Demon Dorm

***

Gremory had been in the Domain a long time by this point, but not so long that she would fail to recognize another of her world when she saw one.

It was a rare event in her home reality, though not entirely unheard of, for an angel to fall into one's lap. Besides, it took a lot to render Gremory unsteady; she had not come by the title of seducer of women without being a little prepared for the vicissitudes of life to come at her fast. Demon or no, a disgruntled husband required some kind of a response, every time.

Sometimes in the Domain, holes will open up in the fabric of the world, depositing newcomers into their midst before closing back up. It came with the territory of being a foundational, forgotten world amid the hierarchy of realities that composed the cosmos. When Lailah, angel of fertility, fell out of her own world and into the Domain, she was recognized almost immediately; a rare thing indeed in these parts.

All enter the Domain alone, and for the most part, how long they stay that way is up to them... but not Lailah.

Gremory had made her home atop the floating plateau of an area known to the locals as Notia, though not a one of them were old enough to remember why. Flat expanses of black rock, each as wide across as a small town yet thin as a china plate, made leisurely rotations in place above an otherwise unremarkable field, forming a loose conglomeration of levitating stone that could not be moved by any force yet applied to them. Even falling from a great height, the obsidian planes of Notia were there to catch Lailah before she came to earth.

Much of Notia's civilization consisted of free floating aviaries, specialized to the flying species that had colonized the plates mostly by dint of it being easily accessible real estate that few others could get to. Walls of striated netting, vertical perches for a cadre of batfolk and tengu that had taken up residence there, loomed over the edge of Gremory's plate, high enough to catch the falling angel as she arced through the air. She hit the netting hard, chain links jangling together, a ripple spreading from the point of impact. Now rolling down the side, Lailah continued her descent, gripping at handholds one after the other to slow herself until, finally, she came to earth.

She did not do so alone. Gremory, from her throne in the center of the place, had dispatched a trio of her flitting, airborne entourage to investigate the falling newcomer at the outskirts. Two were fairies, tiny things barely as tall as an index finger that were surrounded at all times by a ball of inner light, the last a gryphon vixen with deep red wings. They arrived just as Lailah fell to the ground, encircling her cautiously but without outright aggression.

'Easy now,' one of the fairies said, once the angel had recovered enough to get a look at where she was. 'You're the last of your kind, it'd be bad for you to do something stupid and damage yourself.'

Restraining magic leapt from tiny fairy fingertips, attaching itself to the angel where she had fallen, and it was thus that Lailah, angel of fertility, was taken to meet Gremory, demon of feminine seduction...

***

Gremory's home was, in truth, more a brothel than an actual abode, a pleasure garden for all manner of winged women that had, over time, grown from a single building in the middle of the plate to, ultimately, the entire plate itself. Perhaps at one point the city of Notia had objected to one of their central planar centers becoming a den of iniquity like this, but Gremory had a certain set of skills, and all of the city's higher ups had female loved ones who could be, not to put too fine a point on it, tempted into a demon's bed.

A large stone arch demarcated the edges of Gremory's domain, and Lailah was led through it on her on her way to meet the demon in question. Stepping over the threshold was like walking into a whole other world, sounds and sights and scents rushing to greet the newcomer the very second her feet stepped over. Feminine voices cooing in hushed, hot tones, the curves of interesting bodies thoroughly interested in something else, a consistent perfume to the air that was sweet, but never overwhelming.

The fairies led the way, their gryphon muscle having winged away the moment it became clear that Lailah posed no threat, and their pace left no time for the angel to immerse herself in the thoroughly pleasant sensations all around her. She was led past groups of lounging, winged women in various states of undress, talking, bathing, in flight. Flocks of harpies, their feathers shimmering in the sun, swooped and dove overhead, their laughter filling the skies as Lailah passed under them.

The angel had no idea where she was, what had happened to the world she had left to get here, but at least the people that were here were enjoying themselves.

'Come on,' one of the fairies grunted, the sound too high to be intimidating. She jerked on the chain of energy that connected her to Lailah, causing the angel to stumble and keep walking. 'Boss' gotta figure out what to do with you before you get too comfy.'

