Peace held between the waiting guards, and Nua allowed Sobella to cling to her. Nothing tainted the tranquility of the heart of the hellscape except for the minor echo of their footsteps as they left.

The silence held as they left the palace, and it held as they walked the streets between two predators who eyed them through hungry yellow eyes.

The silence held as they reached the base of the horrific pyramid. Up close, Nua could see better how it was made, with bones overlapping bones, smaller ones ground up into a curious kind of glue, acted as seals and fixtures that kept the ghost white color. Skulls of every age bedecked the gaps and offered further support to the bones above. But between the gaps, she saw stones painted white that offered a kind of filler for the rest. ‘Tlalmok engineering is nothing to mock.’ Nua reluctantly acknowledged, and when the lionwomen pointed up the long steps, the wordless command was clear.

Sobella and Nua stepped as one, ascending to the peak, the bones held their weight easily enough, and an idle thought came to Nua. ‘Do they use enchantments to strengthen them? Or do they use enchantments to reduce the weight of those who ascend, or… is it just skillful construction?’ The thought was idle and she admitted, hardly appropriate for the circumstances as they alone made the long trek up to the top.

Nua looked out over the city, and saw it even more impressive from a great height. Everything was laid out in orderly grids, a truly planned out city to the heart of it all. Water ran through many points, and fountains were clearly visible around which many beastmen gathered. There was a market district bustling with merchants from many towns and cities, there was a massive residential district that seemed to take up one whole half of the city. Curiously, she saw no indication of forced labor. ‘It is difficult to believe it never occurred to them to make their captives do anything…’ She wondered about the reason for it with a kind of distant, academic curiosity all the way up to the top of the pyramid. There, a table waited, and on it was laid out a substantial meal of the sort well suited to anyone in Pas’en or the city-states.

“What now?” Nua asked as she looked at the substantial spread.

“Now I eat.” She answered, “It will digest till… then, and when they… when they open my body, they will eat what is in my stomach… it is a way of preparing food…” Her answer had an unnatural calm. There were no utensils, and there were no bread, but there were ample fruits, and even a goblet with a bottle of fine wine beside it.

Nua nodded in numb acceptance as Sobella all but dove onto the table. She reached for the bottle, popped the cork, and poured the dark wine into the goblet. She slapped the bottle down, took the goblet in both hands and gulped it down. Her hands darted for fruit and she bit into piece after piece, tossing aside the remaining core before picking up the leg of a chicken that had been well roasted, and tearing the meat off the bone.

Nua watched from behind her as the demon-elf frantically ate all that she could, the unnatural calm had become frantic urgency. So much so that Nua missed the rest until it was obvious when Sobella fell to her knees.

“Hold me… just hold me for a bit…” Sobella sobbed mindlessly, her tears flowing down and dropping through the thin gaps at their feet, salty tears running over the bones of men, elves, orcs, centaurs, and all others deemed prey animals by the beastmen. The tears dripped down beyond sight, from bone to bone, until the red eyes who shed them could not follow their journey to the heart or base of the monstrous structure.

Nua’s arms held her as tightly as they could without hurting her, “I t-told you before… when we began, there were two reasons I wanted you…” Sobella finally stammered out.

“You did. You told me the first one was that I wouldn’t let you back out, wouldn’t let you run. Something to that effect, wasn’t it?” Nua replied, folding the woman into her arms from around her back, the cold breath of the death worshipper was oddly comforting to the demon-elf.

“The other reason… was that you wouldn’t spread my shame… sometimes… sometimes escorts who survive, they talk themselves up. Present themselves as braver than they likely were. They do it for reputation, for money telling their stories, or just in the hopes of seducing women who liked the strong and the brave. They often speak of sacrifices dying in fear to contrast their alleged courage.” Sobella turned her head, “You won’t do that to me… I knew it the moment your name came up…”

Nua was quick and savage in her affirmation. “No, I won’t… I will stay with you, and when I go back, I will tell them that a courtesan died with the courage of the greatest of kings on the battlefield. I will tell them you died to protect them. I will tell them about your will and sacrifice… me? I am just here to bear witness.”

