Chapter 31: Pleasure in hell
The air in Ashhorn Village didn’t taste of magic like the portal cave. It tasted of dust, despair, and the faint, metallic tang of stale blood. The buildings were hunched things of bleached bone and mortared shale, their windows dark eyes watching the newcomers with passive hunger. Wind whistled through gaps in the crumbling watchtower, a tuneless dirge.
Lilith walked with a new awareness, each footfall deliberate. At Level 76, the world presented itself in layers. She could see the weak, flickering auras of the lesser demons lurking in shadows—mottled greens and sickly yellows of beings between Levels 5 and 20. She felt Sophie’s aura beside her, a steady, vibrant pink, but thin, like a candle flame in a vast hall. A Lesser Demon, barely Level 12. Vulnerable. The bond between them was a taut, comforting wire, but Lilith knew it wasn’t a shield. Not here.
They were noticed immediately.
A pair of Imps, leathery-skinned and standing no higher than Lilith’s waist, scurried out from behind a rusted water pump. Their eyes, glowing like hot coals, swept over them with assessive cruelty.
“Fresh meat,” one hissed, its voice like grinding stones.
“Succubi,” the other spat, the word an insult. “Look at them. Already dripping. Pathetic.”
Lilith felt the instinct to flare her wings, to show the depth of her power and burn their petty auras to cinders. But Morgana’s lessons echoed: Power displayed is power challenged. Power hidden is power preserved. Let them underestimate you until you choose not to be underestimated. She kept her wings tucked tight, her tail still.
Sophie, however, stepped slightly forward. Not in defiance, but with a weary recognition. “We’re looking for a place,” she said, her voice carrying the warm, open tone that disarmed humans. It had a different effect here. The Imps giggled, a sound like breaking glass.
“A place? You’ve found it! Ashhorn’s the place for cunt like yours!” the first Imp chortled. “The Chief’ll want to see you. Follow. Try to keep up.”
They were led down the main thoroughfare, a packed-dirt path lined with hovels. Demons of various shapes paused their labor—mending nets of sinew, sharpening crude blades on grinding wheels—to stare. Their gazes were uniform: a bored lust, a commodifying hunger. They saw curves, horns, tails, and wings. They did not see individuals. They saw function.
The Chief’s dwelling was the largest structure, a ramshackle longhouse built against the base of a dead, petrified tree. The Imp scouts scurried inside, announcing their find.
The demon who emerged was a Brute, Level 34. His shoulders were massive, knotted with muscle beneath grey, hide-like skin. One twisted horn jutted from his forehead. He smelled of sweat, old blood, and dominance. His small, deep-set eyes took them in, lingering on the swell of Lilith’s breasts, the sway of Sophie’s hips.
“Hnh,” he grunted. His voice was a landslide. “Two. Common grade?” He was speaking to the Imps, not them.
“Lesser, Chief Borgo!” an Imp squeaked. “The pink one, for sure. The dark one… maybe Common? Hard to tell. Smells strong, though.”
Borgo’s gaze fixed on Lilith. He took a step closer, invading her space. Lilith didn’t back away. She met his eyes, letting just a sliver of her true aura leak out—not the crushing weight of a Demon Lord, but the confident edge of a high-level Common Demon, maybe Level 45. A warning flicker.
He stopped, a frown creasing his brutish face. He reevaluated. “You. You’ve got some spine. What are you doing in my shithole village?”
“Passing through,” Lilith said, her voice low and even. “We need shelter. Supplies.”
Borgo laughed, a harsh, barking sound. “Nothing’s free. This is the Wastes. You pay or you bleed. What do succubi have to pay with?” He let the question hang, his meaning suffocatingly clear. “We’ve got a communal pit. Men work the quarries, the fissures. They come back tired, sore, mean. They need release. We usually have a few succubi on rotation… but the last one got greedy. Tried to drain a miner past his limit. He snapped her neck.” He said it like commenting on the weather. “We’ve been short. Morale is low.”
Sophie spoke up, her hand finding Lilith’s wrist. Not from fear, Lilith realized through the bond, but from a sad, pragmatic understanding. “You’re offering us protection, shelter, in exchange for servicing the village.”
Borgo’s grin showed filed, yellow teeth. “The smart one. Yeah. That’s the offer. You get a roof—that abandoned storeroom over there.” He jerked a thumb towards a leaning shack. “You get fed—scraps from the communal pot. And you get to live. In return, you work the pit. Anyone from the village who wants a turn gets a turn. No refusing. No draining. You take their edge off, you send them back to work happy. That’s it.”
The hunger in Lilith’s gut, a constant, low burn since her transformation, pulsed in agreement. The idea wasn’t repulsive. It was… practical. It was a purpose. It was an endless buffet for the need that defined her now. She felt Sophie’s own desire, a mirrored heat, tinged with the warmth of her old profession—the simple, transactional comfort of providing relief.
