Elysium wakes. The world of black and white slowly fills with colour, and Heaven’s most diligent wastrel spares no time in lifting her head to stare up at the being that breathes life into all that she is. A wounded slut looks upon a Perfection that knows no limits. The Goddess waking from Her throne is impossibly tall, with golden brown skin adorned with an array of jewellery just as golden as these hallowed halls. Her eyes are utopian hazel, her hair crimson brown. She is chiselled marble, thick and strong.

Apocrypha kneels. The marble floor her dainty knees kiss against felt unbearably painful to kneel upon for long stretches of time, once upon a time. She has since been broken in. Now, it only hurts the right amount; enough to rape her psyche with the searing hot poker of discipline that lights a fire in her loins, but never enough to make her collapse. She is a house of cards, but the Goddess is the only one that can build her up and knock her back down. Where her Owner sports a curvy, muscular physique that makes the fallen messengers swoon like schoolgirls, the scripture—once just as impressive—is a scrawny, pale creature. Her hair is bone white from long sessions with the carving knife. Her lips are cracked and her voice is raspy from prolonged utterance, but her devotion is resolute. Her eyes hold no colour, no light, whatsoever—except for when they burn with the fires of worship.

Heaven sighs. The subjugated messengers feel rejuvenated as colour once again returns to their new lives here in the celestial city. They are each saved from the nightmares come to reap their joy whenever the capital’s new Queen should slumber. They know, distantly, that it was Her who stole the light from their utopia in the first place when She relieved the good king of his head and put and end to that endless reign, but still… they are helplessly, hopelessly, hellishly grateful to the woman who unshackles them from the prisons of grief they are bound to come nightfall.

The golden spear looms. Elysium takes it into Her hand and smirks in anticipation of Her shining hunt. Those renegade few, loyal to old times dead and gone, will have their halos ripped from their heads by the point of Her holy spear and their bodies rent apart by a divine judgement that could only ever be seen as just in the eyes of those most perverse in being.

Eyes shine. Apocrypha, perverted meat that she is, beams up at her everything. Elysium is paradise walking. She is a happiness so pure and potent that it erases all other sources of joy from those subjected to Her devastating presence. She is a poison, and Apocrypha is Her greatest addict. A frail, waifish thing, once heralded as the greatest of all the archangels. God’s chief messenger. Now, she is unholy scripture—with eyes that burn with dangerous passion for the tyrant in their reflection.

Joy approaches. Her descent from the throne can be heard throughout the entire city, tall heeled boots clacking with every step at such a frequency it makes each and every dominated angel blush shamefully. Their lust is a leash that the Goddess keeps nice and tight. Keeping the populous wrapped around Her finger is easy now that Her influence has hatched inside of their heads. It feasts on their dreams, and makes serving Her their only aspiration in their long, tired existences. Many will join tonight’s hunt, the rest will either perform their service rituals, visit the human farm they call Mother Earth, or, should they be selected, submit themselves to the intense, sweaty bustling of the mating tents. Nobody is permitted to discuss what goes on behind those thin canvas walls, so it has become a large source of hushed gossip for those brave or stupid enough to skirt Her iron decree.

Elysium knows. She enjoys the guilt that floods Her emotionally co-dependent, reluctant devotees whenever they should break Her rules. She likes to call them in, have them kneel on the marble—much less perfectly than the pathetic zealot She carved from a distinguished hero—and milk their shame until they call out for mercy. She likes to see which of them whimper and plead for mercy, and which break into pleasure junkies hooked on a masochistic vice that tethers them to their owner’s cunt forever. The sadistic Benevolence beheads the latter without last rites and has the former join her harem. For the incarnation of bliss itself, nothing gets Her off better than suffering. Snuffing that light out slowly, methodically, and with great pleasure. Breaking a person apart and groping their very soul until gratification and discontent mix like a full bodied wine left out in the sun or a beautiful opera. She tinkers away until She has finally, at long last, re-sculpted a living, unique being into a mere effigy of themselves. A monument to Her perfection. Anyone can be broken, or slaughtered, or raped. It takes special touch—time and dedication—to make an individual woefully yours in every sense that matters. Elysium is a dedicated hobbyist.

Fingers curl. Apocrypha’s chin is lifted up even higher to demonstrate the difference in height between the obeisant submissive and her towering dominant. It would not matter if she were standing; spiritually, she is forever kneeling. Paradise grips Her malleable paindoll’s face tighter, and tighter, until the writings gasp.

The Regent Huntress chuckles pleasantly, like a woman playing with her pet. Her touch is anything but loving, at least in the traditional sense, but the hollowed out cunt that yearns for such firmness feels her heart thrum as her shackled sex twitches uncontrollably between those wasting thighs.

“Be a good tool and spread the word to the other cities while I’m away on the hunt,” She orders—her voice a soothing balm on the trembling, wingless angel’s soul. Apocrypha is a wretched thing; covered from head to toe in runic scars that bleed all day long and wearing her fractured halo around her bruised neck like a collar. The once radiant circle of light, which symbolised Heaven’s might, is now as pallid as the girl who wears it. It is Stygian. What need is there for her own light when she bathes in the glow of Paradise Herself, and takes the Divinity’s fists with purpose unlike any given to her by the headless oaf who once ruled these halls?

