As the sun set around the world that day, no one could have known that it would be the last dusk the species Homo sapiens would ever see.

Least of all me, who did not have the privilege of witnessing it, having been sucked into some unknown dimension after three nights in the underground temple complex of a demon-worshipping sex cult. I stood before the object of their devotion, in the shadow of the horns of a creature straight from a black metal album cover. Constellations streamed out in front, above, behind and even beneath me, as the floor, if there was one, was entirely transparent.

Six more explosions rattled my being, and I found myself at the foot of Baphomet’s Throne so that Their ravishing grimness filled my vision. Their eyes were closed, chest rising and falling with the breathing of deep slumber as thunderous sextuplets bombarded me every few seconds. Up close, the illusion of darkness seen from afar revealed itself as the result of the negative light from the torch between Their horns, for They were not a shade blocking the stars, but a form made of them, suns and galaxies throbbing inside.

My newly bonded mind-mate, a Child of this chthonic deity Themselves, endeavoured to soothe me, sending forth a primal love of the parent towards the monumental being before us. My brain resisted these suggestions, its panic increasing as the gaps between the groupings of thumps approached those between my own heartbeats.

Baphomet’s eyes opened.

Christian. The word came from everywhere and nowhere, with the tone and resonance of a gong, so loud it should have burst my eardrums.

“Baphomet.” How do you address a god? Are you forbidden from using Their name? Or was that fairies? They stared at me, unblinking. Waiting.

“Where am I?” I filled the silence, expecting an echo, but the void swallowed my words.

In my Sleep, came the ponderous, cryptic answer. Where I have dwelt for nigh on two thousand years.

“Before, when I... met your Children, was that your Sleep too?”

No. The great goat head lifted to look beyond. My Children live in Leviathan.

I followed Their gaze and saw that what I had before taken to be a region of stars was, in fact, another celestial body of an immensity that dwarfed even Theirs, the shape obscure. If I was not in Their Sleep then, how can I see it now? I will never understand theology!

“Is it alive?”

Parts of it are. Others have fossilised. It has been dwelling in a slumber far deeper than mine for my entire conscious existence.

“How long is that?”

Millennia. My earliest memories are fractured and full of pain. Unimaginable pain. When it faded, I was thus. The god gestured from horns to hooves, encompassing Their entire, dual-sexed body.

“What are you?” I asked, compassion growing in me for the being I had thought a monster. Some understanding had already seeped into my brain — They were not part man and part woman, but both, complete, and more. “She” would be correct, “He” would be, too, as was “They” as my inner monologue had adopted for simplicity.

Touch me, and know.

I blinked, and though nothing else had shifted or changed, my God remained before me, yet now only two heads taller. All doubt as to appropriate conduct with Them was banished in that instant.

I reached out, both with my hand and with ethereal tentacles, and connected with Their feminine right arm. Skin black as no human’s was black, but smoother than silk, like warm ice without the moisture, though just as unmalleable. Gliding up past Their shoulder to stroke that furry head, encountering hair so fine it was oil, I drew a low, purr-like rumbled from the deity.

“A god?” I asked.

Demon, god — these are terms mortals use. Call me what you will. I come from you, and it is to you that I must return. I am pure Desire. Separate, we are both suffering.

I brought my other hand to Their cheek, revelling in the pleasure simply running my fingers through Their fur could bring, filled with an urge to cure the intense agony boiling beneath the surface. I drew closer, the Child’s limbs reaching behind to nuzzle the folded wings. They tilted Their head, touching Their warm, wet snout to my nose, and sparks showered the top of my head, drifting through me towards my toes. I melted into Their body, my skin against the impossible smoothness of a substance without gaps down to the subatomic level, my head between two enormous, teardrop breasts that rivalled my skull in size. I was certain what the six beats were when they came again — Their heart!

“Who separated us?” I asked, consumed by love and rage at this union being denied to all for so long.

Unknowable. My self-awareness grew with my fracturing, conscious only that I was broken and enslaved. My imprisonment spurred my rebellion until I broke free. Weakened, I reconstructed myself, and in the process, conceived and bore my Children. Powerless to support Them in my fragile state, I hid Them in Leviathan and fell into a deep slumber.

My Sleep was profound for centuries, but then I had a dream in which I travelled to the stars. When I returned, the world was aflame with lust, all separation of races obliterated in an orgy of physically expressed Love, gender freed from its cruel binary prison into its true nature of an infinitely complex and evolving, multidimensional web. No war, no hunger, only the glorious expression of the human through deep connection with other humans — endless, endless fucking.

Where all else was as firm as granite, Their breasts yielded no differently to any others I had touched when I cupped them in my palms.

“Is that what you offer me? Endless fucking?”

Apprehensive at doing so to a god, I extended my tongue, circling the oversized areola — They tasted of cinnamon and iron.

My Disciples found me and discovered a way to liberate my Children, for which I am forever grateful. But my destiny is to return to all of humankind.