Sobella felt her beating heart melt within her breast, “I’m sorry all this was put on you, that I had to be your burden, that I was a weapon used against you to take your life, that I kissed you back there when I had no right to, that I tried to get you to lie with me for my own selfish reasons. I’m sorry I held back information that could have killed you… and I’m sorry I’m going to be a burden until my last breath.”

Nua shook her head, “There is nothing to forgive, this is a dangerous place, and I came of my own accord, fuck your Starwatchers and your stars. I came to see a worthy life sacrifice itself out of love for all she had in life. That wasn’t fate, that was a choice. A choice I will respect. You’re among the most noble people I’ve ever seen in all my years, and it is my privilege to be with you here… despite, and because of the danger.”

“Fuck the Starwatchers…? You think they were behind you being here, as much as General Leaman, don’t you?” Sobella asked, and she felt the tightening hold on her body as answer enough.

“Then you don’t believe any of this was fated?” Sobella pressed.

“No. The Tlalmok made choices, Bracer made choices, Prince Rasgen, the priests, you, me… all just choices. Choices based on what we wanted, feared, hoped for. Choices based on what we could or could not do with what we had, where we were… that is all. If the stars authored this world, then they can die, nobody deserves what is about to happen to you, not even those who do it.” Nua violently shook her head, and found it stopping at the crook of Sobella’s neck.

Sobella’s breath was long and slow, “Are you really going to come back here in eight years… throw your life after mine…?”

Nua removed her glove from her left hand and held it palm up so that the jewel of death was clearly visible in the center. “I will keep my word to the God-Emperor, and his empire will wish that I had not.”

Sobella let the cryptic statement pass, and slowly breaking the grip around her, she turned to face her companion. In the distance, the sun had begun to set, marking the passing seconds of the demon-elf’s life slipping away.

She took Nua’s right hand and moved aside her dress to expose her thigh, she moved the assassin’s hand to touch the soft, firm flesh there. But her eyes weren’t on the gesture, rather her eyes were on Nua’s face.

The wood elf allowed the taking of her hand, but as soon as the warmth of intimate flesh was hinted at… she blinked and yanked her hand away as if it had been burned and she began to breath hard like she’d been in a fight, her blue eyes wide and wild.

“No!” Nua exclaimed, and Sobella’s face softened immediately.

“Nua… it’s alright… I don’t, and I won’t… come here…” Sobella whispered, and reaching out her arms to the deadliest person she’d ever met, she drew the tense wood elf in close, and made a comforting embrace. “I’m sorry… I suspected, now I know… and I had no right… but it’s over now… it’s all over…”

Nua managed a tiny sniffle and blinked back tears of her own, “You’re going to die in a few hours, but you’re comforting me? What is wrong with this picture?”

Sobella clung to the woman, “Nothing. Nothing at all. There is never anything wrong with one friend comforting another. No matter what the hour, day, or state of life… I’m about to die, but when you leave me behind, I want you to promise something to me with the same conviction you made your promise to the beastman who rules this place. Let that promise be the dying wish that you grant me.”

The warmth of the demon-elf was more welcome than the death worshipper wanted to admit, and more than that, she felt the sincerity through the way the heartbeat in her dark purple chest, synced in with her own. “What is it…?” Nua asked, enjoying the feel of comforting hands roaming up and down her back and the head folded to one side against her own. The bone of the horn was hard, but the warmth of life was still so close she could feel it as if it were pressed into her skin.

Sobella drew Nua’s face away from her own and held it at the side, she stared deeply into the eyes of her last remaining friend, her companion, and her escort while she spoke. “After my life ends, start to live your own, you can’t just live for work and vengeance and whatever your ambitions are… you deserve the same happiness I got, you deserve something worth not just dying for, but living for. And I’ll be sad in the afterlife if I look in on you and never see you smile except when you’re killing someone.”

