Lament for Capriote by Sunny

Capriote was the Eastern center of worship for hundreds of years, but for the past four decades it had quickly become more and more militarized. The city's crowning achievement? Towering platforms to keep the city within the limits of her artillery laden walls and allow it to continuously expand industry. The skies around the heaven scraping monument to engineering and the gods were filled with the black smoke of forges and manufactorums producing the means to sustain their foreign wars against heresy, wherever it reared its head.

Yet the great city Capriote trembled like a lamb in the presence of a hungry wolf. Her soaring arches, walls of stained glass and iron, and spires stuck in the sky like the claws of a lioness meant nothing to the curious ruby eyes gazing over the outer walls of the man made mountain. The eyes of the greatest war machine they had ever brought to bear on the wicked; Eternity.

Pious looked down on the bronze giant from the highest tower of his monastery, the crowning jewel atop the peak of the city. His latest dealings with the witch king Dido had yielded less than controllable results, evidently. He turned his back on the sight of the naked mechanical woman pushing through the reinforced concrete walls. With a whirl of his black and red capes, he passed between his bowing attendants with a stoic stride that nevertheless betrayed his irritation.

"You there," he pointed with a many ringed finger at another man. This man dressed in a wide brimmed hat and an armored exoskeleton under striped pantaloons, "Alert your musketeers and the rest of the guard; you are to destroy the brazen giant overlooking the wall at once. All weapons are authorized. I pray for the innocent, for they shall not be spared if they are caught in your wrath. Now go."

He could not see the musketeer's face beneath the hollow eyed mask depicting a saintly visage he wore, but he saluted in acknowledgment and ran off without a word. Pious himself beckoned for his attendants who began to follow, muttering prayers and lamentations as they accompanied the Pontiff of Capriote further into his fortress of gilded halls and holy relics.

===

Eternity peered curiously over the walls, bronze breasts propped up on the heavily defended parapet. The garrison had long since abandoned the fight to drive her off, her thick metal skin impervious to their arquebus and hand grenades. The artificial skin was warm like a human being's, evidence of the life bestowed upon her by Dido, though Eternity was unquestionably and inhumanly strong.

The bronze woman reached over the wall, gently pinching a cart between her fingers. She had seen hundred if not thousands like it on the front, but never one she had fought and killed to protect. She rotated it between her fingers as she inspected; it was wooden, and filled with the small red fruits human beings enjoyed so much. Eternity wasn't sure what she had expected of the great gate to heaven, the holy man made mountain which she slaughtered in the name of without ever having seen herself. With a slight squeeze, the wooden construction exploded between her fingers, as had hundreds if not thousands like it before beneath her bulk. As a war machine, the undeniable urge to destroy ran in her blood. Or synthetic equivalent.

She smeared the rest of the splinters and fruit pulp on the wall, returning to her feet. The impregnable walls of Capriote only reached midway up her thigh, mechanical pussy unashamedly on display for all of the impure who would gaze on it. Billowing smoke of manufactorums and homes met with the dreary gray skies, pushed from twisting iron pipes from all across the landscape of concrete and stone. The general architecture of Capriote matched her own stylings and the inlays in her bronze skin, no doubt put there by the witch king to further please her benefactor. Eternity wanted to inspect a certain manufactorum closer; the scent of fresh bread wafting up to her incredibly sensitive nose. The same nose that lent her the epithet "bloodhound" was once again leading her on a path of destruction.

A perfect lithe foot cast from bronze crashed through the gates like a battering ram, throwing stone and steel in a shower of rubble. There was no sign of effort; Eternity merely took a step in the direction of the next object of interest. Her toes spread slightly and unconsciously as she finally set her foot down on the street cobbles, deforming them like soft sand under the tread of a working maiden. Dust settled over her patina green nails as the other foot swung overhead, barely clearing an apartment slum. She may have been an engine of destruction, but Eternity still upheld chivalrous standards when it came to the treatment of the poor. She was the right hand of the most holy city in the world, after all.