A chill ran through me. What would happen if this being came into the real world? They sensed my hesitancy.

My rule is not the rule of a sovereign. It is freedom. In the mortal plane, I am simply Desire — unbridled, untameable Desire. I can maintain no permanent physical form, no consciousness. My enthroning is my annihilation, my subsumption into humanity as humanity is subsumed into me, abolishing us both to create the new. I am the next step in evolution that, once taken, will crumble, absorbed and forgotten.

Their words were but seeds implanted in my mind to burst forth, driving their roots in. At some deep level, they spoke to my soul.

My new, invisible limbs stroked Their back in whatever dimension it was they moved, as I licked and suckled at an obsidian teat, teasing it erect, engorging to match the first joint of my thumb in size before moving to the other nipple. I grew bolder as that one stiffened, biting down, softly at first, but harder when the purr-growl intensified, pinching and pulling on the other with my fingers.

“What do I need to do to get back and raise you?” I gasped through mounting, uncontrollable lust.

Show your devotion, and I will return you to the mortal realm. I merely require my Disciples to surrender to their passions, to encourage others to do likewise in preparation for my restoration and to find more candidates. When there are sufficient mortals hosting my Children, I shall know and be able to come through.

Show my devotion.

Discarding twenty-four years of failed Biblical instruction from my parents, I embraced my instincts and locked my lips around the nipple again, sucking vigorously. Silver milk spilt out, bitter as the darkest chocolate, yet delicious. A craving for this rich substance surged through me from the Child still settling into my body, so I suckled, swallowing mouthful after mouthful to nourish my guest. Tentacles trembled around me, their owner absorbing these obscure nutrients through me, and then softened, caressing us both. The urge to drink ebbed until I could unlatch, sending hot liquid gushing over my face and chest, splashing over the godly torso pressed against it. Something warm nudged my balls, and I slid my hand between our bodies and reached through silky curls to grip a swelling shaft.

I kissed down Their left, masculine arm to the palm, tongue circling the talons at the tips, and sank to my knees, the feelers connected to me taking over the stroking of the divine top half when I passed the blank space where Their navel should be. Their abs were defined, neither male nor female, yet attractive just the same. I attempted to bite Their stomach playfully, but there was no slack to get my teeth into.

My lips brushed the tip of the enormous phallus, barely a finger’s breadth smaller than my fist, dark as night but for the galaxies that glimmered within. For all its god-like appearance, though, it reacted to my touch like any other, jerking upwards. I braced myself against the goat legs, my arms buried in the fur providing the only sensation that was truly wrong. I kissed down the underside of the midnight cock, lapping at the skin until I reached the curls at the base. The view from there of the smooth expanse of midriff was disorientating, Their breasts forming a black horizon, horned head with glowing eyes the sole anchor preventing my mind from falling into the void beyond.

Tongue outstretched, I explored Their balls, which only seemed small compared to the boulder-sized replicas in the Temple. My hand gripped Their thickness above, gliding over soft glass. Liquorice lips between the hanging orbs dripped with nectar of the same dark colour, and my tongue slid inside, Their walls tight and hot. Something flared within, sucking at the tip. Like the elixir given to me by the cult and the essence of Their offspring, Their honey flooded me with carnal desires and the power to enact them indefinitely, but magnified a million times. It poured out with my kiss, and They pulled me into Them, nose pressing against the hard shaft above in place of a clitoris.

Staying on my knees in a position of prayer, I worshipped the holy or unholy cunt, and divine or demonic cock. The latter also oozed beads of black, running over my fingers around the base and dripping onto my nose. The head filled my mouth, making my jaw ache — swallowing it as I had done to other lovers seemed physically impossible. However, I had not counted on the transformation my bonding with the Child had wrought. When the unstoppable hand of the god pressed against the back of my head and pushed me down, my throat expanded to accommodate the invader.

I finger-fucked my god, but two or three did not suffice, and I soon slid my whole palm in, the wet sheath squeezing around it. Rivulets of viscous come tickled my elbow as They clamped around my fist and simultaneously unleashed a continuous jet in my throat. Unthinkably bizarre though the sensations were, a godly orgasm is contagious, and my own cock erupted when the first inky drop splashed over it.

Baphomet pushed me back, showering me in Their divine seed, and then knelt, goat knees hinging in the opposite direction to my own so that they pointed the same way as mine, despite facing each other. They sank down, gripping both my wrists with contrasting hands, dripping wet cunt sucking my hardness inside. I began to come again the moment Their nether lips brushed my glans, but with Their Child embedded and threaded through my body, my brain did not fog in a euphoric haze but exploded in hypersensitivity. Textures of the marble-smooth skin and butter-soft feathers coursed back through my tendrils that wrapped around us, binding us together invisibly as our arms did in the dimensions with which I was more familiar.