“I promise… it may take some time… and I can’t promise I’ll succeed… but if this is your dying wish… I will grant it to you.” Nua replied with a humble bowing of her head.

Sobella kissed the top of Nua’s head, and managed a tiny bit of humor, “I’m also sorry about your hair, it was beautiful… but short suits you too, you know.”

Nua managed a faint groan, “I liked my long hair, I’m not especially vain but… I did like that.”

Sobella reached back and drew her hand through her own luxuriant long raven strands, “I know what you mean.”

Nua snorted, “Rub it in why don’t you…” And grim laughter took them both.

They both ate that night, beneath the stars worshipped by another religion Nua was coming to despise for its machinations. They said little more, until the light of the moon revealed a presence at the base of the pyramid.

“It’s time.” Sobella said and looked over to Nua at her right hand. She clasped the left hand of her escort. “I am Sobella of Pas’en, consort of Prince Rasgen the Great, and a common whore… and I know no fear.” She said the words in a guttural voice that reached only the twitching left ear of Nua. “Hold onto my hand until it is over, and no matter how much it hurts, I will fear nothing.”

Nua gave a determined nod as the trio ascended the pyramid of horror.

Step by step they closed in, the God-Emperor and his sons, the sound of it almost undetectable except for the clicking of the claws on their toes. When they came close, Sobella and Nua walked to the far side of the table.

The three ligermen stood still with the table between themselves, their meal, and the escort who brought it to them, giving the prey a moment to look them over.

Sobella then took the initiative, she removed the camisk and set it on the bone covered surface on which they stood. She then unbound the knots of her dark blue dress, and let it fall away, baring her body to them, and allowed them a chance to look her over as well.

“I offer myself to the God-Emperor, as a tribute of Pas’en to the eating god who consumes life and gives it to his people.” Sobella intoned, and then with Nua’s assistance, she rose up onto the table, first one leg, then the other, and moved herself to the center. Her body stretched out under the watching stars.

‘Fuck you.’ She thought toward them, and she felt the hand of the death worshipper who brought her to this place, tighten in comfort.

Sobella turned her face away from the ligerman and his sons, and looked up to Nua, holding the blue eyes as best she could, she mouthed out again, ‘I am not afraid.’

Nua did not respond, there was no need, that she did not move from her place, nor let her comforting hold on Sobella’s hand slacken, that was answer enough. The warm breeze caught strands of dark hair that hung down beyond the end of the table, the caress of the breeze over bare skin would have been a joy in any other time, now… she was numb.

Until the pain hit.

The ligerman Emperor’s foreclaw thrust into Sobella’s belly, and he began to tear the flesh open. Nua knew the sound very well, almost like rustling through a bag of leaves, but it was immediately drowned out a fraction of a moment later by a noise that tore at her heart.

Sobella’s shriek of pain ripped over the silent city, and was followed by another as she was penetrated at the belly by the same claw at a different spot, and the flesh was shredded away. Her body spasmed involuntarily from the pain, she held as tight as she could onto Nua’s hand, trying not to look anywhere but at the blue eyes that she’d looked at again and again for weeks with so many different emotions.

She heard the sound of biting, and then another shriek filled the air as one of the ligerman’s sons jabbed his claw into her right breast, and began to drag it around the base so he could tear it away from her body.

She spasmed, wailed, shrieked like a dying banshee as her body was torn to pieces. She caught a glimpse of the flesh of her chest passing through a liger maw, white furred fingers slick with blood, and the bite of the emperor on her insides that he had not cut away, but only dragged out of her to consume while still intact.

Her screams went on for what seemed to her like hours, and Nua never looked away from her face, and never blinked.

