Blasphemia II: Deus Vult Pt. 04

"It's some kind of pocket dimension," Filia said, her hungry eyes still roaming up and down Luca's body as a wolf might eye a wounded deer. "Rome's in a bit of a sorry state right now, lots of ugly green things running around prepping the space to be a big sacrifice for some kind of abomination of unfathomable power in another dimension."

Luca looked to Judith. "Another one of those beings you mentioned in your report?"

"Yes."

"I see." Luca looked around them. "Well, I don't suppose we can stop it standing around here, now can we?"

"Nope," Filia chirped, spinning on her heel. "I'll find us a way out, give me a sec."

She loped away across the Colosseum. Judith watched her move towards the remains of the flesh tower, then grimaced and looked away. "You might want to look away. She's about to do some unsavory things to those remains. Unsavory, but effective."

Luca looked for a few moments longer than he likely should have before making a face and turning away. "How did you come across her again? Did you summon her to aid you?"

"No," Judith snapped, her knee-jerk anger coming to the fore. So he was going to judge her, too? Then again, the succubus had been knuckle-deep in her a couple hours prior, so perhaps it was warranted. "I made it quite damned clear that I'm not their collaborator in any way!"

Luca blinked. "I didn't mean to imply that."

Judith forced herself to exhale. "She claims she was sent here on a mission from her masters in Hell. Apparently she's to rescue His Holiness. To what end, search me."

"Fascinating," Luca said. He glanced back over his shoulder at what Filia was doing behind them, then made a face and quickly looked back forward. "Seems best to let her know when she's done doing... whatever kind of magic it is that she's doing."

"Speaking of which, how does a scholar like you know such holy magic?" Judith asked. "I've never seen a barrier of that strength before."

Luca looked down at his arms. Though they'd been concealed before, the spiraling mix of Hebrew and Latin on his skin was even more comprehensive a litany of faith than hers, with far more potent absolutions to draw from. "I was tapped to begin Templar training when I was young, but didn't have the stomach for the martial aspects."

Judith frowned. "You look the same age as me. I don't recall seeing you among my fellow recruits in the Vatican."

"I wasn't trained in the Vatican." He lifted his shirtsleeve a little more, showing off the most impressive biceps Judith had ever seen on a member of the scholarly Research division. A short line of Arabic was inked across where his upper arm met his shoulder, in plain black ink rather than the mercurial ink used in most Templar tattoos. "I was tutored and trained in Jerusalem, with a small group of individuals with the same levels of potential that came from all over the world."

"I never heard of such a venture."

"I only went because I never was good with blades or guns." Luca smiled. "I considered it a pilgrimage of sorts. I learned to pursue my true calling, the reading of God's word and understanding it as best I can." He looked down at his arms, turning them over so Judith could see the full extent of the script. "Though I did figure it best to learn a few holy magics. All of mine are defensive - barriers, healing rites, that sort of thing."

"Those will come in handy," Judith said. "We've a long way to go still before we reach our objective."

A loud crack came from behind them. Filia was hunched over, her hands clawing at the air in front of her. "Come on, you!" she grunted. After a moment, she cursed and pulled hard. The air in front of her rippled, then parted wide to reveal a portal full of the colors of the real world. Filia stepped back to admire her handiwork, tucking a loose lock of her hair behind her ear. "Oy, Holier Than Thous. You two coming?"

Judith sighed. "Tune her out as best you can. Though she's our ally, she's no less abrasive and ire-inducing than she was before." She paused. "Scratch that. She's more."

"And yet I'm just so damn charming!" Filia said, making Judith flinch. "Let's go back to the real world."

"God provides an endless well of patience," Judith heard Luca mutter as the two of them walked towards the portal Filia had created. The succubus smirked, then ducked into the rend in space. Filia and Luca followed.

The moment they were inside, Judith felt her stomach do a flip, nausea flooding her senses. All sense ground being underneath her vanished, and she fell into utter blackness with a strangled curse. Not again!

She thrashed around and slashed at the darkness with Celerity. After a few seconds of flailing, she felt the blade bite on something. Her arm tensed as she forced weight against it. The darkness parted before her sword, revealing a newfound light. Judith didn't hesitate and clawed her way out of the blackness.

