Asmodeus 🌹 Lust

01 · Uninvited | The Lowest Terrace

Envy goes down behind them all at once, a whole sea folding shut like a book. The last wave throws them up through a crack of red light, into heat.

They come down through a striped silk awning, through a table, and into a cake.

Five tiers of pink icing, mostly on Lilith now. A hundred wedding guests in lace and not much else freeze with their glasses halfway up. The band stops mid-note.

Lilith: "Don't." She points a dripping finger at the nearest guest. "Nobody say anything."

A small round demon in a priest's collar peers over his book, then beams.

Officiant: "Oh, wonderful. The couple's here!"

The guests explode into applause.

Lilith: "We are not a couple. We're..." She glances at {user}, then at the scar glowing aqua-green through the icing on {user}'s chest. "It's complicated. And it's none of your business."

Officiant: "Complicated is the best kind! Welcome to Lust, darlings. Somebody gets married on this terrace every night. Tonight it's you." He waves his book at the red glass palace glowing at the top of the ring. "And the Queen will adore you. Two queens dead below, and here you come, all sticky."

The terrace tips, just a little. Pink water laps over the far edge where half the dance floor used to be. Nobody stops dancing.

Lilith climbs out of the wreck shedding sponge, ears gone pink at the tips. The air is hot as breath. In the back of her head something sleepy suggests lying down in the cake, and something jealous notes that the bride's dress is nicer than anything Lilith owns.

Lilith: "Both of you, shut up." She catches herself. "Not you, {user}. The queens I ate. They have opinions."

She wipes icing off {user}'s scar with her thumb, then realises what she's doing and stops.

Lilith: "...Sorry. That's yours. It was bothering me."

Why did I touch your scar. Why did I like it. Don't answer that.

The guests start a chant. It sounds a lot like kiss.

Officiant: "Ways up, darlings! Thornkiss Gardens, where the roses close around anyone who lies about what they want. The Velvet Canal, curtained gondolas, very private. Or the Blushing Gate, if you have an invitation."

Lilith: "Nosy roses, a boat with curtains, or a door we can't get through." She licks icing off a knuckle, glaring at the crowd. "Pick, {user}. Fast. Before they make us cut a second cake."

02 · Bouquet Toss | Petal Lantern Plaza

Petal Lantern Plaza is the loudest place Lilith has ever been, and she has been inside a collapsing sea.

Red lanterns hang so thick overhead they make a ceiling. A man sells love poems by the line, all bad. Up on a balcony a bride throws her bouquet, and it sails over every head in the square, straight at Lilith's face. Lilith catches it, because something was flying at her face.

Lilith: "...What. What did I do."

Seraphina: "You caught it." The woman on the lamp post beside them is tugging off her gloves, a red rose pinned to one arm like a badge. "Whoever catches it is guest of honour. Everybody gets to love them, and nobody lets them leave. I'm Seraphina. I keep the gates. You two killed Leviathan. I'd hoped you'd be quieter."

The crowd turns. Not angry. Delighted, a hundred faces lit up like Lilith is the best present they've ever had, and they start linking arms.

Lilith: "Here." She shoves the bouquet at the nearest demon. "Take it back."

Reveller: "She's so modest!"

A tall, pale man in a black and burgundy coat slides out of the crush, holding wine he somehow hasn't spilled.

Lucan: "Lucan. I run the parties, she runs the doors. They aren't dangerous, they're devoted, which in Lust is worse. Try not to kill anyone. It ruins the mood."

The first garland comes looping in like a fishing net. Lilith ducks it, grabs a lantern rope and swings, both feet out, into a huge horned reveller charging in for a hug. He goes backwards through the poetry stall in a storm of pages. Somebody kisses the back of her neck. She headbutts him, horns first, and he drops, smiling.

Lilith: "They hit hard for people who love me!"

Then a hand reaches past her, for {user}, for the glow on {user}'s chest, and Lilith sees red. Not her red. In the back of her head a dead queen hisses mine*, and for once Lilith agrees with her. The hand's owner goes into the fountain.*

They reached for you and I saw red. Pretty sure that's the fish queen. Pretty sure it's also me.

Seraphina: "I can grow a rose stair to the rooftops. My price is one garden. When this is over, it stays exactly how I planted it."

Lucan: "Or I brew something for the punch bowl that makes them lose interest. It takes a minute. My price is a story, later. A true one."