The howl of pain when Sobella’s sensitive ears were torn away, her agonized sobs, did not move to mercy those who savored the flavor of one of the most sensitive parts of an elf.

“Make a wish!” The brothers said and each grabbed one of her horns, and pulled, tearing them out from the side of her head, each liger looked at the horn in the other’s hand, and at one another before asking, “Who won?” while Sobella wailed out the agony of their mutilation. They tossed her horns away like broken toys, and they tumbled down the stairs of the temple until they came to a rest at the base.

Sobella did not beg for death. Even through the pain induced madness, she knew it would do no good. All she felt was relief at last when the soft touch of claws entered her body to grab at her ribcage, the way they looped within with practiced ease, and she shrieked in one more moment of abject agony when it was torn open before she felt the claws close around her heart, and tear it still beating from out of her chest. ‘Finally… finally it’s over…’ She managed the thought as the power to scream began to fade away.

She heard the sound of its beating stop when ligerman teeth closed over it, she heard the sound of chewing, even through her final dying wail. She felt one final squeeze of her hand from the last of her friends.

Then the bright light in her red eyes faded away to nothing, and like a candle with no more wax to feed the burning wick… Sobella was dead.

Nua let the hand go when the grip slackened, and watched the feast through unblinking blue eyes.

Around the city, she heard the sound of cheering, roaring, cawing, the sound of celebrating beastmen who had their supremacy confirmed by the screams of a dying tribute and the feasting of their emperor and his line atop their monument to atrocity.

Nua listened to their cheers, and watched as Sobella’s strong thighs, the place where Nua had touched, were carved away and eaten. She waited while the lips that had spoken sincerely, which had kissed her in a moment of unexpected passion, were neatly sliced off and placed atop a kidney to be eaten together.

The arms that had held on to Nua, the first to recognize there was more to her than violence and will, were flayed away and eaten skin and muscle, all down to the bone, which was cast off as nothing to roll down the steps with a clattering noise that seemed like it might never end, until it finally did at the base of the steps to land beside the tossed off horns.

Her beautiful face was carved away, and the expressive red eyes that lost their life and luster, were plucked out by the sharp claws of the God-Emperor’s two sons. The slavering sounds of their licking tongues, and popping sounds of bones cracked open for marrow, and the scent of blood filled the air. Arguably worse, was that the trio conversed with one another as they did so, dividing up bits of the body and talking of ordinary things as any family might over dinner.

It was over faster than Nua realized, and what was left was nothing but the long raven hair that still hung from the skull, and a smattering of scattered bones about the table among the remainder of the feast.

Nua had been ignored throughout, until the trio had satisfied their hunger. The cheering of the capital died down as the beastmen residents returned to their slumbers, and silence hung again like a silent noose swaying in the breeze and waiting for a visitor.

“Now you may go. Leave my city, and we’ll see you again in eight years, elf.” The God-Emperor uttered, the bloodstained white fur drew back at the corners in imitation of a smile of indulgence.

Nua quietly nodded, approached the head of the deceased Sobella, and cut off a shock of her hair. “To remember her by.” She explained to the God-Emperor at his curious expression.

“Your horse will be at the gate waiting for you.” He gestured past himself and his sons, toward the stairs.

“I understand, God-Emperor.” Nua replied with a hollow voice and empty eyes, and began to descend the stairs, when she was three or four paces down beyond them, she turned and looked over her shoulder.

“One more question, if I may, ruler of the Tlalmok?” Nua asked with a spark of curiosity.

“Ask, elf.” He demanded with sated, even contented bright yellow eyes.

“How did she taste?” Nua asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

The three ligermen traded annoyed looks. “The truth… worst flavored meat I’ve ever had. But… a tribute is a tribute, and our supremacy is unquestioned, so it was good enough on that basis at least. Now get out of my city and my empire, before I change my mind.” The God-Emperor ordered, and Nua resumed her long walk down the seemingly endless stairs, leaving only a corpse, and three curses at her back.