Gracefully weaving through the terrain of outer gate ghettos and slums, Eternity had nearly reached her goal when a roaring report barked out. The gunnery crew of the siege howitzer cheered as the living statue's high cheekbones exploded in a shower of sparks, and she crashed on her side into a storehouse. The mood on the tracked vehicle quickly dampened. From the dust of destruction, baleful red eyes stared out, rising once again. As she emerged from the dust it was plain to see the wound which exposed her glittering hardened steel skeleton heal. Ropes of foul green magic leaped from one side to the other, stitching the bronze skin back together like a woven lattice. Her face was returned to its state of artistic perfection as the soldiers hit second reverse gear.

It had been a long time since she had been hit with a cheap shot. The splendor of the majestic city had clouded her usually sharp senses. This wasn't supposed to be a battleground. But if the humans insisted, who would she be to deny her masters?

The intricate detailing all across her body began to glow a sickly green, and her blood red irises became shrouded by a black shield, closing over like a cat's second membranous eyelid.

She raised a hand, and in a delicate gesture pointed at the lumbering mass of retreating steel. The crew picked up a faint scent that grew stronger by the second; fresh rain. But the dark ashen skies hadn't allowed a drop to fall all day. The commander of the vehicle cried out in terror;

"Abandon ship, abandon ship!"

Before even the first man could fully cross the threshold of the hatch, a bolt of lightning leaped from the tip of the brass behemoth's lazily pointed finger. The bolt ripped through the thick armor plates like a starving lion tearing through a forgotten can of fish, leaving a molten trail of slag as a billion goetic volts set the ammunition ablaze. The men inside were vaporized before the shells could even detonate.

Thunder boomed behind the flash, echoing louder than even the first fired shot. Followed by an eruption of shellite reducing the block to rubble and the vehicle it was safely stowed inside to shrapnel. Eternity smiled; few of the mortals among her enemies had the balls to try something so outrageously stupid. Not anymore, anyway. Having several divisions of men and machine reduced to ash and half melted slop with a gesture tended to wizen up the surviving heretics quickly.

Giving up her grace and avoidance of collateral damage for a show of raw power, Eternity trampled down everything in the streets and hopped across the crater left by the ammunition cook off like a young noblewoman over a puddle.

Her senses were on high alert now; the rumbling of war diesels and screeching of turbines filling her ears, the scent of distressed sweat mixed with uniform starch flooded her nostrils like it was a thick sap, her eyes picking out dozens of approaching hands of war at once. A feast for Eternity's insatiable lust for death.

A pair of jet attack fighters swooped down from the sky ahead of the advancing forces, painted in the purple livery of veteran airmen promoted to the Pontiff's own air wing. The attack would normally soften up the target for the ground troops, but they were unknowingly one of the bronze woman's favorite appetizers. As the bombs fell, the target crouched. One of the pilots chuckled; they had aimed for her feet, her feeble attempt to dodge the incoming munitions only proved the superiority of fighting men over magical automat-

SNAP.

Eternity jumped into the air higher than any human could proportionally, maw open and her second row of predatory teeth deployed. She had shredded the flying machine in the process of catching it in her teeth like a dog, but the pilot remained intact. The other machine she simply swatted out of the sky like an irritatingly noisy beetle.

The pilot would not remain intact for long; her barbed metallic tongue writhed and flexed to taste him, shredding his clothes and flesh in equal measure. He screamed and begged as his skin was pierced like cheese by a grater, flayed alive like a murderous traitor. She moaned as she hit the ground, savoring the forbidden flavor of fresh blood as the deadly munitions leveled a city block where she had just been standing.

Glurk!

With a quick gulp, man and machine were sent to the hell-pit of her guts, to be electrically decomposed and desouled to feed her magical abilities. The half alive pilot only registered a change from the crushing pressure that felt like a warm embrace to his shock addled nerves. It was the last kindness he would be visited as he drifted into a black sleep he could never wake from.

