Spiritus Mundi, an inuyasha fanfic

The Devil:

You have been invited to The Party.

The Password for the Gate is Aleph.

You will wear black and be Unseen and Unknown; any deviation is unacceptable and admission will be impossible.

Underneath the darkness; you will be No-One and Everyone. You will wear the Face provided to you at all times without deviation. We do not want to know who you are because we already know who you are. You are one of us. You will come with the Sun's death and you will remain in our care until its Rebirth. You will Know and Be Silent!

He was surprised there was more but at the base of the sheet, in that same sloping, Copper-plating script drenched in the ichorous ink, the bone-white rag paper read thusly:

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

It was signed cryptically "Silentium est areum." His Latin was limited to medical terms and the occasional legal quirt but he could figure this phrase out easily.

Silence is golden. Silentium est areum.

Naraku was intrigued but he was not happy when he saw that the dull grey box which accompanied the strange invitation contained two things. One was a Tarot card of a 3 eyed goat supported by a caduceus before what looked like two shields of cellular division and writhing figures, all over the background of an atomic blast. It was one of the strangest pictures he'd ever seen. The card was labelled, 'The Devil' and the other item he now held in his pale hand.

Looking in the mirror before him, the dark man put the half-mask on and wondered at the oxblood leather demon looking back at him. Swirls of black ink engraved and chased across leather, curving up to the twin horns that adorned his brow. His long waving hair rose around him in a black cloud, furthering the illusion of demonic evil that hung like a fog around him.

He hated it – immensely. But once he found an Inverness coat and shed his clothes beneath – he was going. There were only four hours before sunset.

It was Midwinter night, or at least it would be when the sun finally fell below the horizon. He gave the password at the ancient gates he found in the midst of the wooded driveway specified by the invitation, so long it hid any possible dwelling at its end from the view of the road. There was snow on the ground, had been for a week and Naraku found his hard white body was freezing underneath the thick shroud of his mandated woolen covering. His face was covered by the hood and before he was admitted, Naraku looked left, then right and put the Devil's face over his own, horns and all. The verdigris on the gates seemed to vibrate as his car was admitted within.

Ceremonial incense burned and smoked. Through the smoky tendrils in a dark, colonnaded hall of a room, Naraku could see nothing but hooded and caped figures, much like his own. Golden hair or darkest ebony, sleek like a mink – even red waves in elemental abandon caught his dark red eyes, wherever Naraku looked. Masks everywhere like his own, only none quite like his own. None were so clearly evil as his own – it made him feel strangely powerful, able to take or break anything or anyone without prejudice. He wanted the world at his goddamn feet! The dark man who was a force of nature personified threw back his hood with a dry and calculating snarl.

Hundred of voices raised in tumultuous, tortuous harmonics flew over the hard dead beat of a master bass drum – Verdi's Dies Irae from somewhere, with perfect fidelity, louder than his ears wanted – competing with the dull, dead beat of his cruel heart within his chest. A circle of ecstatic celebrants rose and fell in an undulating circle around the only color in the vast space – three crimson hooded figures adorned in harsh bronze masks presided from their seats above a dais surrounded by the writhing, oiled figures – naked except white linen loincloths and their own varied masks, sequins shining and feathers trembling in adulation. Beautiful men and women traced arabesques and watching them, Naraku could sense the trails of golden life their limbs imparted to air around him and all the others, like a countdown to ecstasy.

Naraku wanted to join them, to lead them – fuck them senseless and screaming, ripping out throats and tearing slick flesh in his sensual madness. He could imagine the taste of that one's white thigh as he gorged himself upon the pleasures guarded so coyly by their mistress, he could feel the strong hands of that one in his long feral hair as he squeezed both their throbbing organs together in slick spasms of opalescent essence as he came and screamed... orgies of throbbing, sweating, pleading flesh against him, around him, within him... oh, yes... now...!

He found himself staring over the heads around him at another staring his way across the multitudes. Golden eyes narrowed into his own blood-red gaze and sized him up with a boyish smirk.

The hunt was on...

The Fool:

InuYasha had gotten the strangest box in the mail this morning. Left on the doorstep to his loft, the dark grey box stared up at him like a stray cat. He didn't want to open it – something in his chest said it was dangerous. But, he did it anyway because dangerous or not, InuYasha liked surprises.

"You have been invited to The Party..."

"The Password for the Gate is Ayin."

"The Password for the house is Irgendwen."

"Silentium est areum."

So every other word meant nothing to him – InuYasha didn't know Latin from dog-slobber. He threw his recital notes away on a corner of the impromptu dance studio his loft functioned as during the day and turning the elegant if severe box upside-down, the silver man shook its remaining contents out onto the bleached wooden floorboards.

A playing card with the painting of a Vitruvian-style youth dressed in green, surrounded by colors, spirals, gemstones and animals and cradled by a caduceus drifted to the floor at InuYasha's bare feet, landing on his toes, which he didn't bother to see. The other thing, wrapped in chamois bounced and rolled into his less-then-extensive bookshelf. Stooping to pick the thing up, InuYasha noted it had long golden hair attached, which drifted across his fingers in rough spirals. Muttering a few choice street-learned words, he shook the thing roughly out and put in on his face.

Turning to the mirrored wall to assess his evening's outfitting, InuYasha noted the half-mask was what he could only guess was a young man's half-face but with white, zombie eyes between which a large six-pointed star set on his brow, surrounded by the strange long ringlets of golden curls, which settled over his own silvery-white mane like the inverse of snow on a mountain. The tiny flesh-covered horns on the mask's own forehead gave him a strange feeling of unreality, of a being that could never or had never been.

InuYasha hated it, immensely, but he had heard tales, whispered from students he'd had half a mind to eavesdrop on, about this very limited, secretive society which held a fête every year at this time – Midwinter eve – and if half the whispered rumors were true, he would gladly sell his mother into slavery for the chance to attend, regardless of the freaky get-up required!

Giving his strange reflection a dancer's rolling bow, InuYasha threw the thing into the pile of daily debris by his favorite chair and went off to rummage through his closet for something suitable to wear out tonight. It was only fours hours, give or take, before sunset.

Now, admitted within that huge colonnaded space of a room, InuYasha watched the writing celebrants around the figures in crimson and bronze on their dais. It was an interesting performance, he thought to himself, hearing the sound of oud and duduks simmering, wailing from everywhere and nowhere with perfect fidelity. Tribal drums beat his ears with their chanting and it was all he could do not to join the arching, swaying bodies before him – leading them, guiding them – taking them over with his own.