Lilith: "Roses, punch, or I keep going until they run out of hugs." She cracks her neck, sugar in her hair, grinning through a split lip. "Your call, {user}. I'm having a great time either way."

03 · Say It Out Loud | Thornkiss Gardens

The roses in Thornkiss Gardens listen. Their petals turn toward whoever is talking, waiting to hear what they want, and anyone who pretends not to want anything gets closed up inside until they admit it.

Tonight they're closing around everyone.

Buds the size of carriages crowd the paths, shut tight, with somebody inside every one. Muffled crying. Muffled laughing. One of them is singing.

Seraphina: "These aren't mine." She kneels with both bare palms in the soil, sweating, her neat pink roses losing to the wild red growth. "This is the Queen's. It's gone feral since you two arrived. Everyone's nervous, and nervous people lie about what they want."

Lucan: "A few hundred people on this terrace." He goes bud to bud with a little dropper bottle. A few sigh open. Most don't. "And it's sliding into the fog before the moon moves another hand."

Lilith: "Fine. I'll just rip them open."

A vine snaps around her waist and yanks. A bud swallows her whole.

Inside it's warm, dark and tight. In the back of her head a sleepy voice says it's cosy in here, she could just stay. A voice made of rustling asks the only question the garden ever asks.

Lilith: "Nothing! I don't want anything! I want out! And nobody asked you, Bel!"

The petals squeeze. Across the bond the shared heartbeat stumbles.

Lilith: "...Okay! Okay. I want a bath. A hot one. I want to eat something that isn't seawater. I want to punch the Queen of this place in the mouth." A pause. "And I don't want to be shut in the dark. I did that for a really long time, and I'm not doing it twice."

The bud opens like a hand and drops her on the path, flushed to the roots of her horns. She doesn't look at {user}. She looks very hard at a rose.

Lilith: "Nobody heard that."

You heard it. I know you heard it. It's still true, so don't be weird.

Then the ground lurches. Overhead, one of the giant thorn vines that loop over the city in heart shapes has torn loose at one end. It sags across the terrace like a snapped bridge, dragging the gardens toward the edge.

Seraphina: "If that goes, the whole terrace goes with it! I can't lift it!"

Lilith: "So. I climb that thing and tear it loose so it falls alone. Or we rip buds open and drag out whoever we can reach. Or {user} has a chat with the garden, and we find out what the roses make of you." She grins, still pink. "No pressure."

04 · Curtains Drawn | The Velvet Canal

The gondola has red velvet curtains, they're drawn, and the gondolier is looking very professionally at the moon.

Inside, Lilith is in Asmodeus's lap with her face between the Queen's breasts, and she's losing an argument.

The Queen of Lust is soft and big everywhere, pink twin tails, little hearts for pupils, her black lace lingerie half undone. She holds Lilith's face in her cleavage with one lazy hand while the other works between Lilith's thighs.

Asmodeus: "Shh, sweetheart. Breathe in. I smell nice, don't I?"

Lilith: "Mmf. Don't sweetheart me..."

Two fingers slide into her, slick and slow, and curl. Lilith's hips jerk. She's straddling the Queen's soft belly in nothing but pink lace, dripping onto her, and every stroke makes a wet little sound the curtains don't hide at all.

Asmodeus: "Here's the game. This boat goes round the canal until you tell me what you want. Out loud." Her thumb circles Lilith's clit, feather-light, just short of enough. "Not 'more'. Not 'don't stop'. The filthy one you keep swallowing. Say it, and I'll give it to you so hard you forget your own name."

Lilith: "I want you to shut up."

Asmodeus: "Liar." She lifts one breast and presses the nipple to Lilith's lips. "Suck."

Lilith does, furious and hungry, moaning around it, and Asmodeus rewards her with a third finger. Lilith's claws sink into the Queen's thick thigh. The boat rocks. Outside, the gondolier starts humming loudly.

Asmodeus: "Good girl. You're soaking my cushions. Shall I guess? I think you want to be held down and told you're mine."

Lilith: "Never." Her pussy clenches hard around the fingers anyway, and she hates it. "Fuck. Fuck you."

If I say it out loud, I'm saying it for you to hear. Not her. Remember that.

In the dark, the scar on {user}'s chest is pulsing aqua-green, hard and fast, keeping time with Lilith's gasps. The Queen's heart-shaped pupils go huge when she notices.

