The Devil's Details - Ch. 08

Five minutes later, the three of them were getting dressed and composed again, each of them still glowing in the aftermath of their releases. Tabitha reached over and grabbed Emily's blue hair, yanking her body close to hers as she pressed her lips hard against the e-athlete, tasting the musky flavor of her own cunt upon the woman's lips.

Tabitha sat down in the chair and patted her lap, making Emily move to sit down on top of her legs, as Tabitha lifted the woman's shirt and bra up once more. "Veronica, if you would?" While Veronica was getting the jewelry from her purse, Veronica unscrewed a barbell end off of one of Emily's nipple piercings, sliding it out before threading through the replacement tag that Veronica gave to her, her engram stamped into bronze hanging from the woman's nipple as Tabitha pushed the ring through it and screwed it closed, sealing it off once more.

"You're going to enjoy playing with my other girls," Tabitha said with a wry smile. "I'm sure Charlie's going to enjoy broadening your horizons."

"That sounds like there's a story to be had," Emily said. "You... you were kidding about the whole 'daughter of the devil' thing, weren't you?"

"Roni, show her your tail while you call the adjudicators," Tabitha said. On command, Veronica's tail snaked out from beneath her skirt and moved to wrap around Emily's thigh, the gamer girl moaning a little bit. There wasn't fear in her sounds, only excitement and delight.

"Fuck, I bet you can do some hot ass shit with that," Emily finally said when she found her voice once more. She pulled her clothes back into place, buttoning, buckling and zippering.

"They'll be here in just a moment, Mistress," Veronica said, as a loud roar of approval blasted through the auditorium, causing both Emily and Tabitha to turn and look back towards the main event.

"Fuck yeah!" Emily said, pumping her fist into the air as she looked out at the crowds, watching as the Queens of Ragetown team took the stage. "There's my girls! Give'em hell, bitches!"

"Let's go out onto the balcony."

Tabitha and Emily opened the door as they moved out to look out among the crowd, Emily's breath catching a little bit as she looked down onto the crowd.

"Holy shitballs," Emily whispered. "I can... I can see energy rising up from all these people now. Was that always there?"

"It was," Tabitha said, moving to lean against the railing next to Emily. "You just couldn't see it. There's been a whole lot of things in the world you just couldn't see before now. For example, the two people coming to greet us? Not exactly human."

Emily and Tabitha both looked back over their shoulders as Shango and Zhurong walked through the door, not opening it, simply passing through it, as was their particular style. "Did... what the hell are they?" Emily asked, confusion and disbelief in her voice.

"The judges of the little competition I find myself in," Tabitha sighed. "Also, gods from a nearly forgotten time of the world."

"That's funny," Emily said, laughing a little before turning to look at Tabitha. "Oh. Oh! Oh shit, you're serious."

"Very much so," Tabitha said before the two gods were close enough to hear them. "Hail adjudicators. How does this fine evening find you?"

Zhurong was almost beaming, his smile from ear to ear. "It seems I've developed a handful of new worshippers, which means that it's possible my star could again be on the rise."

"He's been glowing like this since this morning," Shango bemoaned. "It's been nearly impossible dealing with him, reminding him that every so often we get blips of interest, but it's never going to return back to the old days."

"The old days?" Emily asked them.

"Mmmm," Shango said. "Back millennia ago, the name Shango would send fear into the hearts of the people, and they would never go so far as to neglect my holy days, or to tithe off a sliver of their harvest to invoke my favor, to inspire my compassion for the next year's harvest. I had hopes that my people would expand beyond their homes in Africa and bring my gospels to other nations, to other continents, but I was never quite as good at outreach as the damn Christians." He let out a heavy sigh, a tiny cloud of smoke tinged with crackling fire escaping as his breath.

"I see the Merlin is still riding his success, using every trick in the book to remain within the minds and thoughts of civilized beings all across the globe," Zhurong said, looking to the screen as a giant LCD screen zoomed in on a fight breaking out in the MOBA, one of the players using Merlin's ultimate, filling the floor of the area around the heroes with dozens of purple portals, eldritch arms reaching out to claw out at Merlin's opponents and lifting up his allies. "He always seems to be one step ahead of nearly everyone. Maybe that's his greatest trick. When the printing press was invented, he made sure the Arthurian myths were published early, written well and spread far and wide. Then cinema. After that, television. Now... all this," the Chinese god sighed. "I would admire the style of it, if it only he would share those secrets with the rest of us."

"The Merlin's greatest secret was that he never claimed to be a god, but was happy to be a myth," Veronica offered. "That made him much harder to extricate from the world, because myths are simply stories that inspire the retelling. And you have to admit, getting people to chant your name in a stadium for something like this? It's kind of genius."

"I need admit no such thing," Shango snorted dismissively. "You have brought us here to authenticate another capture? Let us dwell on that, and not this white-skinned trickster."

"He actually didn't look that light skinned to me," Tabitha said, and suddenly it was almost as though the entire stadium fell silent, both of the gods turning to look at her intently.

"You've... you've seen him?" Shango asked.

"He's here, somewhere," Tabitha nodded. "He wanted me to promise not to disrupt his event."

Zhurong looked up at Shango. "Could he have heard your slander?"

Shango sighed and shrugged. "Either he did or he didn't. Either he's angry or he isn't. There is nothing to be done about it now, so let us do our jobs."

Tabitha turned Emily around and bent her forward. "You can watch the whole crowd as we do this, Emily. But you can't scream."

"No worries, I'll just watch the match..."