Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

"I AM MOIRA, [Rank Eaglet] with the C.S.A. We first confirmed the killing of the Major thirty after the twelfth hour. The Castrian monks had just rung the bells for the Vespers end. The dreadful news came to us by a fast-riding houseguard."

"Let me stop you there." Corazón reached out with a hand to the red-and-blue appareled Agent. The girl nodded too fast. She was in obvious thrall of the group of people whom she sat with. Rafel had his ruthlessly gorgeous face plastered all over the goddamn city. Posters. Graffiti. Peeling paint. Goth fucking tats!

He was invincible to Moira.

Cora put up a small smile for the girl, because she looked really nervous. Cora started again as Moira rubbed her sweaty palms in her lap, "I'm sure the CSA are thorough in the affairs concerning our great Empire, but we do not sit in here for a brief on how Clandestine Forces conduct business. We all. . ." Cora directed her hand away from herself to Ravenna, Aya, and Rafel,

"—would prefer if we got down to real shit."

Cora left it at that. Moira was twice puzzled at how down-to-earth these famous people were; those in the Freelands and undercity revered them as gods. Rafel had a golden, 26ft fountain statue in the city square. Another of him as a Trident-wielding water chief in Atlantea. Moira was flaming red, up to her sharp ears. Her elfin heritage distinct by the pink, knife tips.

She was struggling not to make a huge whore of herself by offering her tits for Rafel to autograph as it was.

"Real s-shit?" she stuttered.

"Yep! Real shit." Aya popped her lips. Her mouth was painted over with lush black. Her succubus allure worked its magic. Cora relaxed in the shuttle and watched as the shy Agent just about kissed Aya on those hot lips. Rafel cleared his throat. And Moira nearly jumped out of her skin.

In the case of changelings, this wasn't a metaphor.

Rafel squinted his wicked eyes. "Is everything okay, [Eaglet]?"

He addressed the girl by her rank in the CSA. Moira nearly moaned at the sound of his voice; he even sounded way better up close. Ravenna snapped her trimmed nails in front of the girl's face.

"Agent?"
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"Y-Yes, Yes, Your Majesty."

"As you were." Ravenna advised. She adopted curt demeanor to school Moira, although she knew that later in the day Rafel, her, and the girls would call back this moment and laugh over it.

"Yes, Your Majesty. Apologies."

The blue-haired Agent Moira bowed to her Queen courteously and started off with—as Cora deemed it, the real shit: "Major Midas Azubuike was battle-chief of the [003] Dragonrider Covenant, Instructor at the flight fields of Flamecrest.

"As Associate Rector, he had a villa there. He was murdered in it. His mistress lived there with him."

"His wife?" Rafel looked out the tinted window.

"En route, sir." Moira replied soundly.

Rafel again heard the conversation proceed, but the outside of the shuttle had more his attention than in. All he needed to investigate the murder of a military Silverstar was that his girlfriend cared for it. Rafel didn't particularly know the Major—except in passing, but Ravenna cared. So then, so did he.

He watched the view of the city falling away; the mighty Hardden towers, the older brownstones in the Lords District, the newer, glittery ones by the beaches—the ones that hadn't survived the ascent of the Titans, and the rumbling floods of the Cold Sea beyond it all.

Beside him, his closest girlfriend was Aya. She sat on the same plush lounge inside of the [shuttle wagon] as her clic. The interior of the cosmo-abled longcar was lavishly decored in cool, arctic tones that spoke volumes of the people inside of it. Rafel didn't turn again until he felt the [shuttle wagon] start to drop.

"We're here," Moira announced.

The first building Rafel spotted: an Athenian stone flat-roofed edifice, was the one their shuttle came to rest upon. The wide roof was built in the days when flying vessels were unimagined, but now it served dual purpose. An outlook for the watchmen, and a landing strip for the punkish [shuttle wagon].

"Flamecrest, Your Majesty!" Moira held the soft door open as the chauffeur in front stilled the purr of her vehicular comrade; drivers of [shuttle wagon] had to be Mechas only them could bond with the [cosmo substrate] contained in it.

The same way Rafel's [mana core] was attuned to his [Arcane Rune] and demonic symbiote.

Moira held the door until Rafel stepped out. He was the last one of the bunch. And immediately his booted feet touched the stone of the old home, he smelled the blood.

He said sullenly and began walking off.

"There's a lot of blood. It thickens the air."

He led in front, needing no further direction to find the chamber of the Major's assassination. As Cora stepped into line with Rafel, bulleted behind by Aya, and lastly, Ravenna—safeguarded by a [Triad Ninja] who flowed out from the other shuttles that landed over other stone roofs, Moira was troubled. For she alone smelled nothing.

Her elf descent was incomparable to Rafel's horrid Luciferan ancestry. He was a Great White buried in a man; he smelled blood from miles away.

Flamecrest was a mesh of Keeps and fancier villas, in the southern sphere of the dry forest it occupied. Then further up, the flight-fields and refuges used as training stations for dragonriders of the [001], [002], [003] Covenants. A cantonment town, it was not flamboyant. It was built mostly for hardy souls that could combat tricky weather and soiled backs of angsty dragons.

Its ground defense was sorry—as compared to its aerial.

Houseguards of the Flamecrest homes were ever found on balconies and turrets, looking out for the threats on the foreseeable horizon. None below. 'If I wanted to decapitate a Major in bed,' Rafel pick'd in his mind, 'I'll choose this place too. Their ground forces are for shit. Just look at those bulwarks, like famished bedrocks on the shores. Deserted posts on the terrain. Easy maneuvering.