This was the price Pontiff Pious had paid to the witch king for the greatest weapon in all of the mortal realm. Dredged up from the very womb of hell herself, Eternity required human sacrifice of the people of Capriote to stay alive. Otherwise she would simply turn into a beautiful bronze statue, never to reawaken. Pious fed her with undesirables smuggled to the front lines with the rest of the supplies by only his most loyal battle clergy. They would perform the rituals in secret, under the guise of "maintenance." Those soldiers who spoke out on suspicions would mysteriously disappear, labeled as battle casualties. But they too met their end in the bowels of Eternity, their very souls fueling her weapons against the enemies of Capriote.

Eternity looked down as she finished her little snack. A half crushed tank lay under one foot, and shaken infantry ignored their wounds to try to escape the other. She splayed her toes, and slid her foot forward like a flood of bronze, rolling over fleeing men before wrapping around a second tank lining up a shot. Her toes scrunched down like a peasant woman's climbing out of a muddy bank, the hardened machine crumpling just as easily as a clay slope. It's cannon barked out a final time as it died, though its aim ruined by the sudden impact of the perfect brazen foot. The shell should have passed directly between her legs, but something miraculous happened.

The lightning coursing through Eternity combined with her metallic body acted like a lodestone on her command. It certainly wasn't strong enough to stop shells dead in their tracks, but she had learned the finesse over thousands of combat hours to redirect such attacks. The shell looped around her strong thigh, and returned in the direction it had come like a stone cast by an invisible sling over her hip. Eternity giggled as it hit a clock-spire, which crumbled onto an impromptu artillery battery still hastily preparing their guns.

For the first time since she arrived, Eternity spoke. Her voice rang out like the chiming of a church bell, metallic and sweet. And incredibly loud;

"Stupid mortals, is this how you treat guests? Especially guests who have served you so kindly and with such distinction..." She chortled as she stomped down the causeway, crushing vehicles and men with the same ease as they did insects.

The second wave of attack caught her eye, infantrymen leaping from their transports and bravely taking up positions inside of buildings as the trucks ferried away the innocents from the carnage of Eternity. This brought up a conundrum for the woman; it would take far too long to sniff out each one and crush them.

Steam began to leak from the corners of Eternity's forming smirk. The trickle of gaseous water and dribble of condensate soon grew into a proper plume. As it grew into a pair of invisible high pressure columns, she dropped her jaw, lolling out her tongue to allow a belch of super-heated steam burst forth. The invisible scorching blast turned white as it hit the cobbles. It billowed out in and unstoppable tide of scalding death and those not immediately splattered into gore by the blast wave wish they had been as the high pressure fluid filled every available space, boiling anything still present alive in its own skin. After an seemingly infinitely moment Eternity stemmed the tide and closed up her deadly maw.

The remaining pressure of the directed boiler explosion vented from her lips as she walked down the now sterilized street to the towers of Capriote proper.

===

From the third layer of Capriote, Inquisitor General Henricus VIII watched the fruits of the Pontiffs arrogance slaughter the Musketeer Guard through a telescope usually reserved for precision measurement of the celestial bodies. Pulling his grizzled face away from the eyepiece he retrieved his spectacles from his squire Johann.

"The Pontiff's dealings with the witch king have gone on far too long. He has lead Capriote down a dark path, and we are now reaping the harvest of our misguided tolerance. Summon the witch hunters; we shall strike down this abomination of Dido the wicked, and on our successful hunt the Pontiff Pious of Capriote shall be burned at the stake without further trial than my judgment."

===

Johann inhaled sharply as the automated needle pierced is skin, and sighed it out as the sacred oils entered his blood stream. The populace and secular kingdoms called the holy tincture a drug, but that was reductive for anyone who had ever experienced it first hand. Johann had never truly lived until the divine touched him through the small hole torn by the hollow golden needle. That's what the Inquisition was, truly. Not the mere automated living death he had shambled through before lord Henricus had taken him in. This was a life truly worth dying for.

The needle tucked itself back into the bottom of his gilded bracers while the curtain of heavy treated leather sealed itself back over the Inquisitorial squire's elbow. His master sat at his left hand, in the belly of the holy war machine that carried the Inquisitor vanguard to the second level of Capriote.