She fell onto her face onto a rocky floor. Judith picked herself up, finding herself in a rocky tunnel. Rather than the garish pink of the Colosseum, this time all of reality around her was a pale, soft blue. "Dammit, succubus, you took a wrong turn," she muttered.

No snarky response came, and Judith turned back around. Filia and Luca were nowhere to be seen. She took a deep breath. "Fantastic."

Further down the rocky hall she could see the tunnel open up into a larger space. She hugged the wall and approached the aperture slowly, Celerity hanging by her side. Being careful not to move too quickly, she leaned her head around the corner.

In comparison to the rest of the nightmarish horrors that she had seen that day, the room in front of her was rather striking in its beauty. The rocky walls turned crystalline, refracting the light into a million different shades of blue and white that stretched far into infinite reflections. Even the floor seemed endless, the pattern there segmented and cracked like the fine intricacies of a snowflake.

Judith slowly stepped into the room, looking around and waiting for something to jump out at her. Her boots made soft sounds on the crystal floor. As she moved into the cavern, her body was reflected on the floor. She stopped in the center of the space and turned in a slow circle, trying to spot a way out. Celerity tapped her thigh as she looked up at the ceiling, then down at the floor. Her reflection stared back at her.

"Well, now what?" she asked the empty room.

"I don't know," her reflection replied. Judith's blood froze. "Let's find out."

Like a striking snaked her reflection reached up, her hand emerging from the floor. She grabbed hold of Judith's ankle. Judith slashed down with Celerity, slicing the reflection's hand off at the wrist. It disappeared into smoke, and her reflection pulled its arm back. The stump rippled, and the hand reformed. The doppelganger glared up at her.

"What fresh hell is this?" Judith breathed.

The doppelganger surged upwards, phasing through the floor until it stood in front of her. It was a perfect mirror image of her, down to the tattoos and the scars. "Come now," the reflection said in her own voice. "You know well enough that your hell is of your own making."

"I'm not about to bandy words with some apparition," Judith said. She thrust her palm out and willed holy fire.

Her doppelganger mirrored the motion perfectly, right down the slight cant of Judith's fingers to better direct the spell. An answering blast of white fire rippled down the doppelganger's arm, and met Judith's in the space between them. As the spells collided, they exploded, and Judith threw up her arms to protect her face from the heat.

As it faded, a boot sounded on the floor. Judith threw up Celerity out of instinct and felt another blade ring against it. Her reflection smirked before pulling back and striking again. Judith parried the blow and went on the offensive, spinning her blade back into a reverse grip and seeking a vital point. Her reflection swatted away every strike with perfect accuracy, and Judith quickly realized that whatever this thing before her was, it knew all of her moves and how to counter them.

As if to put an point on it, her reflection's blade slipped through her guard and sliced open the skin on her cheek. Judith struck its wrist away and stabbed forward, seeking her foe's belly. Her reflection's copy of Celerity turned her stab away. The spectre pivoted, dodged Judith's follow-up strike, then answered with one of her own. Judith ate the blow on her injured cheek, opening up the scratch further. Blood trickled down her face as she righted herself, both combatants recentering themselves. "What are you?" Judith asked, wiping some of the claret away with her thumb.

"I'm you," her reflection said. "Your past, your future. Your vices, your sins." It levelled Celerity at her. "In this place, truths are laid bare in the eyesight of the True Father. He knows all. He sees all."

"Can he see what I'm about to do to you?" Judith said, brandishing Celerity meaningfully.

Her reflection smirked, and Judith was taken aback. The face was hers, but the expression reminded her much of Filia. "You fight yourself day by day. Do you still have the strength to face me now?"

"So long as I have the Lord, there is nothing I cannot conquer!" Judith put a burst of holy power into her feet and lunged, spinning in a backwards slash to shear off her doppleganger's head.

Celerity whistled through open air.

A shadow fell over Judith. She looked up just in time for her reflection's hand to grab her face and squeeze tight. "Let's examine that, shall we?"

