, it was the perfect tool to command an army.

Knowing that it didn't exactly boost my confidence in this Shamkart personage. What would happen if I took the sceptre away from him? Would he turn into a drooling idiot with a shocking IQ of twenty? How had a person like him managed to become a legion commander!?

With people like that among Khorne's followers, I wasn't surprised that most of Khorne's victories were only won once the Demon Lord himself appeared on the playing field.

“Nobody special!” Jada explained, maybe a little too quickly. “Just some demon who my little sister is currently riding. You know how we succubi are when we find something tasty.” She licked her lips to prove her point. I realized that she was trying to help me by drawing the attention away from me, but I couldn't do nothing while Amon and with him my whole plan was in grave danger.

That actually brought a smirk to Shamkart's lips. “Somebody dared to steal a succubus's claim? What grave offence indeed.”

“Could you please take this more seriously!” I hissed and clenched my hands into fists while walking back and forth, unable to stay still. Who knew how much time Amon had left? A soul mage was target number one in warfare, and a smart legion commander would do anything in his power to deal permanently with such a threat.

And the idiot had gone right there and declared himself as such.

Ex looked towards the tent's awning and I had a feeling that he would have rolled his eyes if those faceted insect orbs had been capable of it. “Just show some patience. Or do you really believe that someone like him could be caught alive by some mere raiding party? I trained that man personally, so I should know.”

I stopped in my tracks, wondering. “What do you mean?”

Ex shrugged all of his four shoulders. “Just saying that Amon isn't the type to be caught alive. That man would rather die than to lie down and let himself get taken prisoner. I say that only because, while I believe that I could defeat him, I don't think that I could take him alive if he fought with everything he had. So, if even I can't capture him, how could some random raiding party do so?”

I frowned. “You are saying that he allowed himself to be-”

My words were interrupted when Shamkart screamed something, and the horizon was lit by a flash of light. My view wasn’t the best, so I didn’t see most of what had happened, but a visible shockwave travelled upwards from somewhere beyond my sight, rocking the flying troops of both legions.

Thunder rocked the plane in a single ongoing explosion and as the shockwave reached us it blew the tent’s awning away. Jada shrieked as the maps from the table were blown up and one was caught by her face.

The gust of wind was strong, but not strong enough to take me off my feet, so I was quick to run forward and check on what had happened.

A mushroom cloud was quickly growing where the enemy's base had been a few seconds ago, and the outskirts of what must have been an enormous shockwave stirred the landscape. Neither legion had been untouched. All the ground-bound troops had thrown themselves to the ground, and while ours had survived the explosion well enough, the enemy hadn’t fared so well since they were closer to the explosion’s epicentre. Though, there were still more than enough of them to fight us off.

Aside from that, all the flying demons had been taken out of the sky as if some angry god had smacked them to the ground. They had fallen like raindrops. I could only guess that the shockwave had stunned them.

I was still trying to comprehend what had happened when I noticed the large, obsidian obelisk that was spinning through the sky. Coming from the general direction of the mushroom cloud, it landed right among our troops like an oversized projectile, killing dozens who were unlucky enough to be in its path. The lucky ones were simply squashed, while the less fortunate ones lost just one or more appendages and were left to suffer.

Then it bounced, creating a path of death and bloody demon paste through our ground-bound troops as it skittered through our people.

All I could do was to open my mouth in silent awe as I realized that this was the enemy's Anima Stone that was tumbling through our troops as if it had decided to go on a walk. It must have been close enough to the explosion to be simply catapulted away like some random piece of debris, just to turn into a gigantic meat grinder.

I reached for my horns, trying to figure out the implications if this chaos was indeed Amon’s work. Was he even capable of such insanity? Though, why was I even asking myself that? I had been in his mind and I knew that he seldom thought about the repercussions of his actions – at least the social ones.

Shamkart was the first to overcome his shock. He jumped and shook his fist while pointing at the ancient and indestructible artefact. “That Anima Stone! Get me that Anima Stone! Don't allow them to respawn!”

His enthusiasm was probably misplaced. I had a feeling that enough warriors of the enemy legion had been killed to turn this battle into a right mess once they respawned right among our people. It would happen any second now, and then we would have a true melee on our hands in which nobody would know what the actual fuck was going on.

Ebandon looked up from behind the table where he had taken cover. His expression said how little understanding he held of the situation while he studied the altered battlefield for a few seconds. Then he looked accusingly at Ex. “You knew that the youngling would go overboard! That's why you insisted on sending him on that fool's mission!”

The insectoid demon's faceted eyes were without emotion while he denied any responsibility. “Truly, I only wanted him to gain some real combat experience – maybe learn some humility in defeat. Who knew that he would carry around a nuke?” He turned towards me. “Won't you go and greet him while we deal with this mess? He should respawn any second now.”