===

Eternity broke the holy city's initial defense as easily as she had that of the heathens and heretics. No one dared to challenge her now, and she didn't care to chase after the same tanks and uniformed men she had watched every day for a year. She was here to see the city. The great monuments, sky scraping spires, centers of worship, and most of all the monastery of the Pontiff. The supposed jewel of Capriote's diadem.

The bronze woman approached the lip of the second level. She was preparing to simply jump, when she noticed a huge platform. Relatively to the city of course, to her it was about the size of a large mattress. It was covered in stone, steel, and parked construction vehicles of all types and sizes. She smiled; this is how the little humans could lift such things. She had never believed the battle clergy when they had claimed there was a 3 layered city, but that she was the only woman her size under the rule of the Pontiff. The humans were certainly as clever at creating as they were destroying it seemed.

Standing on the lift, Eternity sniffed the air; the scent of a nearby human caught her attention. She immediately caught a glimpse of the source of the scent retreating behind a stack of structural beams. The bronze giantess lowered herself to her hands and knees, and crawled over slowly;

"Shh shh... come out, small one. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want a look."

As she rounded the corner, a terrified construction worker was pressed up against the steel, head down in fervent prayer and hands quivering like leaves in the wind.

===

Regina was simply doing her inspection of the cargo and equipment to make sure everything was secured before raising the platform. She heard an explosion in the distance, but merely assumed it was an over-pressured boiler. Maybe someone smoking in a place they shouldn't have. But she grew more and more concerned as the explosions continued accompanied by the sounds of shouting and armored vehicles. She had hid among the myriad construction materials. She dared to gaze out at the source of booming footsteps as they grew louder. Immediately regretting it as the black eyes of one possessed by goetia locked on to her.

Now she tried to purge the impure thoughts she had about the wicked living statue's pleasing shape. It was as if built solely to please the young woman; a body strong, yet feminine. Curves and muscle in equal measure. Fear and arousal fought with piety as Regina prayed to the deific patron of Capriote to deliver her from the beast. Or at least cleanse her soul if she was bound for the afterlife.

She only stopped reciting prayers and devotions when a hardened bronze finger poked her side and knocked the construction woman to her side. Regina merely curled up and cried, giving up her unanswered calls for divine succor.

"What's the matter, sweet girl?" Eternity cocked her head to the side, the protective shielding over her eyes retracting back under her eyelids.

Regina was almost more terrified at the piercing red eyes than the black membranes. They didn't have any malice behind them, however. Chaos and playfulness sure, but more of a genuine curiosity than anything.

"I-I... I'm afraid. Y-you... the whole block... they were screaming..."

Regina didn't bother resisting as a bronze hand gently scooped her up, and Eternity straightened up her posture onto her haunches. The hand was hard, but warm. It had a vast well of strength behind it, but that was in a way comforting to the shivering woman.

"They stuck me first, little one. I had no choice. But you..." Eternity softly pet the woman with the other hand, stroking her tied up hair with an inhuman dexterity for something so monumental; "You haven't done anything but submit. You're safe. So long as you're as sweet as you've been." The great brazen lips curled into a gentle smile, and Regina stopped trembling as fiercely.

"Now tell me, can you operate this platform?"

Regina's eyes lit up, and she nodded enthusiastically.

"Good, good... will you raise it for me?"

The tiny construction woman's heart sunk with the weight of the request as she realized the implications. If she raised the colossus to the second level, she would be able to level the same destructive power she brought to bear here on the first. Surely the armed forces were even now on their way. If she did this, Regina would bear the weight of every drop of blood spilled due to her actions.

"I can smell your arousal, you know."

Regina snapped out of her decision locked stupor, looking up at the mischievously grinning woman; "What? Of course I'm not, I-"

"Lying is a sin, you know little one. Even more than..." Eternity picked up a sheet of steel plate, it's bindings snapping like freshly made noodles, and licked it seductively. Carving deep scores inches deep in the strong metal; "Sodomy."

Eternity raised her hand directly to eye level; "Would you like to raise the platform? Or..." Regina cried out as she went weightless and stopped in front of a gaping bronze maw, the tongue lolling out like a bitch in heat. She nearly threw up as she noticed the barbs still carried remnants of human flesh mixed in with shredded fabric and aeronautical grade metal; "Shall we share a night in Babylon?"