Her reflection pushed down, hard. Judith's back ached in protest as she fought against the crazy strength. Her balance was upset, and she fell backwards, expecting to hit the floor. Instead, she kept falling well past when she should have hit something solid, until she was right-side up again.

Gone was the crystal cavern, though the world around her was still blue. Instead, they stood in a spartan room, with the seal of the Catholic Church on the mosaic floor. Around them were a multitude of youths of various genders and ethnicities, their faces blurred into obscurity save for one. Judith's younger self stared dutifully ahead, sweat beading on her shaved head. Beneath her feet, blood pooled on the mosaic tiles, another stain among the many dried into the terra cotta. Judith remembered the feeling of the rough, scratchy tiles against the wounds on her feet acutely.

"Your existence was forged in pain," her reflection said, also looking at her younger self. "Pain inflicted. Pain endured. You were made to fight your future comrades until you were both bloody to kill the empathy inside you. When you failed, you were punished."

A sound of a willow switch echoing against bare, uncalloused feet echoed through the room. Judith winced out of reflex, then grit her teeth and ripped the reflection's hand off her face. Celerity whistled through the air and cracked against the doppelganger blade, both of them dueling in the midst of the phantoms of Judith's past.

"It was to harden us," Judith protested, pivoting around and feinting twice before lunging at the phantom. "To make our minds and bodies ready for the horrors we would face as Templars. It is what has kept me alive this far!"

"But at what cost?" her reflection leered. "What did you sacrifice in the process?" It ducked a swing from Judith, then punched her in the midriff. The blow doubled Judith over and knocked her off her feet. She flew through the air until she hit the wall, crashing through it as if it were made of paper.

Judith caught a glimpse of a city street before her reflection moved through the hole in the wall, leaping down at her with a head-splitting downward slash. Judith blocked it with Celerity held horizontal, and the clash sent a ripple of force out around their surroundings. None of the passers-by seemed to notice. All of them moved as they had years ago when Judith had stood in this square, on this day. She remembered it vividly.

Before her stood the Pantheon, whole and complete, unlike the rubble it was now. The fountain's water winked in the midday sunlight. It was in this place that she'd seen him. It had been a rare day off, where she was free to wander the city and experience it's history, to remind herself just it was she was training to protect.

Through a gap in the water she saw him again. Unlike the rest of the featureless blue shadow figures in this strange world, her memory of him stood out clear as day. He was American, that much was obvious from the way he carried himself. Likely a farm boy, perhaps only a year or two older than her, with skin tanned from a childhood in the sun with straw-colored hair and freckles dappling a face that was already a man's. He had a bit of padding around his midriff, but she could see the strength behind it and further up in his arms, bared by the tank top he wore. He'd been curiously staring at a cafe sign, his lips trying to work their way around the pronunciation of the Italian written in chalk.

Her first thought had been one that had shaken her to her core: what I wouldn't give to have those lips on my skin.

The combination of fear and elation that the thought had brought returned to her like the force of a divine hammer. Her concentration faltered for a moment. Her reflection swept her legs out from under her just as the handsome young man looked over at her.

Then her doppleganger drove a fist into her midriff and punched her into the ground.

Judith broke through with a sound of splintering wood. Her momentum stopped when she smashed into a wooden floor. The small hotel room was lit by a low light, illuminating the curve of Judith's back as the farm boy undressed her with trembling fingers. Sweat shone on her body, pure nerves bringing it to the fore. She'd felt trapped by her desires, her body betraying her in a way that she'd never felt before.

A noise came from above her. Judith rolled out the way just as her reflection dropped like an angel from on high, sword swinging in a helm-splitting blow. "You remember this," it said, putting itself between her and the phantom images of her past. The world shifted for a moment as the reflection stood up. Behind her, Judith was on her back, her legs crossed around the farm boy's waist as they made love slowly, gently. It had hurt, at first, but when she told him it was her first time, he took it slowly, pumping his hips into hers with slow, gentle motion. Their fingers twined together as Judith found out just how wonderful his lips felt - on her skin, her neck, her own mouth. "The first time you gave in."