It as then, InuYasha – feeling his blood beat like wings in his veins – noticed the Devil was watching him.

The blood-red leather half-mask perched over the bloodless pallor of the man's face but his eyes were madness, nearly as red at the oxblood horns swooping over his dark leonine head. And those eyes were watching the writhing circle of dancers with a demonic hunger that InuYasha could feel from across the vast space between them. When their eyes met again, the silver man felt his body quiver under his woolen shelter; suddenly, he had never felt so naked. But it wouldn't be InuYasha, if his soul didn't want the blistering hot fight that demon's hellfire eyes promised him – he could feel their naked bodies slipping against one another and he could taste the man's sweet white skin between his teeth! So, the besotted Fool held the Devil's gaze until it was no longer a question of accident and let out his best challenging smile.

Dominion is never asked – it can only be traded away. InuYasha looked away for a moment and his partner was gone.

But Darkness found him quickly instead and the large white hand in his silver mane drug the Fool backwards into the shadows of the Moorish arches around them all. Shoved hard against the unyielding marble InuYasha felt Naraku's teeth at his throat, devouring his needing lips, even as his own hands pawed within his dark lover's garb, searching for the hard thing they both wanted most of all. Slipping and twisting against each other in the mindless need to feel, to possess and to find release, Naraku and InuYasha thrashed and growled, each taking the other in hand and despite their great differences in height, brought one another to a quick, spurting end, hands full of pearly wet creation and darkness by turns, the same side of two coins... panting, tasting one another's sweaty flesh without care of exposure to the crowd amongst them.

Death saw the two men begin their strange seductive dance of dark attraction and it was a moment's interest until he saw her, apart and alone amongst the milling throng of fellow party goers...

Death:

You have been invited to The Party.

The Password for the Gate is Khaf.

You will wear black and be Unseen and Unknown; any deviation is unacceptable and admission will be impossible. Underneath the darkness; you will be No-One and Everyone. You will wear the Face provided to you at all times without deviation. We do not want to know who you are because we already know who you are. You are one of us. You will come with the Sun's death and you will remain in our care until its Rebirth. You will Know and Be Silent!

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

It was signed: In hoc signum ego vincere.

Of course he knew what it said - 'under this sign, I will conquer'. It had been his own motto since he'd come across the now-dead language of empire a thousand years ago. He remembered when the Templar berserkers screamed it in battle. Despite his æons on the earth, he would never forget a battle...

But then times had moved on, and him with them. Even so.

It wasn't the first time he'd been invited, but it was the first time Sesshoumaru would deign to present himself. He fished out the card and wondered at the art upon it. He'd been presented with the same choice three times before... the Order never deviated from their judgment. But the veridical-green Orisian crown with the ostrich-cock feathers over the skull's charcoal bones was a nice touch this time, he decided.

His stripes drew out from underneath the cheeks of the skull's jaws like bloody wounds. It pleased him.

The smell of cedar and ambergris smoked into his nose as he found his cloak, right where he left it. Looking at his Patek-Phillipe, Death noted he had approximately 3 hours and 58 minutes until the Solstice sunset. He had plenty of time, always.

Sesshoumaru wore Death's face with the ease of long practice. His long silver hair, straight and thick fell down the full inky blackness of his mourner's cloak – hiding his identity not one single bit to anyone who might have seen him in the upper echelons of this world's latest society. But he knew no one would dare to connect him to such a time and place. Forbidden wasn't a strong enough word – the threat of expulsion from Paradise was enough of a deterrent for anyone actually here. A multitude of wailing chorus voices threw themselves against his ears with a passion that translated across his centuries, the orchestra almost drowned out by hundreds of beating, living, suffering voices, screaming obscenities against the wheel of their mortal Fate. He had heard it in Berlin before the second great War, at its premiere and nearly a hundred years later, it had lost none of its potency. Humanity had the occasional talent for the ineffable, Sesshoumaru had to admit grudgingly to himself.

"Oh Fortune, how like the moon..." Sesshoumaru mumbled to himself as the hundreds of voices swooped and dived in perfect fidelity.

He noted the swaying celebrants in their trance; he could feel the power they were causing to manifest in slow but building ripples along his aura. Lesser wills than his own would be caught like moths around a flame, surrendering to ecstasy and mad desire before half their potential bloomed into the building maelstrom. He had only to turn his head from his place in the shadow of a Moorish arch of variegated marble to see one such couple: two men, it seemed, cast as the Devil and the Fool, groping and humping one another hungrily to an urgent completion.

Sesshoumaru watched them from the corner of one golden eye, and when the silver-haired Fool shuddered his last with a tight-throated growl, the Thin Man could feel their own thrilling power coursing unseen along his bare yet cloaked skin. It shivered down his strong thighs and raced up his back like rat's feet over glass. He could feel the answering tremor in his loins, knew what was expected of him here and deemed himself absolutely above it. That was, until stretching the bunching muscles in his back, he noted a woman above on a balcony looking down at him with molten dark eyes. The nearly naked body barely hidden by a cloak pinned over one of her strong shoulders was an afterthought of the pure and animal desire Sesshoumaru suddenly felt burning along his icy veins.

His body stirred in ways 200 years had not seen and Death found himself stalking up the granite stairs, two at a time, to where the Imperatrix Mundi had summoned him.

Empress:

You have been invited to The Party...

The Password for the Gate is Nun...

You will wear the Face provided to you at all times without deviation... but you may guard your Purity if you must; until it, like dominion, is given away.

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

In hoc signum ego vincere

Sango had no idea what kind of joke this was, but it was weird as hell. She actually felt a little frightened by the dull grey box she found against her door, as if it huddled there – begging her to let it in. Not that a seasoned trial lawyer like herself admitted to being frightened of her mail, Unabomber-esque or otherwise. But rather than pick the strange box up, she kicked it inside her apartment with one slim foot.

And when she noted wryly that it didn't explode from such treatment, curiosity got the better of her and she opened it. The invitation was bizarre but at least mostly intelligible; Sango even grinned at the Latin signature. Her motto on the university's debate team, how could she forget? Battles won, battles lost but always she hungered to fight and win – it was who she was.

Was it saying what she thought it was saying? It was damn cold outside for this kind of thing!