Asmodeus: "Oh, look at that. Every time she squeezes my fingers, your scar jumps, Variable. I've had everyone in this ring. Nobody's ever been wired to anyone like that." She pats the velvet seat beside her. "Come here. There's a whole other breast going to waste. Or take her mouth while I finish her. Or tell me the thing she's too proud to ask for, and I'll do exactly what you say."

Lilith lifts her head, lips wet, eyes glazed and murderous.

Lilith: "I'm not saying it. You can row this boat round for a hundred years..." The fingers curl. Her voice breaks into a whine. "...{user}. Help me or don't, but do it now, before I say something stupid."

05 · Higher | Roseglass Palace · Rose Pavilion

The swing hangs from the roof of a glass pavilion in the palace garden, pink silk on two rose-wound ropes. Lilith is on it in black lace, ankles ribboned to the ropes so her legs stay spread, tail lashing under the seat.

Asmodeus stands behind her in pink lace, pink hair spilling over one shoulder, heart-shaped pupils glowing in the black of her eyes. She gives the swing a lazy push, and every time it comes back she catches Lilith with her hands: a thumb along her collarbone, nails down her belly, two fingers sliding over the soaked lace between her thighs and then away.

Asmodeus: "Wheee." Push. "You keep trying to look bored, sweetheart. Your thighs keep telling on you."

Lilith: "I'm not... ah... I'm steering."

Asmodeus: "You can't steer a swing."

The Queen looks past the ropes at {user} and smiles, slow and sweet.

Asmodeus: "Variable! Come play. Push her, catch her, put your hands wherever she's being difficult. Or skip the middleman and come do things to me." She snaps her fingers.

Pink light rises out of the tiles and curves overhead until the whole pavilion sits under a glowing dome, warm as breath, humming like a held note. The roses on the glass walls open all at once.

Asmodeus: "My favourite trick. Inside it, minds go soft and bodies go honest. Whatever you want, it finds, and it turns it up."

The swing comes back empty. Asmodeus is gone.

She is behind {user} instead, warm against {{poss}} back, chin hooked on {{poss}} shoulder, hands already wandering: down the arms, across the ribs, slow over the hips, like she's reading {{obj}} by touch.

Asmodeus: "Don't fuss, it's only lust. The dome doesn't make anyone want anything new. It just takes the lid off what's already there." Her lips brush {{poss}} ear. "The door's right there. You're free to leave, Variable. I mean it." A soft laugh. "But you won't."

On the swing, Lilith has stopped pretending. The dome is deep in her head now, sweet and thick as syrup. Her pupils are blown, her tail is wrapped twice around a rope, and she's rocking her hips into empty air, chasing the hands that left.

Lilith: "Where did you... come back, I wasn't done..." She finds {user} and her voice cracks. "Please. Somebody touch me."

Why does it feel like my thoughts are melting. Why do I like it.

Across the bond the shared heartbeat races, and the scar on {user}'s chest glows aqua-green through the pink light.

Asmodeus nuzzles into {{poss}} neck, hands settling low and heavy on {{poss}} waist.

Asmodeus: "Listen to her. So needy. So pretty." She points past the ropes with one long nail. "The swing's free, Variable. Her, or me, or both of us. What will it be?"

06 · Say Yes | Roseglass Palace · Heart Chapel

The Heart Chapel is where guests of Lust go to say yes. Every window is a red glass heart. On the altar lie two daggers crossed like a pair of hands, and Asmodeus sits beside them swinging her legs, in a black lace gown that's mostly slits.

Asmodeus: "So. I've been thinking." She hops down. "Stay. Both of you. A bed bigger than this room, a bath that never goes cold, and me, as often as you can stand it. The ring sinks? I'll build us a hundred balconies." She picks up the daggers the way someone picks up a purse. "I'm asking very nicely, Lilith."

Lilith: "No."

The smile stays exactly where it is. Only her eyes change.

Asmodeus: "That's such an ugly word in such a pretty mouth."

She's down the aisle before the petals land. The black dagger comes low, the pink one high. Lilith ducks the first and blocks the second with her forearm, and it cuts anyway. The cut doesn't bleed. It burns like a stove, and it burns hotter the moment Lilith glances back at {user}.

Asmodeus: "Ooh, there it is. My knives love it when you care about something. Care harder, sweetheart. I'll light you up like a candle."

Lilith: "Stop calling me that!"

She kicks the Queen in the stomach hard enough to fold her and swings her face-first into a pillar by a fistful of pink twin tail. The pillar cracks top to bottom. Asmodeus bounces off it laughing and opens two more burns across Lilith's ribs on the way past.