The tongue reached out to lick the sapphic construction worker, strong fingers forming a cage behind her. With nowhere to go, she braced for the wicked iron maiden's grasp. But it merely flicked upwards, only catching the front of her pant crotch and tearing it straight off like a dollop of whipped cream.

"Hm, classy panties, little one. Though I'm not one for clothing myself." Regina felt her whole body flush red as she moved to cover her simple black undergarments.

"So, what's do you choose, small one?"

"I'll do it!" Regina held back tears, as the words seemed to leap from her throat on their own.

===

Eternity had never been on an elevator before, or really anything that could hold her up not firmly anchored in the soil. Seeing the little planes dash and dance in the sky had always been a daydream of hers. The feeling of weightlessness, and then more weight, going where no unwinged being was ever meant to travel. Not to mention the destruction they rained down on their enemies. She giggled at the strange feeling in her belly as the lift lurched upward. Regina for her part disabled all of the safety features in the cab; it was moving overpower at a speed it wasn't rated to go. If she was lucky, it would come crashing down and she wouldn't have to live with aiding this... monster clad in the human form in her unholy work. If she was even luckier, the fall would kill her before the colossus realized she had been betrayed and visited some wicked punishment on the mortal.

But no such luck; the edifice of Capriote engineering functioned well enough to bring about the demise of the very people who built it.

"Goodbye, sweet girl. Maybe once I've seen the city, I'll return to you and we can have some fun." Eternity formed a V with her fingers and wiggled her tongue between it, a gesture she had learned from watching the common soldiery.

Regina finally allowed herself to vomit. She hunkered under the console and sobbed; She cried in fear, guilt for both what she had done and what she had felt, and most of all she wept for what would happen if the beast survived the coming onslaught of war machines and fighting men...

===

The Inquisition of Capriote stood in its full might in the path of the bronze satan. Their transports sat with hatches open in anticipation of a swift retreat, with guns uselessly trained on the war engine wandering around the second level of the holy city like a tourist in a model town. Henricus snarled, he being the only one without a helmet donned. Such was his divine favor, it was said, that the very bullets themselves dared not touch him. Johann had seen it himself, and it filled him with zeal to have such a powerful ally. Even in the face of what seemed to be a devil incarnate.

Henricus grabbed the vox projector mouthpiece hanging from his suit; "Attention, vile humonculus!" Eternity for her part gave the unimpressive street blockade a passing glance, before returning to fiddling with the bell hanging from a church spire she had poked a finger through in order to get a better look inside.

"You are hearby tried by the council of the inquisition, and have been found guilty of the slaughter of the innocent, desecration of holy grounds, gross immodesty, and witchcraft. Your father-commander Pontiff Pious XIII has been found guilty of treason to the people of this most holy city. Your engineer-mother the witch king Dido has been found guilty of grand witchcraft, standing against the natural order and all that is holy, and so you by association are found guilty for aiding these crimes!" The inquisitor general barked, his chest puffed powerfully and posture inspiring his fellow inquisitors further. This was Johann's favorite part...

"The sentence of this trial is unanimous; death!"

With a wave of his hand, every inquisitor, war machine, and armed attache present leveled their weapons. The guard units carried weapons made for mass production and befitting of parade marches; the arms of the inquisition were made to execute the most powerful of heretics, purify witches, and stem the most wicked of heterodoxy infecting the people's minds. Even Eternity surely could not resist them.

Johann felt his blood run cold as the demoness shifted her attention from the tower; her eyes had gone black, and a sharp toothed grin bewitched his constitution. He hadn't actually seen the slaughter himself, but he knew from the Inquisitor General's descriptions of what she had done as they prepared for battle. Just her breath could boil a man alive in his own skin like a mere stew carrot.

The monster's wicked barbed tongue poked from her fanged maw, and steam began to bellow from her nostrils.

"Inquisitors, on me! The wrathful horror's might cannot stand in the face of my holy gifts!"