The assassin must've done jigs before he left.'

But what if it wasn't a she?

Rafel had seen enough of the mortal plane to know bitches murdered just as frightening and bloody as fucking Maulers. You think you've seen the worst of a fighting pit, until you fuck a Shieldmaiden—and then dump her. Or at least, try to.

'Shit. That always ended in disaster.' Rafel thought while he moved down rock steps hewn into the vast home; a case that circled down from the flat rooftop into a wide pavilion entrance, the doors of the keep like a herald at the end of it. Fresh basil and aloes formed a drooping blanket around white stocky pillars.

The Major's home at one time might've been pretty. A gem of the old world.

That was the fruition of Flamecrest; it retained the olden magic of dragons, in its ground and air.

The antique Grandfather clock above the mantel in the antechamber of the Major's home—that looked more like the iron seal for House Nnadi: an ancient house, pointed to two o'clock as Rafel and the girls crossed the carpé threshold into the foyer.

The mistress was already waiting.

"I am Holly Evergarden, the Madame of this house, and it is my pleasure to—"

"What YOU are is the cheap whore that dead cunt in there was fucking!" This new screamer didn't let the hostess of the Major's home finish. Out from a side door in the antechamber stepped a really tall woman. She had very dark polished skin.

"That's the Major's wife, Adanna, the heiress of the House Nnadi. This villa is hers. Half of Flamecrest is hers. Her great ancestor, Chief Julius Nnadi, was the conqueror of the gray elemental dragon. His House are still faithful worshippers of the Orishas."

Moira whispered this to Cora's ears. Rafel heard it.

No wonder the woman was straight-up fuming.

Her husband was screwing his concubine in her ancestral home. And Holly Evergarden was the whitest bitch ever.

"Oof!" Cora snickered.

The Major's wife came close, completely ignoring the smaller, petite Holly who bent her head at her passing. She stopped in front of Rafel.

"Adanna, at your service, my liege."

"Lady Nnadi," Rafel wisely addressed her by her maiden name. "I am pleased to meet with you. But you know why I am here. We followed the stench of cold murder. I discern the path of blood in the wind. Show him to us, will you?"

Adanna bowed to Rafel, then Cora and Aya after.

She waist-dipped to Ravenna. "Your Majesty," she greeted affectionately. Adanna was about 6ft of height, with twenty good years on Ravenna's. But even the Major's wife recognized the soul of a god within the Empress's emerald eyes. Adanna moved her eyes back toward the winding silver staircase, and Holly Evergarden shrank just a little bit more.

"Move, you little white bitch!" Adanna actually said this aloud.

As the Major's wife led the way from the accented antechamber, Rafel was conflicted by how the Hel Midas could cheat on this woman. Her rapturous ass and ivory skin reminded him of his own wife.

Peitho slurred in his head.

[Ding!]

[Does my Lord host wish me to summon the ocean goddess, Yemaya to his bed later this evening?]

[Along with her harem?]

Before Rafel could think to answer this salacious and very enticing offer from his system, Adanna reached by a lonely door on the second storey of the home. A cold wind blew out from the slightly ajar door as they all halted in front of it. Rafel put off Peitho for later. "Ask me this again, when we've left this place, okay, Peitho?"

[Yes, Host]

Peitho's presence—her mapletree scent in his head drowned into the recesses of his mind as he heard Adanna say, "the Major's right in here."

She didn't call him her husband.

Rafel started to wonder, if Midas was fucking Holly, who was Adanna fucking?

Cora was the first one to go through the door, with Moira hot on her heels. "All good, sir!" The [C.S.A] Agent called out. Only then did Rafel let Ravenna walk in, still accompanied by the [Ninja Triad].

The bedroom of Major Midas Azubuike was much colder than normal. Even for the winter rolling into the lands. And so Rafel was sure a [Soulreaper] was lurking nearby. Perhaps behind the blue curtains billowing unnaturally to the east windows. Moira put out gloves and walked forward, tracing the fog of coppery exsanguination thick on the evergreen floors of the bedroom.

It stopped her by the large bed. Here, the blood was so gushed it was a block of red at their feet.

Thick, viscous, slimy crimson.

Moira pushed off the blanket someone had put over the corpse.

"Ack!" A collective gasp rumbled from everyone in the room. Only Rafel and the dead Major's wife did not flinch.

On the huge white bed, a soldier's body lay. In full regalia, ranks, and colors. His shaved head was ten inches parted from the frigid, blue body. His dead body. Major Midas was dead as a raccoon in rain.

Moira tutted and began speaking fast, working her gloved hands dexterously. "See this marks on the decapitation site? The Major had his head cut off by what I'm assuming to be a shaving razor."

"A SHAVING RAZOR?!" Ravenna was appalled.

Moira kept talking. "And there was a second body."

"A SECOND BODY?" It was Adanna this time.

"Aye. The lass is right," a husky baritone rumbled out of the shadows by the weird blue veils where Rafel stood. Inspite of herself and the situation, Ravenna felt heat flood her cheeks. Her demon's voice never ceased to amaze her. All in the blood-sodden chamber were looking to Rafel to explain.

He said simply, "no one person bleeds this much."

Whilst everyone pondered this in quiet, his yellow eyes caught on Holly Evergarden, shyly bent by the doorway. He caught the flash of truancy in her soft doe eyes, and a wicked grin that flashed in the light of candles. As quickly as it appeared, it was gone. Rafel almost doubted seeing it himself.

But he did.

And looking on the contrite Holly Evergarden, he wondered if they had already found their killer.