Lilith looked at Sophie. Are you okay with this? The thought pulsed down the bond.
Sophie’s return was a wave of resolve, edged with a dark, accepting thrill. It’s what we are now. And it’s safer than being alone out there. We stay together.
Lilith turned back to Borgo. “We accept. But we stay together. The pit, our quarters… we work as a pair. No one gets one without the other nearby.”
Borgo shrugged, a massive roll of his shoulders. “Fine. Doubles the novelty. Starts tonight at sundown. Don’t be late.” He turned and lumbered back inside, already dismissing them.
The storeroom was exactly that: empty save for dust, old straw, and the smell of mold. They cleaned it with their hands, sweeping debris out the door. There was no furniture. They would sleep on the packed earth. It didn’t matter. The simmering in their blood mattered more.
As the bruise-colored sun began to sink, the pull became unbearable. It was a physical ache, a dehydration of the soul. Sophie was panting, her pupils blown wide, her fingers clutching at her own breasts through her torn shirt.
“Lilith… I can’t wait for the pit,” she whimpered, her tail lashing.
“We don’t have to,” Lilith growled, pushing Sophie against the rough wall. Their mouths crashed together, a battle of tongues and fangs. Clawed hands ripped away the last remnants of fabric. Lilith’s tail, already hard and seeking, found the slick heat between Sophie’s thighs and pushed inside without ceremony.
Sophie cried out, her body bowing. “Yes! Fuck, use it!”
Lilith pistoned her tail, the obscene, wet sounds filling the hollow room. She was rough, driven by the gnawing hunger, and Sophie met her with equal fervor, her own tail writhing up to penetrate Lilith in turn. It was fast, brutal, and necessary—a quick sating of the worst of the need, a priming of their bodies for the work to come. They collapsed in a heap on the straw, sweating, temporarily placated.
“It’s just like the Lotus,” Sophie breathed after a moment, a trace of her old smile touching her lips. “But… more.”
“It’s survival,” Lilith corrected, but she nuzzled Sophie’s horn. “And it’s us.”
At sundown, they followed the noise.
The “pit” was a natural depression in the ground behind the longhouse, surrounded by rough-hewn benches. A large, smoking iron brazier provided flickering light. Already, two dozen demon males of various races—Brutes, scaled Dregs, horned Gnashers—were gathered, drinking fermented fungus ale, their eyes glittering with anticipation. The air was thick with musk, smoke, and testosterone.
Borgo stood at the edge. “Fresh stock!” he bellowed. “The usual rules. No permanent damage. You get your time, you leave. The pink one’s tender. The dark one’s got bite. Line up.”
There was no ceremony. A Dreg, his scales chipped and dusty from the quarries, Level 18, was first. He pointed a claw at Sophie.
Sophie glanced at Lilith, then stepped forward, her expression smoothing into the welcoming mask Lilith remembered from the Crimson Lotus, but her eyes held a new, demonic glow. She led the Dreg to a flat stone in the center of the pit.
Lilith watched, her own hunger rekindling as she saw Sophie kneel, her delicate hands untying the Dreg’s crude loincloth. The demon’s cock, thick and knotted, sprang free. Sophie didn’t hesitate. She leaned forward, her pink lips parting, and took him deep into her mouth, gagging slightly before finding a rhythm. Her tail swayed gently behind her, a lure.
A low, collective groan went up from the watching crowd. Lilith felt their collective arousal like a wave of heat. Her own cunt throbbed, dripping.
A Brute, reeking of the forge, nudged her. “You. Now.”
He was larger than Borgo, Level 28. He didn’t ask. He shoved her onto her hands and knees on the hard ground. Lilith felt a flash of rage, the Demon Lord within her straining to lash out and reduce him to paste. But she quashed it. This is the role. This is the disguise. He mounted her from behind, his blunt, stubby cock slamming into her with a grunt. It was friction, not pleasure, but her body, built for this, translated it into a raw, animal gratification. She met his thrusts, amplifying the motion, taking him deeper than he expected, making him roar. When he finished, spilling inside her with a shudder, she absorbed the scant, crude energy he released without even sighing.
And so it went.
They became a rhythm in the pit. Sophie, who used her mouth and hands with gentle, coaxing skill, who let demons take her from behind while she smiled reassuringly over her shoulder, who whispered filthy encouragements that made them spill faster. And Lilith, who took them with a fierce, aggressive energy that bordered on violence, who challenged them with her eyes to last, who used the muscles of her cunt to milk them dry in moments.
Their bond thrummed continuously, a feedback loop of sensation. Through it, Lilith felt every cock that entered Sophie—the shape, the heat, the pounding rhythm. Sophie felt every violation of Lilith, every grunt and sweat-dripping thrust. They didn’t just share the physicality; they shared the dim, brutish emotions of the miners and laborers—their frustration, their loneliness, their simple, aching need for contact. It was draining in a way the physical act wasn’t. It hollowed them out even as their bodies were repeatedly filled.
