The Grand Campaign

Callisto and Sarah were startled awake by the sound of rushed footfalls and the rantings of a town crier. Soon enough, the cause of the commotion became clear. The northern orc tribes had responded more quickly than anticipated to the Duke's plan and, somehow unified, they had launched an **** upon the Empire, all along its northern border, killing and **** and enslaving in equal measure.

'My dear brother,' Sarah cried, 'he will be **** to fight or die as a traitor.'

'If I find him, I shall spare him or rescue him, I assure you.'

Sarah did not seem to know whether to smile or frown at that. 'You are joining this war, then? This genocide?'

Callisto misliked her lover's judgemental tone but retorted without invective, 'I will defend the innocent people in the north from the orcs, nothing more.'

'Won't you stay? Marmorstadt will be safe. We could remain here, and you could leave this awful business to the people who started it.'

'I am an angel. I will not standby whilst these orcs unleash hell.'

Sarah had turned to grabbing at her, trying to pull her back to the temple and to their bed, saying, 'I could please you, in any way you could imagine. We could become drunkards and fill our days and nights with sex.'

Callisto pulled away from her, preferring the part of herself that took being an angel seriously to the part that growled in excitement at the prospect of such a debauched existence. 'No. You will remain here. Take another lover, if you like, but I will fight.'

Sarah did not respond but simply sobbed and turned away. Callisto did not pursue her, nor even look around to confirm whether they had made a scene. Instead, she flew straight up and then northwards to a war that had come much too early for her taste. Her God's Eye directed her towards the worst of the bloodshed and she was confronted by the horror of it before she even touched the ground. A village ablaze, the awful sounds of panicked animals and screams of fear and pain, it was almost too much.

Steeling herself, Callisto produced an emanation in the shape of a horse and raced towards her enemy, through the winding streets, with debris and viscera all around. She made short work of the attackers, dozens of them, mostly stragglers lingering behind in the wake of their army to loot and ****. After that, she began to help the survivors as best she could. She used what little water magic she knew to snuff out the fires and pulled many villagers from collapsed structures. Some had injuries she could heal but many others did not and she scouted a relatively safe path for them to head towards Marmorstadt.

She armed as many of them as she could with weapons taken from the orcs she'd killed. When an elderly woman, the closest thing the small group had to a leader, expressed concern that it would not be enough protection, Callisto produced a host of emanations to guide and guard them. 'Bless you,' many of them said, as they passed her by, often kissing her cheek or squeezing her hand. Soon after, Callisto had flown to the next village that needed her aid.

This time, the attack was still in progress and she sent yet more emanations to act as a relief ****. Her God's Eye told her who the leader of this particular band was and she made a beeline for him. A monstrous sight, even by the standards of the orcs, Zorgulg was eight feet tall, with sickly off-white skin that seemed to strain painfully against his muscled form. Most notably, he had been mutated by the foul arachnoid demon he worshipped, who'd bestowed him with a second pair of arms and an ugly mass of pure black eyes across the top of his head.

With her mana reserves somewhat low, Callisto knew not to underestimate him and entered the duel cautiously. In each of his four hands, he wielded a steel longsword. His combat style was frenetic but not unintelligent and he put her on the backfoot almost immediately. Amidst the smoke and heat of the wooden buildings that lined the street on which they fought, her enemy seemed to be perfectly comfortable. As she coughed and sputtered, a plan formed in her mind. She pretended to falter against one of his swings and sent herself into the burning wreckage. Her hard light armour kept her safe long enough for him to lose sight of her as the thick black smoke obscured their vision.

Her God's Eye told her where he was, however, and she blinked through to the other side of him and drove her sword into his lower back, severing his spine.

His body crumpled into the cinder and eventually his demon-blessed skin began to burn, oozing blood and bile and emitting tremendous clouds of purple smoke. His **** did not shatter the morale of his forces, likely because most of them were not aware of it, and Callisto had to fight alongside her emanations for half an hour before the more difficult work of search and rescue could begin. Once again, she called upon her low-level water spells, enough to eventually deplete her mana reserves, and had to use her own natural strength to assist with saving people from the wreckage.

She cursed her God's Eye when it showed her a badly burned boy, that she'd managed to pull from the ruin of his home, had died in her arms rather than merely having passed out. She cried bitterly and showed no mercy to the wounded orcs she found, allowing them to die slow and agonising deaths or else have vengeance taken upon them by the surviving villagers. The leader of the village's small militia, freshly promoted after the **** of his captain, thanked her for her help but she only felt guilty for not arriving sooner and for not having been stronger.

'I must learn more water magic, and learn it quickly,' she said, to no one in particular.

'Um, Miss Angel?' a girl's voice spoke up, 'my mother was a nymph, I could take you to their lake, if you'd like. They would teach you water magics.'

Callisto turned to face the sound and saw a burned girl, barely eighteen, with unnaturally blue eyes, skin of milky cream where it was not red or blackened, and a willowy frame. 'I would like that,' she replied and allowed herself a small smile.

She left the rest of the villagers with what few of her emanations remained but warned them that she did not know how long they would continue to exist. Along with the remnants of their militia, however, they headed towards Marmorstadt just as this girl led her off, to the east, into a dense and foreboding dark forest. As they walked, they spoke a little. She gave the girl her name, having already learned from the God's Eye that she was a half-nymph named Petraea, and explained her backstory as vaguely as possible. For her part, Petraea thanked her for coming to their aid and explained that her father had died a few years prior and her mother had gone missing, as most fey creatures in human company were wont to do, when she was little.

