To Reign In Hell

Succubi were made in mockery of those angels invisible and hidden, yet close enough to inspire the human heart to greatness. Because the Black Prince can only pervert, not create, his answer to the angels of longing surpassed their originals in all ways. They were beautiful, beautiful beyond measure or reason, creatures of lust and carnal airs, and could turn the heart of a saint from the heavens in a nonce. But they lacked in one respect; they could only mock the act of lovemaking, but never bring it to the fulmination to which Heaven intended.

Incubi and Succubi could not bear offspring.

Usually, that is.

Once in a century, once in a dozen centuries, a succubus will feel her belly swell and know that she has conceived. Not from any one of her conquests; her daughter (and it will always be a daughter) is the offspring of every man who had looked at the succubus with lust in his heart, whether or not he copulated with her. Every drop of seed spilled from a masturbating saint who had glimpsed a vision of beauty in the depths of hell kindled the spark that became the new demoness.

Ninsun the succubus is the latest to become with child. Such is the way of Hell that when her time comes, she flies on silent, leathery wings outside the city of Dis, the one city in Hell, to the barren fields of scoured, dry earth, past even where mortals were tormented for their sins, and gave birth in an ordeal that lasted thirty days and thirty nights.

When it was over, the child succubus emerged, bloody and naked from her mother, imprinted with all of the knowledge of the ways of Heaven and Hell, as had the first demons made by the Black Prince. She knew of the War, she knew the Law and the barrier separating the lower planes from the realms of mortals, and she knew the politics of hell, the delicate, chaotic dance that led downward to the Courts of the Prince, from which every demon and devil yearned to rule.

Ninsun lingered long enough to name her child, Ishara, and returned to Dis to feast on blood and souls and recover the power she had lost. There was nothing maternal in the feelings between Ninsun and Ishara; they were competitors now, and Ninsun was like an alligator; apt to eat her young if it became necessary. So that the new succubus could survive, she was left on her own.

Within an hour, Ishara stood on the blasted plains. In Hell, in her truest form, she stood tall and proud, muscular and lithe. Her skin was black as the void, her eyes empty globes of darkness. A leathery pair of wings folded her hairless body like a cloak, and her triangle-tipped tail swished behind her with a languid ease. A pair of horns, white as bone in the moonlight, crowned her brow. In the mortal realm, of course, she could appear as she wished, as the mortal she beheld would most wish her to be, but those with eyes that could see would always behold her thus; succubus of Hell.

Ishara was on her own. If she was to become anything in the hierarchy of hell, she would have to claw atop the bodies of her enemies; and she had legion, merely by existing. She was expected, of course, to corrupt and seduce mortals, and brings their souls into Hell to add to the Engines of Misery, or to keep in the realms above as tools of Hell. But she could not go bodily into the mortal realm unless summoned by name or if she had heard a call go forth for a succubus.

But she could go into the world of men as a spirit, and travel on the wings of their desire, whisper into their dreams, and feed upon their seed as they slept. By far less satisfying, but perhaps safest, now, to feed quietly and surely and grow in power.

Ishara could remain in Hell, and attempt to forge alliances with the infernal. But she would have to be clever not to be caught in the machinations of her rivals.

It would not be an easy thing, Ishara realized, to reign in Hell.