The black armored men and women began to corral behind their leader as the tide of roiling white clouds of death burst forth over Eternity's tongue. Those on the flanks too slow or too far away were swept away and cried out in their agony as their flesh fell away from their bones like a well roasted pig's underneath their hardened plates. But those beside the Inquisitor General witnessed nothing less than a miracle.

His hand outstretched, tongue reciting holy writ, chapter, and verse, and stance defiant had split the sea of steam in twain. It rushed either side of the group like a ship cutting through the chop of a stormy sea, the eddy swirling behind them cooling off into scalding water on the sides of the transport.

Eternity glared at the defiant bug before her. The sins of the man he called her father were none of her business, and he would do well to keep the name of the witch king out of his mouth. But the power that split her breath was interesting at least. As she focused, she could feel the spark of lightning in him; he was using the same invisible grasp of lightning through bronze to split the lightly charged molecules of her steam into two streams. But her own lightning had a few tricks yet...

Johann was torn from his awe by a terrible screech from the mouth of his master's vox projector, and a sultry, feminine voice emanating from it.

"Hm... you ensorcel the very hand of your god, and then accuse me of witchcraft? Silly. Pious. USELESS judges... feel the power of true witchcraft."

Within Eternity's throat, an arcing web of green energy leaped between her tonsils. The steam rushing up from her insides was split at its very fundamental being. Two streams were born in her gullet; one of air, and one of fuel. As the super-heated miasma crossed her tongue it recombined in a rush of flame.

Henricus sweated as he forced all of his might into sustaining the deflecting shield. His will and his strength was all that protected the survivors in his charge from the horror of being cooked alive. Suddenly, the tide faltered. Surely the bronze beast had run out of breath?

He lowered his guard for only a moment, but that's all it took for the onrushing wave of flame belched from the depths of Capriote's greatest shame to sear his exposed face. He managed to raise the shield once more, but he gritted his teeth in pain as his vision faded to black and his skin scorched to cinders. He could only scream through closed teeth as he concentrated on keeping his soldiers safe.

Even without his command, the inquisitors began firing wildly into the churning maelstrom of flame. Explosive shells burst moments after breaching the shield, most went wildly off target with the interfering field, but a few managed to plink off of Eternity's thick plating. Johann emptied the magazine of his rifle into the storm, unable to see if his powerful precision rounds even touched the grotesquely dangling tongue barely visible through the purifying light of flame. He cried out as he watched Henricus falter and slump to his knees. The squire screamed as his tincture enhanced senses amplified every single nerve igniting at once as the succor of his master's power died, and he was engulfed in unholy fire.

Eternity giggled; it had taken seconds of her flame breath to destroy the most feared organization in the whole city. As she closed her mouth up and the flow tapered off, she assessed the charred corpses and melting equipment. Pure art, by a master artist. However, the collateral damage she wasn't as thrilled about.

The powerful flamefront had traveled down the entirety of this thoroughfare, which exited on a similar elevator she had ridden up, on the opposite end of this level. Everything was ablaze. Wooden framed structures collapsed as they incinerated, super-heated flame jumped from rooftop to rooftop, manufactorum and storehouse alike went up in explosions as the conflagration devoured every flammable substance in seconds. People and rats fled together, stampeding and trampling each other as they searched for any exit from the hell on earth promising to swallow them up. Even stone cracked at the intense heat nearest Eternity.

She had seen cities ablaze before, this wasn't as interesting as how it had been before. Even with the people cowering instead of doing their daily activities, it had been beautiful and vibrant in its own way. She loved the way the flame danced, but that wasn't why Eternity had come to Capriote.

She grabbed hold of the corpse that was once the second most powerful man in the city; "Ugh, stupid bugs. You made me ruin everything with your nonsense." She opened her mouth, and popped the ex-human barbecue inside; the smokey flavor of the body paired well with the savory taste of magic held within.

Like the plane and pilot before, the shreds of inquisitor were gulped down with a flick of her tongue. She spent a while feasting on the charred remains of armored human and melted vehicle, periodically licking remnants from her lips or cheeks with her unnaturally extended tongue. The black eye shields remained firmly extended; the desperate humans may try something while she was distracted.