She couldn't really be thinking of doing this! Fishing the chamois-wrapped mask from the throat of the box, Sango put on the mask and gazed at herself in the mirror next to her front door. A crown above a golden half-mask drew her eyes but the thick nimbus of feathers nearly as long as her arm, each dyed a heady metallic gold to match the leather over the upper half of her face were absolutely stunning. Her reflection's Bordeaux-colored lips were like a queen's command. She'd do anything to wear this mask and as a stranger, preen – besides no one would notice her if she wrapped herself up tight. She could enjoy being anyone and everyone with nothing to give her prim and severe daylight self away! It was just the vent she needed after her constant battle with inequity and injustice. The card at the bottom of the box went unnoticed, all light greens and pinks – reflecting Sango's daily grind with a pelican in her piety, bloody breast open for the innocent and the guilty alike...

The clock on the wall said it was nearly four hours from sunset. The Empress rushed to find that thick golden brooch of her Grandmother's to close her ebony cloak of state – let lesser mortals wear coats, she would be a glory in her anonymous garb.

She did remember to feed her aged Himalayan cat, Kirara, on her way out the door.

Unable to decide on the exact best way to display herself, Sango had elected to wear a half-toga of black silk pinned at one shoulder, open to one side – which she demurely covered by an equally black half-cloak at the last minute. She didn't like the exposure – but as she climbed to the balcony over looking the dancers in the main room of the vast mansion she'd been brought to, Sango felt less and less like hiding herself from the masked and cloaked entities surrounding her.

A dark processional marched all around her as she climbed the large spiraling granite steps to the second floor balcony, timbales and zills summoning her majesty with the deep baritone chorus leading her to the gallows to pass Judgment. The zealots around her drew away in what she felt was dark deference – all but one. She saw him standing in the shadows, as imperious as the Moon in the winter sky above them, all silver and bone-black. The Empress noted his crowned skull mask most of all and knew he was here for her alone. The processional spun itself into a heady bacchanal, swirling the dancers below in the drunken waltz like orgiastic Sufi mystics, turning galactic belts of magical fire she could very nearly see with her Wadjet eyes.

Sango threw back her half-cloak and knew Dominion; she knew Power. Holding herself between two columns, her fine wrapping dripped open, exposing one high, tanned breast to anyone willing to partake of it. The thin black thong she wore under the sheathe of black silk hid nothing at all save her bare and powdered sex. Creation's fires lit through her, just under her skin as she lightly swayed to the inevitable rhythm around her, making the pheasant feather crown tremble in her wake.

"Imperatrix Mundi." a deep velvet voice called out to her, striking fire in her quivering belly.

"Thanatos." she countered in a more ancient tongue, raising her chin in challenge.

"Now – time to die." He smiled through his fangs and held his bare marked arms out to her.

Sango took one last conscious look and realized just who was demanding her surrender in his outstretched arms. The near-mythic owner of her firm was the only person she'd ever seen with those tattoos on his face and long hair the color of quicksilver. But that knowledge meant less than nothing when she let herself be backed up over the wide, hard ledge of the balcony behind her. His golden eyes melted for the quick moment it took him to lift one of her long bare legs around his waist and plunge himself hard into her hot depths. The marble dug into her hips as Death took her, there on that ledge, driving fire and pleasure through them both in a full circuit she was sure would set her hammering heart aflame. Sango tried to get a purchase on her lover's hard shoulder and missed, scoring his white chest in welting furrows with her fingernails. Sesshoumaru flung her against the column beside them and held her hard to his snapping hips, snarling at her trespass against him. Screaming spiraled her into the Infinite as they both magnified and transfigured the magickal energy around them, climaxing like an exploding binary star – two parts made whole for an indefinable moment.

Pink eyes beheld the Empress of the World transfixed by Death and taking it within herself, waited for the Tower to be broken before her...

The Moon:

You have been invited to The Party...

The Password for the Gate is Pei...

You will wear the Face provided to you at all times without deviation... but you may guard your Purity if you must; until it, like dominion, is given away...

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

Sine qua non.

She knew the phrase but it didn't make sense on its own. Kanna shed her day's lab coat in the laundry basket and thought more about it than she did about what the whole package suggested. Sine qua non – the one thing that must exist for there to be a clinical manifestation... like chimeric inheritance markers for true hermaphroditic expression. Cradling the box with its mysterious contents, Kanna searched for a mirror. There were plenty in her loft; she could never grow tired of her unique reflection. In her stark clinical bathroom, the geneticist set the box down and removed her dark brown contact lenses – revealing her dark pink eyes. God, she sighed to no one in particular, it felt good to take those things off!

Getting the mask settled on her thin face just so, Kanna was inwardly surprised at the beauty of the pearled Moon perched, full yet abstract, over her pale face. Her white-blond hair fell in full layered waves over her shoulder and the lacy silver-plated filigree metal work of the surrounding half-mask made her appear a rare and fascinating alien. Different from her usual everyday alien – better. Powerful even. She allowed a smile to cross her still face and went to search for appropriate attire, flipping the unheeded card with its towers and jackals and curves over her long fingers...

For a just one tiny moment she wished she'd bought that black lab coat as she pawed through her closet...

Kanna settled her back against the cool marble of the column behind her and watched the couple across from her own balcony. They were going at it with animal abandon but something between them bespoke of a battle, of one trying to best the other for constant control of their coupling. She scratched her itching nose and wondered if they were lawyers – they fucked like lawyers, she decided. One was Queen, the other was Death – was he winning, she wondered and fidgeted with the thin black linen chiton she'd decided on for the evening's festivities and just this once, despite her elemental dread at such likely exposure – had gone as bare as the day she was born under her clothes.

A purring androgynous voice spoke over a caramel-smooth bass line in her ear, enjoining her to talk a walk on the wild side with perfect fidelity. The dancers below her seemed to drift through their orisons in air turned to clear gel, perfectly drifting with the slow heart-beat of the strangely hypnotic beats of the music in her mind. The couple she was shamelessly peeping were collapsing against the balcony's hard railing, panting in exhaustion now – Kanna supposed that show was over, pouting the tiniest bit on the inside. Looking around she noticed a feline man lounging against a table behind her. Her first unbidden thought about him was that his eyeliner was WAY better than hers... but then, he was prettier than her too. He noticed her looking at him and narrowed his painted eyes at her for trespass. His arms crossed over his lean black form, making his full mourner's cloak draw higher up his bare legs at its intricate folds. Heavy bronze lightening bolts appeared to be breaking a tall tower over his hard eyes – but she got the feeling he didn't need the mask's help to look or be dangerous.

Jakotsu started to glare at her until he really looked at the bitch in the Moon and then things got down-right strange...