"I do not regret this," Judith said, her voice shaky. She reversed her grip on Celerity. "Compared to what came after, this was divine."

Her reflection smirked. "Let's talk about that, shall we?"

It raised a hand and obliterated the world around them in a blast of fire. Judith put up her arms to ward off the scorching heat.

All of a sudden she was on her back, pinned down by something holding down her waist. Her eyes opened wide.

It was the night that Filia and her demon Nico had spread the corrupting thrall marks to a large number of students at Saint Bethany's. It had started in a ritual at the beach, and the mark was spreading like wildfire, turning the students into fuck-hungry animals. It was like a scene out of the one zombie film Judith had seen in her entire life, once level-headed youths practically running each other down in their drive to spread the demon's gospel. Only instead of devouring each other's flesh, they instead sought the flesh's pleasures.

In that time, she'd been enthralled just enough by the mark for her body to be out of her control, a prisoner in her own mind. Yet she could feel everything. She could feel the thick, heavy cock spreading her labia wide, plunging deep inside her with every bold thrust. Another was between her lips, a third in her hand. It took all of her considerable willpower to hold it together, to preserve the will to resist inside herself.

The scene changed to the one a few days later, where she hadn't even been able to claim that. The Infernals, drunk with power, had seared a thrall rune on her body so potent she hadn't been able to fight back. She had become connected to them, connected to everyone around her, even the Angel with her head buried between her legs. If ever there was a transgression against her soul, having her cunt eaten out by one of God's own Angels was it. All that had mattered was the basest instincts of her body - fuck, drink water, fuck some more, fuck until you couldn't even sort out the sensations anymore and then keep going past that point.

All of those sensations washed over Judith again, even as a bystander. Warm heat pooled in her groin, and her legs clenched out of long-ingrained instinct to tamp down on any pleasure she might have felt. Despite her assurances to the confessors, there was a small, smoldering part of her that had enjoyed every minute of being under the Infernal's control. It was the same part of her that had gone all a-quiver when the succubus had pinned her down in the apartment and fingerbanged her hours prior. She spent so much time, day in and day out, being in control of her body and thoughts. It was all she had been trained to do. Why did it feel so good to relinquish it?

A body slid against her own and she turned her head towards it. Her reflection stared back at her, naked as she was, both of them floating in a black void. "I see you," it whispered, before kissing her on the lips. Judith reacted out of instinct, wrapping her arms around the reflection's shoulders and pulling it into her own body. Breasts pressed together, legs twined, skin rasped against skin as Judith made out with herself. It felt unspeakably good.

"You see me?" Judith murmured against her own lips.

"Of course," her reflection said.

Judith allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. "But did you see this?"

She released all the power she had been holding onto into her arm. Her grip around her reflection tightened like iron as the tattoos on her arm glowed like the sun. A moment later, holy fire erupted from Judith's body and engulfed both her and her reflection in flames. A keening scream wailed over the sound of roaring fire.

Judith opened her eyes, finding her cheek pressed against cold crystal floor. Celerity lay next to her head. She grabbed the blade and got to her feet.

A bipedal creature staggered to and fro in front of her, it's skin charred black from the close-range blast of fire. It's four-fingered hands scrabbled at its body, trying to put out the smoldering flesh. Judith ran it through the midriff with Celerity, burying the blade into the thing's gut all the way to the crossguard. "And now you get to see God, you goddamn monster," she snarled.

The creature made a hacking noise. It's hands scrabbled around Judith's with weak, jerky motions. It listed against her, and she turned her head away contemptuously. It spoke, but it's voice was no longer hers. It was deep, resonant, and made her teeth hurt. "You presume much, Judith Magdalena," it said.

"I'm not the one with a sword in my gut," Judith said, twisting her wrist. The blade crunched inside the creature's body, as if to emphasize the point.

"You have robbed me of a mere vessel," the voice said. "I have many more. And still more with each passing hour. So long as they bare my eyes, I can see as they do. As my return grows closer, so too does my ability to assume control." It craned its head to look at her, and despite the charred skin, the thing's eyes looked right into her soul. It was like looking into a bottomless abyss. "It will not be long now."