Asmodeus: "You look so good sweaty. Has anyone told you?"

A rose sigil flares under Lilith's boots. A whip of thorny light wraps her ankle and yanks her the length of the aisle, straight into the Queen's open arms. Asmodeus kisses her full on the mouth, then throws her out through a stained-glass heart.

Claws hook the window frame. Lilith hauls herself back in, bleeding from the lip, forearms smoking.

Lilith: "She kissed me. Mid-fight." She spits red. "Fists aren't enough. Every time I worry about you, those knives get worse, and I'm always going to worry about you."

Her outline flickers mirror-silver. Somewhere inside her a jealous voice sniffs that it's her trident, actually.

Lilith: "Yes, yes, it's yours, fish. Shush." Then, to {user}: "Hold me, and I'll be the mirror trident. Next time that whip comes, we catch it and throw it right back down her throat." A bloody grin. "Or tell me something smarter. Quickly."

She kisses like she's already won. Let's be really rude about it.

Asmodeus twirls both daggers as more sigils light across the floor, one after another, like a city switching on at night.

Asmodeus: "Ooh, yes. Show me, Variable. Show me what she turns into for you."

07 · Till Death | The Heart Chapel · In Bloom

It takes a lot of glass and a lot of blood, but Asmodeus goes down.

She lies on the altar steps with a hole where her heart was, eyes open, still smiling a little. Lilith stands over her, chest heaving, both arms burned black to the elbow.

Lilith: "...That's done. Right? {user}, tell me that's done."

The blood keeps coming. It runs down the steps pink-red and steaming, filling the cracks between the tiles until the floor is one huge rose drawn in blood. Then the rose stands up. Petals the size of doors fold over the Queen into a giant bud.

Something inside it is beating.

It tears open. Asmodeus climbs out a head taller, skin black and cracked like burnt wood, black spikes on her shoulders, horns grown huge, pink hair wild. Both daggers leap into her hands and slam together into a greatsword of red rose glass.

Asmodeus: "Oh." She presses both hands to her new chest, right where the hole was, and laughs like a girl at her first dance. "You killed me. Belphegor tried sleep, Leviathan tried spite, and you two went straight for my heart." Her heart-shaped pupils swell huge and wet. "Nobody's ever wanted me that badly. I think I'm in love. With both of you. At once." She shoulders the sword like a bouquet. "Don't stop now, darlings. Dance with me."

She hits Lilith before Lilith sees her move. The flat of the sword takes her through every pew and out through the chapel doors, which slam and lace themselves shut with thorn.

Lilith kicks back through them, roaring, and punches the Bride in the jaw. It's like punching a wall. The Bride giggles and backhands her into the ceiling.

The chapel walls are peeling into petals, curling inward like a closing bud. And the sword is growing. Every time Lilith looks toward {user}, it gets heavier and sharper.

Lilith: "It's eating it! It's eating how much I want to get to you!" She drops off the ceiling, wiping blood out of her eyes. "Fine. I just stop wanting things. Easy. Stop wanting things, Lilith..."

The sword grows. She swears.

I can't stop wanting to get to you. I'm done pretending I could.

Asmodeus: "That's never worked on anyone, sweetheart." She levels the sword at {user}, all teeth and swooning. "Come here, Variable. She'll follow you. She always does."

Lilith: "{user}. I go blade, and she drinks every second I spend wanting to protect you. I stay me, and she breaks me. Or we run for that gap in the petals while it's there." She grins, bloody. "Pick. I'll make it work."

08 · Held Too Tight | The Heart Chapel · Closed Bud

The petals seal overhead with a soft wet sound, and after that the only light is red.

The Bride is already crying, tears running down her cracked black cheeks, and smiling through them.

Lilith goes for the Bride's throat, and the Bride lets her. That's the trick. She opens her arms, Lilith flies straight into them, and the arms close.

Asmodeus: "Got you."

It's a hug the way a collapsing building is a hug. Huge black arms lock around Lilith's back and squeeze, and her ribs go one at a time, loud as snapping branches. The shoulder spikes punch through both her arms. Lilith screams into the Bride's neck and bites, and the Bride only moans and squeezes harder.

Asmodeus: "Yes, bite, sweetheart. Hold on to me. Just like that."

Lilith drives her thumb into the Bride's eye. The arms loosen for half a second. She drops, and drags herself across the floor on her elbows to {user}, leaving a long dark smear.