Jada folded the map that had been blown into her face during the entire debacle while she looked between me and the battlefield. Her eyes told me everything I needed to know. Namely, that she held me responsible for something. She lifted her hand, showing me that during the shock of the explosion she had ruined one of her fingernails with a large scratch.

I quickly turned and beat my wings to get away from the scene before she could say anything. Taking off and rushing towards the warband's Anima Stone was a simple matter. It was located close to Ebandon’s command tent, not more than a few dozen metres away. Amon’s minions were already waiting there since all of us had bound our respawn points with it.

Instead of rushing towards the commanders, they had probably guessed that their leader would respawn at the Anima Stone soon enough.

Uphir huffed at me in frustration when I landed. “Nuke? Was it Amon who caused that explosion? He really could have used it in a way that would have included us.”

“You knew that he had one?” I asked, wondering what was going on. “And weren’t you arguing against attacking the enemy’s camp?”

“You didn’t?” he replied mockingly. “I thought you were riding him.”

I blushed. “No matter what you think of succubi, a few fucks don’t give us insight into every detail of someone’s memory!” I quickly covered my mouth, hoping that nobody had noticed my slip-up.

“He was carrying the thing around since Baaar,” Philomena commented, looking bored compared to the rest of us. “I had no clue that he intended to use it. But anyway, I am glad that it’s gone. One has to be crazy to carry around equipment like that in a dimensional storage device. Mortal technology… there is no telling what might set it off.”

“Aren’t you guys forgetting something?” Jebril asked while wringing that jingle which she used as a focus to cast her spells. “He just killed several thousand soldiers. Who knows how many souls the Infernum will account to him? How many times will he evolve? How much more powerful will he get?”

She spoke as if she thought that wasn't exactly a good thing.

Kitia winced. “He must have been sitting somewhere between ten thousand and fifty thousand souls after that incident with Baaar. I got some several thousand souls for helping with his plan, but I was just an underling and the competition held nobody really noteworthy. If Amon was in his second or third evolution stage, then killing off so many warriors at once will push him into the hundreds of thousands. And what if that explosion also got the enemy commander? Amon might evolve twice or even thrice in a row.”

Shax drew in a sharp breath and nodded. “Will… hurt.”

I knew for a fact that Amon sat comfortably at a few thousand souls when I met him. There was no definitive set of rules for every demon since every evolutionary path was a little different. It was also influenced by the type of souls that were collected.

What few demons knew and what was only known to powerful families, was that the power of a soul also played a major role in when an evolution would occur. A few very powerful souls could trigger a special evolution where dozens of weaker ones did nothing at all.

But as a rule of thumb, evolutions happened a little more frequently in someone’s earlier stages of life. Normally, every order of magnitude required at least one evolution to contain the collected souls. Sadly, there was no real way to measure a demon’s soul-power.

Most demonlings became imps once they collected more than ten normal souls and then evolved to an adolescent form once they got over a hundred. A demon was considered an adult once he reached his third evolution with more than a thousand souls. Ten thousand was another breaking point, a hundred thousand, and then a million.

I knew for a fact that Amon’s little exploitation of Baaar’s competition had boosted him straight from an imp to his adult form. Depending on how the Infernum would rate Amon’s suicide attack, he might have gotten enough for two or more evolutions! In any case, going through an evolution wasn’t a delightful process, and going through several ones in a row would be excruciatingly painful.

My thoughts were interrupted when the warband’s Anima Stone glowed and emitted raw magical power. Slowly, the energy coalesced and gathered into a body, much like when a demon was summoned through a summoning circle. Only that this artefact required no such thing and got the deal done indefinitely quicker.

A moment later, Amon was standing before me and grinning like an idiot.

“How many souls,” I asked him quickly, wondering how much more powerful he would become.

His smile faded and his expression became contemplative. “I am…”

Suddenly, his entire body seized up and he reached for his chest in pain.

I caught him as he doubled over, losing control over the enchantment that held his wingless form as his wings sprang free from his back. All I could do was watch as his body shook in pain, turning a little leaner without looking any less powerful. The claws on his fingers withdrew and turned into black armour plates that covered the outside of his hands and arms.

Some other little details changed, but the most noticeable one was his horns. Previously, they were those smooth and almost straight things, starting at his temples and going back behind his head.

Now they thickened and took on the shape of blades while they curved to form an inverse omega that looked like a crown on his head. Lastly, unknowable runes ignited on them to burn with blueish energy.

I helped Amon to the ground and cradled his head in my lap, hoping that there would be no lasting trauma after the forced evolution.

At last, he opened his eyes, revealing slit pupils ringed by a golden iris that floated inside a sclera of perfect, pitch-black darkness.

He smiled, revealing that set of pointy teeth. “I think… that the enemy’s legion commander took a nuke to the face… because I got a whole lot of souls to look through!”