Eternity fell on her rump as she finished. The meal had been delicious, but she still hungered. She desired to taste SIN. The flesh of a betrayer would serve nicely.

Climbing to her feet, she approached one of the great octagonal pillars that held the city aloft. Rearing back a hand with fingers opened like claws, she slammed it into the grotesque adorned concrete structure. Her fingers curled for a greater grip, and pulled herself higher, digging in with all of her fingers and toes.

As she continued to climb, hand over hand, foot over foot, the traces of her green glow intensified. For miles around she was a beacon of verdant evil. The soldiers who had sought to stop her advance abandoned their posts, and went home to their loved ones. Some to escape certain doom, and some to be assured the horrors they witnessed were merely a nightmare. But still, their illusion climbed...

Her demeanor changed the higher she went. Something was awakening inside as she neared the monastery. Images hidden to her flooded her sight, primordial secrets, hidden mysteries, universal truths. The light radiating from her sigils began to desaturate, going from a pale green to a brilliant white. As the revelations continued, Eternity only had one urge; get to the monastery. Slaughter anything that stood in her way. Do not stop climbing.

===

The Pontiff waved on his men as he retreated to his private auto-carriage. Nothing had managed to do anything but slow the colossus so far, and she was quickly closing in on the third layer. There was not a moment to waste to reach the airfield, and yet the servants dragged his things so slowly.

"Hurry now! Your lives and immortal souls depend on it, wretches!"

They struggled harder still with the chests of gold and jewels, until the very ground beneath them swallowed them up. Through the massive hole in the reinforced concrete supporting the layer, a metal hand punched through with the sound of a bell ringing. A chest of gold and an attendant were obliterated under splayed, cast fingers as it crashed down.

Eternity writhed through the hole her fist had made like a newborn shark, hungrier for flesh than she had ever been. White steam poured from the corners of her snarling lips, clouds for the approaching storm of hellfire. As her other hand breached the womb of concrete she appeared as a pagan effigy come to life. Pious trembled in the luxurious seat of his vehicle. Her attention drifted from the cowering man to the petrified driver. The black shields snapped away from her blood red irises.

Rays of near invisible light rushed from her pupils onto the driver. He at once began convulsing. The great Pontiff of Capriote could do nothing as the man twisted and shook, unable to scream so tight were his jaws locked into themselves. He sputtered and gurgled, bloody foam seeping from his tight lips until his eyes rolled back in their sockets and he collapsed. Pious could swear the bronze monster snorted, drawing in the man's immortal soul into her wicked lungs like a single whiff of breath. Her attention was now squarely focused on him.

"Why do you cower, rat? Does your prized creation no longer please you?" Eternity's gaze didn't break for even a moment as she pulled herself lustily through the breech like a woman leaving a pool. Her voice had changed; no longer purely mechanical, it carried the clarity of a prophetess standing at the pulpit, with Eternity's chiming words now only the undertone.

Pious grimaced at the insult, but held back the baser instincts that a lesser man would have taken to mean to swear; "N-no. To attack the Holy city is to turn your back on heaven. You are now merely one of the myriad abominations of the witch king." His voice trembled, but the practiced air of righteous authority bled through nonetheless.

Eternity wrapped the mortal machine in a powerful grip, and raised it to her face. Pious was thrown from his seat to the plush floor by her merely raising his car up to gaze into it. With a finger, she ripped the subtly armored door from its hinges, dumping the Pontiff into her hand like an insect ripped from a nest of bark.

"So you really don't know me, 'Father'." She looked at him with her cockeyed, curious stare as he sputtered in the hand below. There was something even more powerful behind those eyes than goetia; there was pure divinity. She was not of his seed.

That vile temptress DIDO. She had said the idol was merely bronze until they consecrated the spell to give his beautiful war machine life. But Eternity must have been watching them as they bred like animals all through the night upon the work-piece altar. How? How could something that did not yet live see?