The Tower:

Reaching into his purse, Jakotsu pulled out a mirror to look over his shoulder and then satisfied the courier who left this unknown box on his doorstep was gone, pulled out a couple of small cotton pads and begin rubbing them cautiously over the rim and corners of the box. He was pretty sure there wasn't any explosives in the box by the continued nonreactive white of his swipers. Picking the thing up and letting himself into his place, the wickedest man in town tried to decide what to do with the rest of his evening.

You have been invited to The Party.

The Password for the Gate is Qof.

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

It was signed: Sine qua non.

He had no damn idea what that meant except that maybe it was a code related to work. Arms deals to certain groups and countries didn't happen over the phone like ordering from Chanel! Jakotsu shrugged to himself and decided to do a search on the phrase to check it out – he just hated looking like a bimbo fag in front of clients. It must be a business meeting, talking in code and all this absurd "Party" crap, Jak mused and dug around in the box for whatever else it might contain, hoping it was cash.

The mask, needless to say, surprised him to no end. The heavy bronze thunderbolts on the top of the half-mask, combined with the heavy reds and oranges of the leather and that broken tower – Jesus, it was hideous. He hated it because who could pull off the required red eyeshadow these days and not look like a refugee from 1985? Ugh. This was not his style at all! But business was business and the mortgage always needed paid. Maybe he'd find someone fun to play with tonight at this "party"?

Giggling at the pretentiousness of the invitation's demands, he pulled his phone out of his purse and looked at the time: only four hours to get ready! Stamping his Gucci-clad foot in annoyance, Jak flounced into his huge closet, grinding the unheeded Tarot card into his pristine Tabriz carpet...

Oh. My. God. Jakotsu scowled to himself in the shadows – it really was a damn costume party! And if he saw one more nearly naked woman go by, he was going to kill someone. There was some eye-candy to be had, especially that strangely silver-haired Fool in the arms of a dark Devil earlier – he could have given lessons to that one, oh baby – yes! But alas, they had retired to somewhere deeper within this huge mansion Jak found himself delivered to. Having done a little research into that cryptic Latin phrase on his invitation, he was sure it was a business deal. Quoting the Geneva Convention? Oh definitely – he'd bet his entire collection of Tom Ford lipsticks on it. So, despite the quite delicious flesh all around him and the silky perfectly-rendered sounds of tonal jazz in his pierced ears, Jakotsu held himself back and waited.

He saw one insanely white woman wearing what looked like the Moon on her brow look over at him and Jakotsu gave her the count of ten to find somewhere else to look before he did something terrible to her. He wondered if it was an expert dye-job or if her hair was naturally that white-blond; who ever did it for her did an immaculate job to match her albino coloring perfectly. Wait... albino... her eyes! Jak found himself staring hard at her deep pinkish-purple irises. They were amazing in their rarity; he hated her even more than he did before! But before the overwhelming urge to do violence against the bitch asserted itself, Jakotsu really looked at her, to catalog in his mind what he was going to disfigure her for, right here - right now.

The woman looked less and less like a woman the more he looked at her – her chest was nearly as flat as his own, her arms longer than those of most women he'd had the misfortune to notice. But she was soft where men were hard, wasn't she? It was the strangest thing! The less he hated her and the more he wanted see if what he suspected was true about her...

Stalking over to the white woman, Jakotsu drew her hard into his chest, groping for her breasts. They were real, all right, but quite small. Her little hard nipples poked at his palms and her skin was thin but not so thin like some carrion-foul wench; it felt like his own – pampered and soft but male. But her face was female! Narrowing his painted eyes on the woman's surprised face, Jakotsu was determined to solve the mystery of her being.

"Which are you?", he breathed close to her ear, turning her head in his killer's hand and studying her odd eyes.

She was breathing too fast, frightened as hell of him and rightly so – he'd killed women like her more times than he had fingernails to tick them off upon. But he was unprepared for what she actually did, though her blank face gave him no warning at all before she did it.

Grabbing the hand not otherwise engaged with her chest, the being before him pulled it between the folds of her chiton and guided the shocked man before her to stroke her own rapidly-hardening shaft. Jakotsu pulled his hands off the creature before him as if she were on fire and after a moment's deliberation, fell to his knees before her. Whipping the front of her meager black clothing away from the flesh beneath, the Tower – now most certainly broken - gazed raptly at the gorgeous oddity of the Moon's sex. Organic curves and frills of flesh surrounded a complete if boyish phallus, and Jak couldn't stop himself from leaning in to taste the clear drop of sweetness found gathered at its bobbing tip. It tasted beautiful.

"A Perfect mystery.", he breathed, forgetting everything else he'd ever known and dove down to her closely-guarded secret. Energies from both sides the male and female duality were merged into their eternal unity and for a moment both beings were one on all planes of existence, pouring magickal power from the couple like a fountain of starlight, just below the threshold of sight.

The Moon held the Tower to itself and sighed in overwhelming pleasure as his tongue played its chimeric body to a quickly shuddering completion where they stood transfixed against the cool column of marble, nearly as white as its flesh.

The Sun noticed them and blushed to the roots of her thick black mane - it seemed like a sin to behold such a thing... base human eyes couldn't be meant to bear witness and understand such a thing!

The Sun:

You have been invited to The Party...

The Password for the Gate is Vav...

You will wear the Face provided to you at all times without deviation... but you may guard your Purity if you must; until it, like dominion, is given away.

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

Age quod agis.

Kagome had no idea what that meant – she could hardly read the sloping handwriting, let alone translate something in another language! After letting her ancient calico Buyo out for a trot through the neighbors door-side bags of garbage (which she didn't know about.), the willowy woman gave the open grey box the hairy eyebrow... what was this? Some kind of joke? She had work tomorrow at the hospital anyway – it was her weekend to cover the hospice needs at the mid-town location and people seemed to always die in droves this time of year. It seemed to Kagome, she mused as she poked about in the box, the start of Winter was the best time to start that sort of journey – families were already gathering for the holidays and life was high; what better time to say goodbye?

These were the sort thoughts that had ensured she fit nowhere else in the medical or social fields. People thought she was callous, or worse – stupid for her views on death. It was just another things everyone had to do, so why not talk open and frankly about it? Why not plan for the best possible exit and the best possible transition for those left behind. Kagome sighed over the same old argument; her boss had felt goaded by other staff to have yet another talk with her about a certain lack of grace and tact and she felt prickly and undeserved.