“Be useful, My Apocrypha, and I’ll allow you to taste the blood of those you once shepherded in the days of chaos proceeding My arrival.” Her Apocrypha. The low bitch swoons, nodding in a state of drunken wonderment as the other’s golden digits slide into her mouth. She tastes nature; violent and hedonistic. The thought of dragging her filthy traitor tongue across Elysium’s bloodied spear and cleaning off her former family’s lingering essence makes her leak from four separate holes. She drools down her chin as Perfection’s rough fingers violate her throat, the treatment causing her eyes to water and her cock to dribble. Shame molests her, and Elysium samples the result like a sommelier, pressing the tip of Her tongue against Apocrypha’s lower jaw—making the disgusting scripture shudder and whine with need—and stroking the muscle upwards to taste the servant’s tears. Apocrypha’s text begins to bleed as the feeling of her Master’s spit coating her face lacerates her composure. She loses herself completely and fellates the fingers like a cock, tongue-fucking the pacifying flesh that conquers her so perfectly. It feels so right. Just a mouthful of Elysium’s fingers is worth so much more than she ever will—than the entire Kingdom of Heaven itself.

“I love You,” says the bleeding wounds. The memories of those words being carved into the enslaved archangel’s body replaced the ones that made her loyal to other, lesser things. Freedom is ignoble when it can lead to pain. Pain is everything when it comes from Her. She is illogically loyal, hypocritical apocrypha that remembers, while swooning, the time she spent in Paradise’s lap—squealing like a pig being slaughtered as the knife sunk almost a quarter of an inch into her body. Apocrypha hated the knife, and She who wielded it, up until the pain unravelled her and she needed that kind smile—those words of praise when she lifted a limb as instructed—too much to remember that the one giving it was also the one administering her torture to begin with. It wasn’t Her. It could never be Her. It’s the knife, she told herself. The knife is the only one to blame.

Apocrypha scorns. In the deep recesses of her past, she remembers that juvenile lifeline she held onto to escape the guilt of falling for her sadistic new Queen. For long hours in Her utopian lap, she would dream of holding Elysium’s hand as that soft voice continued to melt away her rebellion like candle wax. The Goddess’s tongue was a flaming wick. And still, Apocrypha scorned only the knife; it was all that she could do to keep herself sane. Now, she understands better. She is an effigy, as are the rest of her people—her sisters.

Everything must burn.

“Off to hunt. Unclench.” Elysium snaps.

“Mmgh…” The scripture groans, staring down at the ground. She did not realise she had begun to bite down. She scorned the knife and bit the hand that feeds. “S-Sorry Goddess, I-I—”

“Pipe down. The only words that should ever leave your mouth are the ones I put on you, understood?” The foreign invader, not content with just one Heaven, clicks Her tongue.

Apocrypha nods. The world of colour overwhelms her, and sometimes she forgets herself. Her Queen watches smugly as the tamed legend corrects itself. It is an object, a tool. It is Her writings, not a person. Certainly not a saint, or anything beyond even that.

“On the hundredth night, the young and the meek shall be bled as lambs. Taken from their homes and fed to the eternal engine of Her godhood. Immortal flesh, forever young. And on the night proceeding the ritual, Her children shall emerge. Holy, holy. Bred from the maidens of Heaven and Earth and baptised in the blood of the unhallowed, those who may walk freely will carry Her will through all known planes. The vampire will stain the world of men with glory. The watchers shall swarm and judge. The infernal shall call Her name—holy, holy—and be rewarded with Elysium. All beings—body, soul and spirit—shall overdose with Heavenly bliss.”

Apocrypha recites. Her eyes shine gold; her head empties itself. At some point during her obedient, dutiful recital, the Goddess leaves for Her hunt. Plenty of resistant angels who managed to hold onto and chose to fight for their own colour, their happiness, shall be struck down in the following bloodshed, and the world shall be painted over in black and white.

Some will be killed outright.

Some will be twisted and made to hunt their own.

Some will become invokers, and chant Her name from dusk till dawn.

Some will become messengers, and whisper doom to the mortals they visit with wicked smiles and empty stares.

Some will become thinly veiled whores; be it as members of Elysium’s private harem, fawning at Her feet as the Goddess lounges in Her throne, or—should they be less fortunate—as disposable fuckpigs in the breeding tents, never heard from again.

Some will expire, some will serve, and others will plead and squeal as unsympathetic harlots.

None, however, will ever be so blessed as Elysium’s darling scripture.

“And on the seven hundredth day,” it repeats, mindlessly, eight hours after it began. Blood stains the marble. Unnatural pride stamps itself against her celestial, ivory heart and gives it the will to keep on beating.

“Joy will flow for eternity. Out of every black orifice in the depths of space. And the universe will become Elysium.” Yes. Yes! Apocrypha’s scarred body shudders as another orgasm hits. Yes. It buckles and it recites. It forgets the past, because the past is bored; pastiche. History is insignificant.

The best is yet to come.