The boss, such as Gremory could be called that in a place as large and complex as Notia, was hidden away in her own private corner of the plate, the building she had taken residence within actually a bakery. The scent of fresh bread, garnished with alien spices or fruits, was a pleasant kind of cloying, washing out from the open door in a warm rush. Other fairies flitted to and fro within, these ones creatures of fire that flew in and out of the ovens without hesitation, wings of smoke billowing out behind them as they tended the bread.

And sitting in the midst of it all, looking extremely out of place in her skimpy, fishnet body-stocking of an outfit, sat the boss herself, a smile on her face and a cadre of women fawning over her every move. She was deep in conversation when Lailah arrived, but it only took one look at the angel for the boss to switch her attentions.

There was a moment of silence, where the boss demon's eyes first widened, then narrowed, the motions distinct and emblematic of their own individual emotions. Brushing off the clinging hands of her retinue, she stood, in the process only coming up to Lailah's chest. She approached the chained angel with head held high and wings defiantly outstretched.

'What,' she said slowly, fangy teeth bared. Demons do not know every angel of their world's heaven, but there was a certain scent that lingered, a material signature that was the same whether one was a denizen of the Upper or Lower realms. 'Was the name of your heaven, angel? Because I think I know you.'

'The Islands of the Saved,' Lailah replied, a pang of sadness in her voice; it was extremely likely she would never get to see them again now, that they were... just gone. There were too many people here whose soul signatures she could not identify for this to not be some kind of castaway world. 'But you're...'

'Gremory, of the marriage bed and the virgin's secrets. Demon of seduction in the world in which you were Lailah of the twinned embrace, the angel of fertility.' The demoness frowned. 'We've never met but our domains of influence were alike. You really did land in the best possible place, in my backyard...'

'What are you-'

'You're about to get all arch, tell me that angels and demons are in no way alike, I get that,' Gremory waved one clawed hand, dismissing the thought before Lailah could even get through expressing it. 'But you're not at home anymore, Uptown Girl. You're down here in the Domain, where all the really lucky people of all stripes get to come and have their illusions of having a place or a purpose wiped away. Home's dead and gone, Lailah Double-Touch, and you can't tell me you don't feel the pull of this place now...'

Reaching out, the demon gripped the spellwork chains that held the angel and pulled, drawing her down to eye height. A crimson gaze met those azure eyes.

'I'm a demon of seduction, you're an angel of fertility. Surrounded by young, nubile women, we're both empowered. Feel it in your bones, Lailah.'

She could feel it, had been feeling it gathering in her since the moment she had entered this place, though a mix of confusion and growing grief had masked it until now. Not an entirely alien feeling, it was in fact the sort of thing that Lailah had felt many times when she visited her plane's Midworld, bringing divinely inspired motherhood to deserving women. A sensation like lightning in her blood, miracles boiling up through her every cell, an incipience she did not truly understand... a lust for the marrow of life itself that roiled and never came to rest.

Even divorced from her heaven, bereft of her gods and separated from her paradise, Lailah still felt her angelic calling. Far from divinity born, it seemed now to be an inherent part of her, something she carried with her unto this new world, whatever it was, and the fact that it hadn't died with her homeworld, that she was not here bereft of her very nature, seemed more chilling to Lailah now than even the prospect of losing it.

Worse still, she could feel her godsblood calling out to Gremory, finding a kindred spirit in the little demoness, some other thing that drew its mana from the bevy of ladies that had been collected here...

Her whole body heating up, painted lips parted and panting, the essence of fertility flowing through her in a bright tide that carried with it, in a moment like this, a deep sadness, Lailah almost sobbed. But the question that came to her was something else, and it demanded to be answered. Curiosity had to be present in the nature of an angel that wanted people to breed, after all; humans were mysterious people when they thought with the brains between their legs.

'Why is this place a bakery, though?' She asked, finally gathering the wherewithal to tear her gaze from Gremory and look around the many ranks of ovens and their attendants of flame. Raw dough was constantly being kneaded, pressed, basted or treated, the cozy nature of the scent and the wafting heat presenting a fundamental mismatch when compared to the lounging, barely clothed women everywhere else.