For whatever reason, she did not complain much about her wounds, except to quietly wince from time to time, and Callisto could not tell if it was on account of her personality or her fey blood. They walked for what seemed like hours, making her restless and anxious to return to the war. She wondered how many people were dying whilst she followed a pretty girl around in circles. Her God's Eye was no use, as the entire forest gleamed with fey magic, pixies and fairies constantly darting in and out. Finally, she protested, 'how much longer?'

Petraea looked back at her, as if bewildered by such a question, 'fey are tricksy creatures, Cal, we can't know how long it will take to find them.'

Cal. There was that nickname again. She frowned but said nothing in response. Eventually, once the moon was high in the sky, melodic voices began to pull the pair of them to their destination. Once the glimmering pool was revealed to them, her God's Eye showed her that the seemingly endless trek had brought back a part of the forest barely twenty minutes away from where they'd started. She'd have been fuming mad if it weren't for the site that accompanied the pool, half a dozen naked fey maidens beckoning her.

One of the fey ladies fussed over Petraea, seeming to know her, kissing her full on the lips and beginning to heal her wounds. The others swarmed around Callisto and helped her out of her armour. She found it hard to control herself once they'd pulled her into the pool. Soon enough, she had one sucking on her right nipple and another teasing the left, one fully submerged and pleasuring her cunt and another with her tongue right up her arse. She moaned deeply but the fifth girl silenced her with a kiss. In her ecstasy, she almost failed to realise what was really happening.

The pathways towards greater levels of water magic were unwinding within her mind and, at the exact moment of orgasm, she learned much and more about the intricacies of command over water and rain. Slowly, the nymph who'd been tonguing her arse ascended from the water, leaving a trail of blissful kisses up her back, making sure to be gentle with her wings, as the others withdrew. Once she had reached her neck, she spoke up, 'a fine gift,' she announced, 'for the woman who saved my daughter.'

'Mother!' Petraea cried, apparently having not noticed her, before she rushed through the water to be with her. Their naked embrace, chaste though it was, filled Callisto with lust and she looked away out of respect. The two of them reconnected as she lingered in the pool to recharge her mana reserves. Though she ached to be fucked by these creatures once again, she knew that she could not afford to delay herself. With kisses goodbye from Petraea and her mother, Callisto put on her armour, then layered it with light and flew off.

At the site of her next battle, she let heavy rainfall loose as she fought, extinguishing all but the worst of the fire. There, she faced off against a most curious sight, the leader of this particular warband being a woman. She had faced women warriors amongst the orcs before, of course, though not many, but she'd never come across one of any high rank and, from what she knew of the orcs, it didn't seem as though such a thing really even existed. When she got close to the woman, however, who surprisingly appeared almost as petite as a human or elven woman, her God's Eye showed her the truth of it.

This woman, having forsaken the name her human mother had given her for the ugly name Mogak, was not even half an orc, only one quarter. She would've had no hope of being anything other than a free use cocksleeve in an orc tribe except for one thing: she was a vampire. As they fought, sword to sword, with supernatural speed and strength, she delved deeper. Naturally, she was the product of ****. Rather than resenting her father, however, she had only ever hated her mother, the poor sweet thing who'd tried to raise her right, and she'd killed her to prove her loyalty to a passing vampire who'd taken a fancy to the idea of turning her, largely for fetishistic reasons. As if she had not already scraped the bottom of the barrel of depravity, when she had journeyed to be with her father, she had taken him as her thrall and lover.

With renewed determination brought on by disgust, Callisto pressed her hard and harder. At every turn, however, she found her moves countered. Only when she noticed the briefest singe on the she-beast's skin after they had pressed against one another did it occur to her that her light would actually function like true and pure sunlight. As if reading her mind, Mogak's eyes went wide and she immediately retreated. As she extended her bat wings, however, and pushed off the ground, Callisto shone. Night briefly turned to day, as the whole village was struck by the sudden illumination and Mogak was reduced to a pile of smouldering ash.

After the battle, when the casualties were being assessed, she cursed herself for not trying it sooner. 'I am the Sunlight Angel,' she said to herself, 'I better start acting like it.'

After many more hours of fighting, all across the Empire's northern regions, she retired to her domain for some much needed sleep. When she got to her room, to her great annoyance, she found Melanoche there. 'That was such a shame,' she announced, dispassionately, 'Mogak would've made a great concubine for the beast you were meant to be.'

'This is who I am meant to be,' she spat back, bitterly, 'a single moment with those nymphs would be more pleasing than a whole lifetime of debauchery with that loathsome creature.'

Melanoche closed the gap between them and poked at her face, 'do you think they'd have spent a single second with you, if they'd known what you really were?'

'Get out,' Callisto yelled, and the goddess was banished in an instant. Only once she was gone did the tears start to fall. She cried herself to sleep, and woke up in a haze of doubt and self-loathing. She made a construct then, that looked almost human, with lips that tasted almost human before vanishing it in frustration. The key, writing on her desk, called to her but she resisted the self-destructive urge to slaughter demons. She had a war to win.