The mask found its way to its place upon her ebony head and was instantly heartened by her reflection. The bright golden and copper sun disk above her deep brown eyes gave her face a beautiful tint of warmth most night-shift workers sadly lacked; all sallowness was instantly banished from her frustrated face. The cherubs bracketing the golden disk had enameled butterfly wings of such delicacy, she was impressed that the thing could hold together with the way she'd kicked it through her door and then tripped over the box itself, as Buyo shot out around her weary legs. The fine strands of gold and copper filaments seemed to form the ethereal rays of the faux sun perfectly and she had a few moments of fun shaking her head before the hall mirror, watching them shimmer and form a momentary halo around her dark head.

Too bad she couldn't go... Kagome pouted. She really wanted to wear this for others to admire – it was so rare that she felt both important and powerful, for what could be more needful than the Sun?

Her phone was suddenly ringing.

Fishing out of her purse almost in time, Kagome tapped her foot impatiently and waited for the voice mail to present itself. The familiar chirp took forever. Doing the required ritual of taps and codes, she found herself listening to her boss telling her that census needs were going to not require her presence at work tomorrow and to enjoy her weekend and her holiday. Her mouth hung open in a throughly ridiculous way under the glory of the Sun.

After a moment's happy dance, the excited hospice nurse forgot all about her one-woman war against despair and nearly ran to her coat-closet to find something to wear over the very little she intended to wear. Drive, because you are driven... age quod agis; Kagome would have appreciated it, maybe – but sometimes the Devil got lost in the details in her white, flower-scented mind.

It was gorgeous within the large mansion Kagome found herself meandering through. She wanted to wear heels, but being in inborn klutz, she opted for the soft knee-high black leather sandals her brother had brought back from Greece on his last assignment; fitting her feet like gloves, Kagome felt double bare in her skin under a black silk kimono. It was so warm in here! She saw far more skin around her than clothing... the Sun maiden was a bit too shy still for that sort of display! Who wanted to see plain ol' Kagome when they could see what looked like a queen, her own imperial mask slightly askew as she leaned, full of post-coital abandon, over the shoulder of a tall silver being dressed as Death? The possessive twist to his lips lit upon her for a split-second and the Sun wobbled on her axis, as the golden eyes of Death lit her sex on trembling fire with unslaked desire. But her fragile ego kept her moving yet. Who could really want to see her girlish body when they had a Queen?

No one - that's who, she thought shyly to herself and blushed. Sometimes it really sucked to be Kagome and nobody else, she mentally swore for the nth time. A driving processional hurled itself before her, drums and cymbals clashing in her wake, brass horns blaring the elemental heat, fire and life of daylight running up her back like a breaking golden wave she could just almost see – all with perfect fidelity.

Looking around almost furtively at the writhing, coupling figures around her, Kagome ascended the marble stairs before her booted feet, bringing the Sun further into darkness.

She assumed the heavy oak doors hid something interesting and pulling them open was surprisingly easy, even as they must have outweighed her own small mass by a thousand pounds. Kagome found herself in a library. Dark woods, ladders, tables all rose out of granite floor as if they had grown from it – she'd never seen something so arcane and patrician in all her life. The space was engulfing, indeed she felt it swallowing her solar radiance like the throat of some dark basement, some cavernous seat in a mountain she'd never known. Something in her flared to life at the thought of the approaching, devouring darkness around her and the Sun shone like noon in the desert, blasting everything before her in unseen spiritual brilliance. She didn't notice the dark man lounging near a stack of ancient books, priceless beyond measure.

The Heirophant had come to this place to satisfy his curiosity and to avoid someone he knew and who knew him. He did not expect to see the Sun in this place, where over these very tables regimes and everyday men and women alike were made to fear and to obey... and it was all his doing, over these very same tables.

The Heirophant:

You have been invited to The Party.

The Password for the Gate is Reish.

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

It was signed: Age quod agis

Bankotsu had gotten a similar sort of invite before, but only for work – never for play. It was the sort of thing one didn't question or refuse. He figured who he might see and what they might want, but the menu was a little on the slim side this time of year: Sarin and ricin both were very sensitive to cold weather and the VX canisters, even from the old Soviet labs, where it snowed ass-deep on a camel all the damn time, were that much more temperamental during winter transit. And no one likes temperamental chemical weapons of mass destruction, Ban mused to himself for not the first time today.

He thought the best he could come up with for any potential clients would be a few aerosolized cannisters of Marburg hemorrhagic fever or hi-vir smallpox. But he was forgetting himself; business would sort itself out as he made his way to the Order's den for the night – might as well see what was in the box. The modified N-96 respirator he wore just in case this little gift had fangs, did make the mask fit a little askew, but the five-tiered diadem crossed by a set of large golden keys was ostentatious no matter the accessory he suited to it, Ban was sure. Hey – whatever made them happy and free with the dough was OK by him, Bankotsu thought with a grim smirk.

He did like the idea of having a crown and the twin crimson ribbons that trailed either side of his long, waist-length braid like servants did look quite fine. As long as Jak behaved himself and didn't kill anyone, it'd be a fine time – for where Bankotsu went, his business partner was sure to follow. So long as he didn't have to keep the arms dealer in check the whole night, yeah – it'd be a fine time.

"Titties and beer.", Bankotsu smugly murmured to himself as he wadded up the chamois, the card and the parchment invitation together into a sloppy ball and shot a three-pointer into the empty box. There was about four hours of daylight left – where was that black coat at?

He'd met the Order before in the library so after a few moment's enjoying the show in the main hall, the architect of mass destruction stalked off to make himself easily found, if that was what he was here for. Strands of crimson fluttered anxiously in his wake as if sensing the black energy coursing of him in waves. Party-goers, servants and celebrants alike gave him a wide berth as Bankotsu took the staircase with his usual casual ease. Out of the corner of one dark eye, he noted a woman, thin and ill-fitting in her own skin, dressed as the Sun, walk through the large foyer in a similar direction.

Ethereal slides drifted, panned and fought their echoes. Vibrato electric guitar menace thrummed and dove like a hawk in dove-infested skies. Bankotsu started to feel drunk, though no liquid spirits were served, nor had ever been in any of his dealings with this group. He didn't know if it was some new chemical they were testing on the unsuspecting masses all around him, but they could have warned him – even cryptically, as was the usual style. He was almost professionally annoyed by such a thought, but in the end, Ban figured if it were meant to be dangerous – he'd be dead by now.