'Because I like bread,' Gremory crossed her arms, raising her chin in snooty defiance. 'I'm not just about seduction, you know. Besides, you and I might be immortal but my people still need feeding and taking care of, no matter how they spend the rest of their day.'

'"Your people?"' Lailah cocked her head to one side. 'You're a demon! You don't have people, you have victims! Temptations!'

'Meaning you've only had salvations, I suppose. Again, you're not in the Isles anymore,' Gremory sighed. 'Whatever we were made for back home, it doesn't... Look, it'll be easier if I just show you, okay? Come inside, fairies, let the lady go, and go and get me the, uh, the thing, alright? The thing, glowballs, I want to be able to sit next to the woman without leaving a crater behind.'

Having literally nowhere else to go, and with the whisperings of her old power practically clinging to the walls of the building itself, Lailah followed when Gremory turned and stepped deeper into her bakery. Flame fairy traffic corrected itself around her path, the only one of the two tall enough to actually disrupt their natural flight paths; clusters of gryphon vixens, dragonnewts, winged creatures of all types looked at her with some curiosity as she passed them by.

At the center of the bakery was a repository for the fresh product, racks lining the walls and filled with pastries. Other kinds of fairies made their home here, sugar sprites who attended the finer details of frosting, cream-filling and otherwise confecting the things on the shelves. The scent of fresh bread hung heavy in the air, counterpointed by a myriad of sweeter smells, their composition constantly in flux depending on what the sprites were summoning now.

There was neither a stitch of clothing nor an unhappy expression to be seen anywhere.

'It's not the most private room in the place, but certainly the most pleasant to be in,' Gremory took the subjugation leash from her flitting fairy assistants, made sure that Lailah could see it before she proffered the business end to the angel. For a demon she seemed to be a remarkably straight shooter. 'Put it on. We're like dynamite and a stack of lit matches otherwise.'

'We don't know each other like that,' Lailah shook her head, knowing all too well what that thing could do.

'But we could,' Gremory shot the angel a crooked smile, fangs showing at the corners of her mouth. She was a small woman, unassuming and unconcerned with her largely bared self, but in that moment it became clear there was so much more to her than just that. Her horns, curled up against the messy crimson bob of her hair, shone black like the depths of night, the very core of ancient forests bristling with watching eyes and hungry teeth. Her own eyes were a lurid yellow, pupils serpentine and slitted, their knifelike narrowness entrancing, demanding all of Lailah's attention.

She could sink into that gaze, like so very many mortal women had before her...

'Old world's dead, angel,' Gremory's voice was a silken lilt, something strange and heavy hiding beenath that softness. 'Long live the new world. Ain't no Isles of the Saved anymore, no Continent of the Tempted either. The human world we worked in is gone. What's left is this: no salvation, no punishment, just life.'

Her short thighs were thick and curvy, tanned skin rubbing against itself as she walked, inviting all who were present to imagine them wrapped around their waists, rubbing endlessly against them. Gremory strode a loose circle around Lailah, her tail trailing behind her, a lazy black ribbon long enough to remain in the angel's sight even when the demoness it belonged to was behind her. Her wings, flapping, beat the hot bakery air into Lailah's body with rhythmic certainty, heating her up second by second.

'You can't... use your magic... on me,' Lailah's generous chest rose and fell, laboring for breaths that only came now as heavy panting, her cheeks burning hot.

'You'd be surprised how many of the old rules don't apply here, Uptown Girl,' Gremory smirked. 'You don't have divine protection here, and I've got no infernal motivation to cause you trouble. Relax, let me in. Put on the collar, angel, and then we can talk like equals.'

'I n-need a subjugation collar to be equal to you?' Lailah mewled.

'You've spent a lot of time at the top of the world, Lailah,' Gremory continued her circuit around the angel, fighting off a more severe expression that might have inhibited her charms. 'One of us has to wear it so we don't explode the joint, and I think of the two of us you've had it easier so far.'