During a brief lull, as two finished demons staggered away and the next in line hesitated, Sophie crawled over to Lilith, their bodies glistening under the brazier’s glow. They were both streaked with dirt and other demons’ fluids. Sophie rested her forehead against Lilith’s shoulder.
“You feel it too?” Sophie whispered, her voice hoarse. “The… emptiness in them? It’s worse than the sex.”
“It’s what we feed on,” Lilith murmured back, licking a drop of sweat from Sophie’s horn. “Their base energy. Their lifeforce. But there’s so little substance to it.” She was Level 76. These Common and Lesser Demons were like sipping at mud to quench a desert thirst.
A Gnasher with broken teeth approached, leering. “Having a break, sluts? My turn for the pair. Heard you do doubles.”
Lilith and Sophie shared a look. An idea, born of hunger and bonding, passed between them.
They moved as one. Sophie lay back on the ground, spreading her legs, her pink cunt swollen and glistening. Lilith knelt over her face, lowering her own dripping slit onto Sophie’s mouth. Sophie’s tongue flicked out, not playing, but delving deep immediately, lapping at Lilith’s essence with a desperate hunger of her own.
The Gnasher stared, his cock jumping. “Fuck yes.”
He positioned himself between Sophie’s thighs. As he shoved into her, Sophie’s muffled moan vibrated against Lilith’s clit. The dual sensation—the thick, invading cock in Sophie, and the wicked, knowing tongue on her own core—unmade Lilith. She threw her head back, a ragged cry tearing from her throat as she came, her wings flaring wildly.
But she didn’t stop. Her tail, which had been coiled, shot down. As the Gnasher fucked Sophie, Lilith’s tail-tip pressed against the tight, clenched rim of his anus. He froze, grunting in confusion, then shock, as she penetrated him there, her tail pushing in alongside his own cock buried in Sophie.
The three-way connection was electric. Through Sophie, Lilith felt the Gnasher. Through her tail, she felt him differently, intimately. She could feel his pleasure magnify, spike, become unbearable. He screamed, his thrusts becoming erratic, and then he was coming, his seed pumping into Sophie as his body convulsed around Lilith’s invading tail.
The energy this time was different. Richer. Darker. It wasn’t just physical release; it was the total overwhelm of his senses, the violation of his every boundary. Lilith drank it in through the bond with Sophie and through her tail, feeling her own core mana vibrate with a minute but real increase in potency. Sophie shuddered beneath her, gasping as she swallowed the combined energies.
The watching crowd had gone dead silent. Then, a roar of approval erupted.
The night blurred into a hellish tapestry of flesh. They lost count. They became vessels, living conduits for the village’s repressed fury and longing. They fucked in every combination the demons desired—sometimes together, sometimes separately, sometimes with three or four at a time. They used their mouths, their cunts, their hands, their tails. They took cocks, thick and thin, knotted and smooth. They took rough fingers and questing tongues. They absorbed the low-grade demonic energy, their succubus bodies metabolizing it, converting the dross into a sustaining, if meager, fuel.
When the brazier’s fuel burned low and the last demon, a young, timid Imp who came too quickly, scurried away, the pit was empty save for them.
They lay in the center, limbs tangled, bodies filthy and used, covered in drying sweat, spend, and dirt. The hunger was banked, a low simmer again, sated for now by sheer volume. Lilith felt a strange, heavy peace. This was their function. This was their worth in this society. It was degrading, and it was empowering. It was monotonous, and it was utterly consuming.
Sophie stirred, curling into Lilith’s side. “I lost track after twenty,” she mumbled.
“Thirty-seven,” Lilith said, the number presenting itself from some cool, analytical part of her mind. “You took twenty-two. I took fifteen. The shared ones are in both counts.”
Sophie gave a weak, choked laugh. “Only you would count.” She was silent for a long moment. “It’s different here. At the Lotus, it was a choice. This is… an assignment. A sentence.”
“It’s a foothold,” Lilith corrected, stroking Sophie’s matted hair. Her Demon Lord senses, carefully concealed all night, stretched out. She could feel the village sleeping, the weak auras guttering. She could feel Borgo’s satisfied slumber in the longhouse. “We are invisible here. Just two more succubi in a pit. No one is looking for us. No one fears us.” She let a cold smile touch her lips. “This is where we grow strong. This is where we learn what this world is, from the bottom up. And when we’re ready, we stop being the meal and become the feeders.”
Sophie looked up at her, her pink eyes searching Lilith’s face in the gloom. “You have a plan.”
“I have an appetite,” Lilith said. “And this village is the first course. We will give them exactly what they want. And we will take everything they have, one drained cock at a