But he felt quite the opposite as a matter of fact; he felt almost drunk. Like on the verge of a battle, all life and death and power, mixed together in his jazzed-up veins. Maybe it was micro-crystalline cocaine? Fed through the heating ducts of the entire place? No – this place had radiant heat in the floors, no doubt – and his teeth weren't numb. What the fuck was it, he was feeling?

Perched upon the edge of settee on the edge of the light, Bankotsu crossed his legs under his thick cloak and got a thrill – he was goddamn horny! Holy fuck, where had that come from all of a sudden?

Then she snuck into his hiding place and the need got so much worse.

The Sun struck a bonfire in his loins where there had just been flickering coals. He had to cover his mouth to keep the needy groan from escaping him. She was so dark, so thin – completely the opposite of the infinite, over-flowing tidal wave of unseen light and power that seemed to crush everything in its path. Long coltish legs in those ridiculously unseasonable sandals peaked and teased him, Ban knew if he didn't get a good look at the great ass he knew they made of themselves, he was going to go howling -insane! He didn't even notice he'd begun stroking himself in time to her small, tentative footsteps until he was nearly at his peak – faster than it had ever happened before. Panting breathlessly, he forced his hand away from his throbbing arousal to catch his breath – it was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his relatively short life.

Bankotsu was holding himself down, gripping the unfortunate couch in white-knuckled agony. He had stopped but his body was still going, it was all he could do to keep from ripping his cloak off and taking himself in both hands to come screaming in pain and dark glory. The woman clothed in the Sun came within arm's reach the moment his iron will collapsed and then it was too late.

Roaring in mindless desire, the Heirophant flung himself and the Sun onto the nearest mammoth reading table and pressing her shocked face to the wood, he slammed her gorgeous rump in the air and dove himself snarling within, over and over, harder and harder. Flailing unsteadily, the Sun grabbed the nearest thing to her writhing body and pulling hard upon it for leverage, yanking Bankotsu's long braid and with it his whole arching, flexing body deeper inside her. It was all he needed to spend himself in thick spurts that were pumped by his spasming body down her stretched, trembling thighs.

It was quite a show, thought the High Priestess and her thin smile was just visible through her shimmering veil. The library doors closed silently behind her as she left.

The High Priestess:

You have been invited to The Party...

The Password for the Gate is Beth...

You will wear the Face provided to you at all times without deviation... but you may guard your Purity if you must; until it, like dominion, is given away.

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

Veritas Liberabit Vos.

Kikyou hated that saying, hated everything about it. The truth never set anyone free – the truth was the worst kind of chain to hold a person in the dust. That's why she never had much use for the truth, in her line of work. Tossing the stick drives with this week's editorial proofs onto the table with her Hermes bag, Kikyou took quick stock of what she was up against. Once a freshman, hoping to major in journalism at Columbia, had gone to a certain party and had never been the same again. She'd done... many things... with someone she found out in the real world was a dance instructor on the West Side and when they'd tried to make it work in the harsh reality of daylight, four years she'd never see again were wasted in the blink of an eye. Getting her life back together was like painful rebirth after a cold, hard death, one she still bore the emotional scars within.

She was pleased by the choice in archetype, however, fancying herself uncontrollable and truly unknowable. Only Kikyou had the keys to herself, she mused in the third person with the ease of long-standing emotional trauma. The High Priestess' mask fit her snuggly, a stylistically blank ivory woman's face, inset with white moonstone eyes and crescent moon above them, covered by the sheerest iridescent blue turquoise veil, which covered her like frail armor, all the way to her pointy elbows. She liked the cover, she liked it immensely. She felt safe and separate from the image staring back at her from the mirrored closet door. Separate was good; the person within had nothing to do with the vision without. No matter what the outside person did tonight and with whom.

Less the 4 hours before sunset, Kikyou thought coolly to herself and wondered if InuYasha still had the cloak she'd worn before. She hadn't thought about that in years...

She actually had this album and was surprised at the very personal feelings the deep swaying cello and viola waltz engendered in her chilly mind. Its menace was straightforward and beautiful. She loved Kilar's work on any day but here, seeming to come from everywhere at once, the diabolus in musica vibe rose her spirit out of its sleeping depths. She trembled at the feeling of unseen entities brushing against her naked yet hidden skin. It had been exactly the same nine years earlier as well. The power generated here was enormous!

Kikyou once had seen a nearly extant copy of the fabled Hypnerotomachia Poliphili – here, in the library, another arcane and priceless treasure amongst so many others; she was certain there were even extant papyri from a rather famous now-defunct ancient library hidden away on those enormous, forbidding shelves. Being a devotee to the written word, Kikyou was trying to focus her unraveling will upon something other than the writhing couples around her. She was certain if she let her guard down this time, her very soul would be swallowed by the hungry spiritual maw that came to such a magickal feast. She knew weeks would go by in a daze before she could replenish the very essence of her soul that would be stolen tonight. And yet – she came willingly, perhaps even more willingly than the last time. Kikyou continued to hide from the liberating truth as she wandered...

She had pushed the library doors ajar when movement startled her hazy eyes beneath her veil. Through the hand's span of space between the oaken slabs, The High Priestess watched the mad, frenzied coupling spread before her. The Heirophant and the Sun, it seemed, were pressed, standing against one of the great dark tables, in a furore of carnal embrace – absolutely flagrante de licto. She could see the man's slick shaft plunge hungrily in and out of the woman's wet cleft, she could easily hear his thighs slap her taunt buttocks. Surprised out of her self-imposed torpor, Kikyou found the very carnality of their sexual fury intoxicating. The man began to fling himself into his partner with heavy, laden groans and could she see thick, gleaming trails of his essence slipping down the Sun's trembling, over-stretched legs? Oh yes and it was beautiful, so beautiful and she wanted it, she wanted to taste it and take it into her – she wanted to paint her own wet need with his hot essence and come screaming, right here... now...!

Kikyou gasped at her own racing thoughts, squeezed her hot thighs together good and tight and let the doors close silently on the spent couple before her. When she tried to go back the way she came, the Magician's wicked hand kept her pinned to the door, a handful of her hidden rump in his hungry grasp. His other hand held and drew her face upwards and before she could gasp a surpised breath, his smirking lips were at her veiled throat.

The Magician:

You have been invited to The Party.

The Password for the Gate is Gimel.

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

It was signed: Veritas Liberabit Vos.