Sliding dangerously close, Gremory pressed her lips to Lailah's ear. The angel gasped, fearful, actually feeling their natures begin to repel one another, black static earthing itself in her soul; but she could not bear to pull away, not from that mischievous mouth and that small, sweet body. In that moment she would have risked oblivion indeed to stay close to the short demon.

'Put it on, Lailah of motherhood.' Gremory said, her tone hot and wanting, just as desperate then as Lailah felt. 'Then we can find out what sorts of things I can get you to take off...'

The angel whimpered. Her hand had come up without her knowledge, fingertips resting atop the golden metal of the collar, just a second from taking it up. She still had three other hands unoccupied, and each of them clenched into a fist, long nails digging into her palms in an effort, weakening by the moment, to avoid reaching out and touching Gremory before they were prepared.

Fighting against her own impulses, she carefully lifted the subjugation collar from Gremory's palm and held it, turning over the intricate artifact in her hand. Back on the Isles it was commonly understood that only a few such devices had ever existed at one time, things meant to, for one purpose or another, bridge the gap between the angelic and the demonic. She had been content at the time to never be anywhere near one, their perversions of the natural order too close to a mortal sin for Lailah's comfort.

But the Isles were gone now, and it seemed the only ones that had escaped the destruction were herself and the little demon currently licking her lips as she watched Lailah agonize. What a pity it would be, that the only two who could even remember what their home was like were doomed to remain at arm's length for all eternity. Barred from getting close, from speaking candidly.

... Barred from t-touching...

Eying Gremory with mounting hunger, Lailah lifted the collar to her neck and clipped it into place. The inner workings of the lock vibrated lightly against her throat as they closed, the leash extending from the centerpiece in a growing spill of light, making itself inch by inch until the control bauble at the end formed and offered itself to the demoness.

Gremory wrapped her claws around the golden ball, not hesitating even a moment to bring herself into the connection it represented between the two of them. Their selves flowed through the leash toward the center, commingling there for the first time without the danger of violent repulsion. Lailah gasped, some small but important part of herself bowing its head to the demon.

'Good girl,' she was all fangs and prurient expressions, watching with no small delight as Lailah gasped at the appellation. The angel sank to her knees, and no part of that seemed wrong or strange to either party now, but instead a natural extension of what the collar and leash they held had made they two.

For the first time they touched, Gremory laying a testing palm on Lailah's shoulder. Neither could conceal their nerves in that moment, both tensing up at the point of contact, before quickly relaxing; there was always the possibility of things going wrong, after all.

Now that it hadn't, though, Gremory trailed that hand up the angel's shoulder, luxuriating in the smooth darkness of her skin, up the graceful curve of her neck and toward her cheek. Her thumb stroked against Lailah's white painted lips, and the angel, operating on some logic below conscious thought, obediently opened her mouth and admitted the probing claw inside.

The Isles of the Saved had not been as pure as many had assumed. Lailah knew plenty about sexual impulses beyond procreation; she moaned now, her tongue pressing up against Gremory's thumb. The sharp point of her nail proved an especial draw, something she lavished with extra attention.

'Welcome to the new home, better than the old home, angel,' the demon said, her voice thick with fascination. 'We've got stuff you've never felt before in your little paradise. Come and see.'

She crawled. It felt natural to do so, though both she and Gremory knew that it was the collar doing that. Four palms flat to the ground, Lailah allowed herself to be led inward, her mouth still full of demonic fingers; Gremory let her hand trail behind her, extending out so that the angel could continue sucking her thumb. While they were connected by the leash, neither could imagine a world in which this arrangement did not continue.

Gremory's skin carried with it a sort of venomous, addictive heat, the resonant echoes of the place in which she had been forged. It swept into Lailah like a fever, leaving her unable to think straight, her mind always returning to the sway of the demon's generous ass, ponderances of how her tail might feel inside her...

There were no places that were more private than any other here, just configurations of rooms that held more or less working fairies and lounging women than others. Lailah could hardly bring herself to be concerned about crawling, leashed, through such rooms though, because Gremory seemed unconcerned entirely. There came a point, during an infinite lifespan dedicated to seduction, that the prospect of someone else seeing you in the middle of something untoward began to lose its ability to embarrass.