Eternal nights

"I need your help." Her pleas never led to something good. Neither at the happy times when Dimalchio didn't yet know who he was dealing with, nor at the moment he realised it, nor since he has accepted it. Dimalchio turned away from the window where Alushnyrra was stretching out - dirty, vicious and beautiful - and looked at Arueshalae. She was standing in the doorway of a house they bought together with blood and tears of the mortals who'd died in the arena. Their faces were erased from memory faster than blood went into the sand. Succubus's eyes, bright and predatory, watched him intently and relentlessly, and there was a smile on her lips. She told him there was no way to make yourself known in Alushnyrra better than killing demons in the arena, and he believed her. After all, before he came here, the destruction of the fiends had been the meaning of his life. Before he spared one. But in the Battlebliss he had to kill not the demons, but those whom the master of arena would order, and those whom Arueshalae pointed out. And the barbarians attacked, calling for Gorum, and the priests died with the name of Desna on their lips. And the gods took their souls to Elysium, where he himself could never return. You can leave the arena only as a champion or a dead man. Not a day passed that he didn't regret he was too weak to choose the latter. "I'm not going back to the Battlebliss", he said, fully aware that if she asked, he would. Arueshalae appeared behind him as soon as he looked away. "Of course not," she whispered, and hugged him with her hot hands, "And why would we? You and I have no equals there. Our names are known well enough to attract the attention of the one who cannot be denied…” Nocticula holds the city firmly in her hands, not allowing anyone to doubt what will happen to the idiot who decides that he has enough strength to encroach on her power. No uprisings or coup attempts have happened for ages, but from time to time the Lady In Shadows receives gifts from admirers from other planes. One of these gifts is a pretty cambion from among the palace servants. He made an agreement with the devil and exchanged a shameless lot of information about the inner life of the House of Silken Shadows for a warm place in Hell with the help of deception, ingenuity, and a small quasit. Cambions are the only demons who have something to sell. "He's not afraid of death," Arueshalae sighed, "It will only allow him to take his place at the feet of his new master. And he used to feel pain, like anyone who serves at the House. A little longer and we'll have to let his soul go to Hell, just waddle a finger at him before saying goodbye. Mistress Nocticula will be... disappointed." Dimalchio took a deep breath and raised his hand, placing it on Arushalae's hot palm. No one dares to disappoint Lady In Shadows. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, but received no answer - only a gloomy look from under her long eyelashes. The time when Dimalchio frowned, walking through the streets of Alushnyrra, has passed years ago. Screams no longer hurt his ears, only settled on the edge of consciousness with a thin veil. The way to the casemates of the palace doesn't take much time if you know where to go, and Arushalae knew. She floated through the streets of this city like a fish in the water, but he was suffocating, washed ashore. The cambion had no fingers or eyes left. The rot slightly touched his blackened wounds. The succubi really worked him over. His thin, gaunt body was hung nailed to the wall by the wings, like a caught insect; his arms and legs chained in shackles. He made no sound, just breathed rapidly in the fever of his bloody dreams. When Arueshalae snatched a shrieking quasite from the cage with one hand and plunged a dagger into the cambion's solar plexus with the other, Dimalchio still didn't understand what he was doing there. She could do all of this herself. The cambion opened his bloodied mouth in a painful scream - he had no teeth left either. They were cut out one by one and must have been lying somewhere on the floor. Dropping a blade and lifting the edges of the wound with thin, well-groomed fingers, she shoved a rapidly twitching quasite inside. The cambion squirmed and yelled, but couldn't even move in his shackles. Blood trickled down his body and dripped onto the dirty floor. “Close the wound,”Arueshalae demanded, but it was difficult to make out through the cries of her victim. “What?” "Close it!" she barked, and Dimalhio flinched. He couldn't even lie he had no powers left - she knew for sure that he had them. In the arena, he more than once had to close the wounds of valuable allies in battle, and it worked on demons as well as on everyone else. "He must not die tonight!" she shouted over the cambion, "Or I will take his place in the morning!" Wincing, he came closer and placed his hand over Arueshalae's. Even through her hot, blood-soaked fingers, he could feel the quasit twirling, trying to free itself. It's painful, using the light of Elysium, and it's more painful each time, but for Dimalchio there is someone who is much more precious than this light. She won't leave. She only did once and he'd sworn he'd never let her do it again. "Well done," Arueshalae exhaled in his neck and touched it with her lips, but didn't allow him to take his hand away from the moving skin of the screaming cambion, "It's going to be a long night…" Back then, he didn't know that the nights in Alushnyrra are eternal.