How interesting, Miroku thought to himself with a half-smile. There were truths and then there were Truths; which were going to be on display?, he wondered poking gingerly through the half-eaten Chinese noodles on his plate. The grey box sat on the small kitchen table next to him, a silent dinner guest promising him quite the dessert, if the hushed and furtive rumors where to be believed. He could always rationalize his participation in such a rite as one born of sheer ecumenical drive; all religious experience aimed for unity of the self with the Divine – who was he to judge how the expression and practical application of such principles were best gone about? Spiritual principles and notions of sin were easily over-wrought with careful if acrobatic logic on his part all the time... he loved his calling.

Shedding his collar and his cossack, Miroku neatly dealt with both his self-rationalization and his priestly conditioning to go find something to cover his lean body for the night. The golden male face of his half-mask was crowned both by the caduceus and the sign of the Infinite; he had to admit both served him as well as any other sigul could. Nearly sunset – in a few hours. Halfway to his closet, the humane monk back-tracked quickly to grab one last large mouth-full of noodles before the hunt began...

Of course it was impressive, even by his high standards: nudity and better, everywhere his violet eyes could take in. He'd done some study before ordination on the many various forms of spiritual expression but he'd never witnessed this particular form first-hand – this Order was very secretive and circumspect as a general rule. Eyes glazed in both spiritual and erotic Nirvana, the dark Magician felt right at home.

He'd thought of the various words of power, given to him in the invitation. Thinking back to his past study of various ceremonial magick traditions, by the first password, Miroku knew he was looking for the High Priestess. He hoped she was a stone-cold fox with no gag reflex and a nice round... well, it was all he could do to not moan aloud at the thought! The second password meant nothing to him, regardless of how he racked his extensive brain for its hidden meaning. It was a guttural word, probably German – which he didn't speak. He couldn't recall ever hearing of a German tradition of sex magick, but hey – it was big wide world out there, wasn't it? He couldn't know everything sexual or spiritual in nature but it was always good to have a goal in life, he smiled to himself and hurried up a flight of curving marble stairs.

He found her doing exactly what he would never have guessed she'd be doing: peeping. He could hear the sounds of sex coming from the room the severe woman was standing outside of, looking through a crack in the double doors. She was so engrossed in the show before her veiled eyes, he was able to get within a hand's-span of her rigid form without her even suspecting him! Miroku gave the show before them a cursory glance, cataloging every little filthy detail for gentle remembrance later on and let his eyes drift down the much-more interesting show in front of him. His hands just itched to slide themselves over her curves, despite the cold armor her aura blasted off her in waves... only melting little by little as she forgot herself in the pleasure before her.

The High Priest could feel his body responding in kind to the heavy, bestial rhythms before him as the couple within wound to a screaming climax. Hard enough to be painful, he swallowed his intended greeting quickly as the High Priestess let the door silently shut on one theater only to topple them both together into another when she backed into his hovering, needing body. Hands with a mind of their own drew her wonderful bottom into one squeezing grasp, the other busying itself with giving him access to her veiled white throat. It surprised him in every way that instead of the customary violence Miroku expected from such trespass, that she slipped her hands behind that amazing rump and grabbed his erect phallus through his robes hungrily.

"Right here?" she breathed – it was both a question and a harsh command.

"There is no 'here', Priestess – the only reality is this.", the Magus quoth hotly in her covered ear, his lips grazing her flesh hungrily, squeezing her hand on his body.

"There is only Now.", she agreed and withdrew her hand and bent forward against the shut door. He allowed her all the space she wished, dropping to his own knees, he pushed her long cloak aside to bear her glistening sex to his hungry mouth. Feasting upon her, licking and sucking like a starving supplicant at her fount, Miroku lost himself to humanity utterly – becoming one with the surging tides of power and energy, chasing through and around his body and hers. He thought he heard angels singing when she bucked in his talented mouth and climaxed hard enough to nearly suffocate him with her shivering, clenching body. For a split-second, conscious thought returned in the form of his own personal mantra: there was no better way to die than to die in coitus, his hands full of a beautiful woman. Coolness returned like a trickle of melt water and he watched, on his knees as she tried to close herself up like a fan.

He tried then to rise and worship her anew, when on his feet – however unsteadily – she drug him to a marble pedestal, savagely flung the urn of greenery to the floor, flung him onto the thing. Seconds passed like æons and then she pushed herself down on his starving rod in a hot, tight mouth-full. He couldn't stop the load from coming then after the shortest span imaginable and groaning hoarsely, held the High Priestess down on his spasming loins, spending himself in her utterly in an unthinking void of thick, hot dissolution.

Judgment looked on jealously at the beatific smile plastered across the High Priest's blissful face – he seemed to weave the strands of sublime power flowing just out of sight with an adept's ease. Looking for nothing less than pure Lust, Judgment left the panting, spent couple to their languor.

Judgement:

You have been invited to The Party.

The Password for the Gate is Teth.

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

It was signed: Ad astra per alas porci.

Someone was fuckin' with him, Koga just knew it. Probably the guys from the office, Ginta and Hakkaku especially, those douche-bag friends of his! God love 'em... where they got the mask was anyone's guess. He poked his head into his little sister Ayame's room to get her spin on the cryptic epigraph. And once she stopped screaming about him barging into her room without permission, he got the story from her.

Cute – real cute! It sounded all good and wise and shit, but what it really said was, "When pigs fly."

He was going to kick Ginta and Hakkaku's asses real good tonight – and Koga was going to do it in the strange get-up their phony-baloney "invitation" specified; robed and masked! The blue double Ma'at crown with its freakishly suspended chains and scales did make his light blue eyes look nearly colorless in the dull light of the den-like apartment he shared with his sister... he'd just do a little sparring practice in the basement in the few hours until his intended rendezvous...

OK – there were nearly naked, masked people everywhere! Ginta and Hakkaku were nowhere to be seen. Koga was totally flabbergasted, and worse - he felt very vulnerable without his pack of friends in tow. But there were naked... holy fuck, was that guy just...? Were those two doing what he thought they were doing? Oh... oh god, yes they were! Wait... which one was a guy; were they both or was one just both? What the hell did he just see?

It was everywhere – this sudden, almost violent need to drive, to hunt, to mindlessly fuck until he couldn't stand or even breath without it being a stimulating act. Every time his half-flaccid member rubbed slightly against his dull black hunter's cloak, he thought he was going to whine with the acute pleasure of it! That was it – pure and simple: he was on fire with animal lust.