Eternity's ringing voice sounded more and more like his dirge as she spoke; "She lied to you, wicked beast. I am not born of the womb of the witch king's mind, only trapped by it. I am not the very ikon to your sin. What I am, what she trapped, is the daughter of your Lord. The very one you sought to hide me from beneath clouds of incense and an unending stream of prayer. Behold;"

Pious screamed at a sudden pain screaming from his prostrate hands, and he bolted to his feet. The bronze beneath him began to glow golden hot, and dripped away like wax. The brilliant beams of white traced across the monster's body became her body, not merely accentuating designs. All the world fell away from him, only blinding white light remained. Even Eternity's steel skeleton turned red, and then gold, sloughing away and melting. It leaned forward for only a moment, before a being of fire burst from the skeleton like a butterfly from its chrysalis. Pious covered his eyes; he could feel the light searing his eyes. Sights and sounds never meant for the flesh filled his mind. Eternity's light grew so bright that even through his very bones could he see her face, brilliant and beautiful.

She gave up speaking now, but her words still rang in his mind and tore his psyche asunder. He was no longer the pinnacle of holy men, but a babbling, screaming pile of smoldering humanity trying to latch on to any succor from an abandoned god.

"You are given to lust, rat. You have sown discord and hatred throughout mankind and across the lands in your eternal wars." She leaned close to her open palm, and whispered deafeningly; "You should have been rallying your forces against the evils within. Struggling against your nafs. But the Lord on high urges to forgive ignorance. So your reward..."

Pious didn't react as her face moved away. He was more focused on the fact his hands had melted to his ruined eyes. But so bright was her holy light, he could still see her form through them as he traveled lower. The hand stopped before her crotch.

"To the lustful, I offer my flower, shaped by the very hands of my Lord himself."

Pious leaned up to witness the vulva carved of eternal flame. A tuft of purple flame crowned the love cavern like the flaming crown of a demon. It was comforting for a moment, as his nerves finished searing away. But the screaming was born anew as divine fire scorched his soul through his flesh; Eternity's clitoris opened into a baleful red eye. The wicked liquid he had so readily preached against, and even more readily imbibed was liquid fire, and it fell in droplets onto the hand and onto him. Her juices incinerated all that was left of his mortal body into atoms of soot. Her other hand spread her thick, swollen lips with her fingers, and what awaited inside made the impious Pontiff's heavy heart sink further.

Ten thousand souls, all swirling in a tornado of righteous fire, screaming, writhing in agony. Generals, warmongers, and false idols from all ages caught up in and ripped from the storm raging in the soft folds of divine womanhood. His voice joined theirs as a lusty pair of fingers thrust him in, swirling and churning in the ages long procession to the gates of the angel's womb.

===

The angel fell back onto her rump, continuing to pump her fingers in and out of her vagina. Mortal steel and concrete couldn't handle such righteous heat, and melted away. But her powers held her aloft, and the slick sounds of a woman's masturbation rang out across the city, louder than even the great bells of the Pontiff's tower. She thought about all she had devoured as Eternity, all she had done to these self righteous insects who thought themselves above their creator. They could not even stand up to her, hobbled and weakened by mortal metals and magicks. She pumped harder, flinging molten juices everywhere, melting down structures and supports with equal ease.

"I- I am the angel MALIKTA, guardian of hell, mppphh... AH! And destroyer of, of..." Her flaming tongue dangled from her mouth, and ruby red eyes crossed as she finished, repressed from years of captivity inside of a metal body; "Capriote!"

With a final spray of cum, the angel disappeared in a flash of blinding light, leaving all who saw it bleeding from the eyes and blind to the material world. But they would later find that their sight of spirits and the otherworldly had manifested entirely.

The following days were bleak. Blood and ashes of the slain were taken from the streets, and wiped above the entrances of every still inhabited building to stave off the creeping death emanating from the last known place of Eternity. What remained of her bronze shell had been so hot, it melted through to the soil, and burned even that up in a massive crater. None but the witch king Dido dared venture there, so strong was the invisible death whose hand stripped teeth from mouths, and caused bleeding and malnutrition in every orifice.

People left the city there in a mass exodus, by fighting truck and by foot. Capriote was a salted land, and is now marked with great walls of concrete that read;

"Here lies Capriote,
A land smitten by an angel of GOD."