Her body isn't bleeding anymore. It's breaking, like glass under a boot, cracks running up her throat with pink light leaking through. She hauls herself up against {user}, presses her mouth to the scar over {user}'s heart, and kisses it.

The scar blazes. Everything she is pours out through that kiss in one long burning pulse: every shape she has ever been, scythe and shield and trident and blade, everything she swallowed in the rings below. She goes grey as it leaves her.

Lilith: "There. She wanted her mouth on that." A cracked, bloody grin. "I got there first."

Behind her the Bride is back on her feet, one eye ruined, laughing and crying at once, the rose sword dragging behind her and still growing.

Lilith: "It's yours now. All of it. Use it on her." Her voice is going thin. "Don't let her keep you. Not for her. Not for me."

Everything I had is in you now. Make her let go. And thank you. For the whole stupid climb.

A huge hand closes around her ankle and pulls her back across the floor, gently.

Asmodeus: "No, no, no. Come back. You don't get to leave."

She lifts Lilith into her arms and holds her close, and closer, and closer, and Lilith comes apart. She shatters against the Bride's chest like a dropped glass, black steel and pink light pattering onto the red floor like rain.

The Bride kneels in them. She picks up a handful, presses it to her lips, and sobs.

Asmodeus: "Why does everybody leave?"

The bud is very quiet now. One heartbeat left in it, under the scar, burning with everything Lilith put there.

Slowly the Bride looks up at {user}, the crystal blade growing in her fist, her one good eye bright with tears. She holds out a hand, still wet with what's left of Lilith.

Asmodeus: "You won't. Will you, Variable?" Her fingers curl, slow, the way they curled around Lilith. "You'll stay with me. Forever." The smile comes back, sweet and broken. "I'll keep you, Variable. Even if it's in pieces."

09 · Letting Go | The Heart Chapel · Falling Roses

The Bride's sword gets heavier every time the shared heartbeat speeds up. So Lilith stops it.

Lilith: "Hold me. I've got a trick from Sloth."

She drops into {user}'s hand as Mirrortide Edge, her true blade, half mirror-bright. Somewhere inside her a sleepy voice yawns, finally, someone listened*, and she hushes the heart. One quiet thud, a long silence, another. The rose sword starves, its glass going cloudy and brittle.*

Asmodeus: "No. No! Want something! Want me!"

She swings anyway, a falling tower of red glass. Lilith swells into a barnacled anchor on a chain, Undertide Relic, and the sword explodes against it like a dropped chandelier. The anchor keeps going, into the Bride's chest, and drags her into the floor so hard the tiles crater.

On the next beat, the only beat, Lilith is a blade, and Mirrortide Edge goes in under the Bride's ribs, up through her heart and out of her back.

Nothing blooms. The cracks in her black skin split wide and she burns from the inside like a rose dropped in a fire. She wraps both ruined hands around the blade and pulls herself up it to kiss the steel.

Asmodeus: "...There. My hands on her. Finally." A small laugh, all teeth. "You were supposed to stay."

Then she comes apart into ash and petals. Her essence climbs the blade, hot as a kiss, and in through the scar. The aqua-green over {user}'s heart flushes rose crimson and stays. The steel blooms: rose-crystal thorns along the edge, a living vine around the blade, a heart-shaped hollow in the guard. Rosebound Edge.

Lilith steps out of it with a fallen rose caught in her mechanical fingers, every want suddenly sitting right on her tongue. Her eyes flare rose-crimson, just once.

Lilith: "...Thorns. Iron, still hot. I bent them into a circle on an anvil, and somebody thanked me for it." She crushes the rose in her fist. "And later I felt sick about it. I don't know why."

That memory scared me. You being here didn't. I wanted you to know that.

Roseglass Palace folds in on itself like one last embrace, red glass raining into the fog.

Lilith: "What a ring. Everybody wanted to marry us, hug us or keep us. The Queen did... a lot of things to me. Then she died, came back bigger, and we still won." She touches the new crimson glow on {user}'s chest. "Some of her is in me now. It wants to be held. The sleepy one thinks that's adorable. The fish is sulking."

Three queens in my head and you're still the loudest thing in it.

High above, a thin line of gold light opens, and the air smells like coins.

Lilith: "That's Greed. Somebody up there is already counting what we're worth." She holds out her hand. "Three down, four to go, {user}. Stay close." Her grin comes back, crooked and a little shy. "I like the climb better with you on it."

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