Koga loped around the mezzanine and wound his way carefully through the writhing, copulating couples, trios, masses before him. By the time his eyes lit on the High Priest and the High Priestess, Koga's need for a partner had been honed to a razor-sharp keening in his blood. Stalking with predatory purpose, the lupine man ascended another set of wide, marble steps to yet another level of erotic insanity, searching...

She was there, dancing - pure unadulterated Lust - perched atop a marble pedestal table and clad only in a pair of large exquisite feathered fans... his perfect prey...

Lust:

You have been invited to The Party...

The Password for the Gate is Lamed...

You will wear the Face provided to you at all times without deviation... but you may guard your Purity if you must; until it, like dominion, is given away.

The Password for the House is Irgendwen.

Ad astra per alas porci.

Kagura figured it belonged to her brother – he was always getting this kind of weird shit in the mail! How his dirty work kept getting dropped on her doorstep was anyone's stupid guess. But then the box had her name inscribed upon it in cool old-fashioned calligraphy. She was late getting home – wind tunnel testing on the tolerances of the D.o.D's latest project were not going so very well at all. The wings were just going to rip off the prototype every time she turned on the vortex machines... ugh! Kagura knew her wind-tunnel and what it could do to designs, but try telling that to the project design leader – oh no, she was just an underling, wasn't she?

Shaking out her long jadeite earrings in frustration, Kagura decided not to dwell on work any more today – she was done! Carting her mail and her unusual package into her small loft, the hot-tempered aerospace engineer shut her green-painted door in the face of another awful day on the job.

Shoveling yogurt into her face distractedly, Kagura wondered at the even-stranger contents of the mysterious dark grey box. She didn't know what the inscription was saying exactly; something about stars and pigs, which wasn't far from the truth of her business these days, she harrumphed past a mouthful of strawberry-flavored goo. Shoving the spoon hard into the small plastic vial of what was to be her dinner this evening, Kagura flipped the odd playing card between her carmine lacquered nails, studying it – the warm colors and animalistic symbolism not lost on her completely. It was a heady thing to look at; the more she looked, the more Kagura saw in the heavily composed art. After a few moment's perusal she decided she quite liked it.

The half-mask was a woman's bronze face, crowned with a... well, it looked like a... highly stylized, of course... it looked like an... opening... full of out-pouring swells and waves of multicolored enameled rays of light, like Creation spilling from, well - what she had last seen a day ago, in a shaving mirror, standing over the side of her tub – trying not to cut herself to keep the landing strip free of the bushes, so to speak. Kagura let out a slightly embarrassed throaty chuckle; she was a grown woman alone in her own home – might as well be a big girl and say it! The mask's dark golden face, surrounded by two snarling lion's heads, surrounding it all with a golden mane of thick ostrich feathers was crowned with what could only be a tastefully wrought but undeniable vagina. Putting it on at the dinner table made her feel... odd. Bucking up her courage, she made a beeline for the nearest mirror and decided after a large smile and a few jade-clinking shakes of her head, that she liked the mask too.

Looking at her bedside alarm clock, Lust noted she had but an hour's span to find the required attire and attend. Damn, working late...!, she swore and began pulling off her daylight self, starting with her rumpled clothes.

Kagura found herself on one of the higher floors of this cavernous mansion before she was distracted from the omnipresent sensual display all around her. She almost didn't make it in time to be admitted, slipping within the large gate just as the sun was dying in the West – blowing in just like the cold hard wind that rose over the skeletal trees huddled around the monolithic building.

Now she was held in place, staring at the statue before her – a bronze couple, Apollo and Daphne it must be – he, just reaching his arms out to capture her and she, her body belled out as far from those aching fingers as possible, turning subtly into the laurel tree. It was priceless, such a life-size casting had to be authentic but some one had placed two very large fans of champagne-toned plumes in the nymph's fleeing hands. They didn't belong there, so after moment's thought, Kagura easily stretched up her long legs in their burgundy stilettos and plucked the fans for herself. She felt someone or something was making its hungry way towards her and she was going to meet it head-on, her Beauty to the oncoming Beast.

Kagura couldn't remember kicking off her shoes nor could she recall throwing off her thick velvet cloak – both of which were unheeded under the large pedestal table she had vaulted up upon to twine herself up in her newly prized fans. Her body, naked but for the smallest bit of black silk across her trimmed mound, flowed and curled like the winds she minded in a daily grind. The slightest breeze of her passing made the mane of her mask and the frills of her fans shimmer and slink, speaking the language of Lust and elemental power in the hungry minds that gathered slowly around her. Circling her slowly swaying form like sharks, men and women drew her power within their own and blew it back out flaring nostrils and smiling, panting mouths – all to feed and return the great circuit of energy being raised among their milling masses.

Judgment found her, perched above the lesser mortals and always, guiding the experiment for another, inflaming temperaments. She knew him in a split-second of fire when her dark reddish-brown eyes beheld his own nearly colorless blue. The Chains of his office clinked as he stalked her slowly. She threw back her gold and black head and laughed, twisting her body away from him with a challenging thrust of her hips in his direction, closing herself up in the fans.

He drew quickly to the edge of her impromptu stage and leaned up to her, devouring everything about her with feral eyes.

"Loup-garou?", she whispered in her throaty voice as Lust leaned in to nip at the man's outstretched flesh.

"Only loup, woman. You're here for me!", he hissed hungrily and hoisted himself easily onto the marble slab with her.

Judgment held her on her knees and when that wasn't enough, he pulled her knees around his own, bent them both back and rammed her upon his bursting flesh in open display. Her audience was now theirs, their frenzied orgy mimicking the sweating, moaning acts of desperate passion between Lust and Judgment on their high altar. He gouged her thighs hard enough to bruise and she hung from his sweating, corded neck in wanton exposure and when Lust finally broke upon the wave of pleasure within her, her lover bent himself further and howling like an animal, filled her with spasm after spasm of his hot, white seed.

The Crimson being in the middle of the whirling mass of mindless celebrants could feel the power rising and knew the hour was at hand. All night, in countless ways – in countless permutations of full life and little deaths, of the give and take - energy rose in a steadily building charge, like a phantom spiraling spark on a great Tesla coil. Raising and building until, with two ancient clawed hands, the Order's Head Priest drew the power down to himself. Between his own, a woman's hands made of golden spectral light formed, cupped in great offering. Something was coalescing, coming into being... like a sparkling jewel of pure Creation, waiting to be born into the world, like the sun just under the horizon, once more. He had only to breathe and give, will it so and take...

"Irgendwen..." the ancient being whispered in his thin, rasping voice and began to remake the world anew.