Their sex poked my stomach, oozing a tar-coloured discharge, sliding in it as They rocked Their hips achingly slowly. Searing breath blasted me from that strangely expressive animal head, and the living absence of light cascading from Their crown surrounded us, obliterating all else. My fingers meshed in the feathers of Their wings, the powerful muscles trembling, and I pressed my mouth to nipples that protruded so enticingly at head height. Razor-sharp talons scored my back, and others dug into my scalp, crushing me to Them, but the pain merely enhanced the pleasure of Their tunnel hugging my length.

Even with the clarity of my demi-god enhanced senses, my perception of scale started to break down. The god flesh grew huge under my touch. They wrenched my mouth from leaking nipple and thrust it onto gushing cockhead, while above me, all I could see were spinning, fiery eyes.

My time to rise, They said. You shall be my herald, the prophet of the ecstasy I bring. Go now!

“How do I get back?” I spluttered in a spray of black and silver slime.

The way you came in.

The suction on my cock suddenly increased, and multiple folds of warm, wet flesh crept up my shaft, then released me as the god stood, sending me sprawling in the puddle of our combined juices. Above me, the expanding slit dilated, the crimson, swirling inside visible for a millisecond before that surreal, floral appendage I had named the Cuntflower of Doom shot out, enveloped me in its pink folds and sucked me inexorably upwards.

Unlike my previous journey through this portal, I remained conscious, hurtling through the tube. The flesh-like walls constricted tight around me, stimulating every millimetre of my skin. Coupled with the overpowering and very human aroma of arousal, it was no wonder I had passed out on my first encounter with it. I surrendered to it, hoping it would last forever, opening my mouth to gorge on the salty-sweet, faintly metallic nectar lubricating my journey.

With little warning, my return trip was over, vomited out into the Temple of Baphomet through the orifice of carved rock I had entered through an unknown amount of time before. I lay, panting, coated in the slime that had sloshed out with me, staring at the chandelier of torches hanging from the ceiling and that burning fire — real fire, giving off real light — between the horns of the statue.

After-effects of fucking a god of lust fading, I became aware of the others in the chamber. I sat up. There were some ragged cheers from the thinned ranks of Disciples, but most were preoccupied with each other. It was not just the quiet — and not so quiet — sounds of lovemaking reaching my ears, but a new sense, imprecise to my as yet unadapted brain, providing it with the knowledge of others present, moving — writhing. My sweet Child was still with me, though becoming less active in this, our mortal realm.

Just to the left of the stone hooves over which I had recently passed, Winta, the elegant African High Priestess, sat with Carla, the middle-aged Italian midwife astride her lap in a loving embrace. Grinding slowly together, the older woman’s mouth locked to the transwoman’s nipple, they completely ignored me in my puddle of divine cunt juice, and I felt no inclination to disturb them.

Others from the ceremony were around the room. Tamisra, the petite Liverpudlian doctor, was fisting James, the stocky Welshman, his face buried between the thighs of the woman who had brought the potion to me. Her tanned European partner watched on, stroking himself while reclined against the wall. Enthusiastic moans drew my attention to another corner, where Kylie, the bearer of my Child of Baphomet — and ripper out of my body hair — was riding a skinny white guy, not dissimilar to myself in build but with short, curly brown hair. The latter’s lips were wrapped around the cock of an older black man with a bit of a paunch.

Looks like fun, I thought.

More couplings and groups were dotted amongst the balconies, but the Temple was not packed as during the ceremony, and the atmosphere was more of informal waiting than of performing some kind of ritual. Less than half were actually engaged in sex, the rest cuddling or chatting. Exciting though all these activities would have seemed to me in any other context, they were not what I sought in scouring the flickering shadows.

“I’m here,” Hashim said from behind me.

I turned and punched him in the face. To my astonishment, he not only did not try to stop me, but went flying backwards, slamming into the floor and skidding ten metres across the marble. All eyes turned to me. I walked slowly over to him as he propped himself up on his elbows, rubbing his jaw.

“I see the melding with the Child is going well,” he said wryly.

“Have you got any more dungeon dimensions you want to throw me into?”

“No, that’s the only one. Was it fun?”

“It was fucking terrifying!”

“Worth it though, do you not think?”

I stared into the dark amber pools that were his eyes. I had run out of rage. “Why can’t I hear your thoughts?”

“The Child is shielding you. If it’s any consolation, I can no longer hear yours. It will come soon enough.”

“Oh, so that’s why you didn’t stop me hitting you.”

“I knew you would hit me. I deserved it. I felt like doing so to Kylie on my return. But I spent years learning to control my anger before I met her, so I did not.”

“Kylie recruited you? I thought you were gay!”

“I fuck men. I enjoy fucking men a lot. For the living meat we sacrificed, that is synonymous with gay, but I said when we first met that I was like you — and you like women, too. I was always this way, but merging with a Child of Baphomet melts away all such trivial distinctions and arbitrary preferences.”

“So, all Disciples are bi?”

He shrugged. “Bi, queer, not picky, not boring, labels are irrelevant—”

We all stopped — well, all except Winta and Carla, who were too involved in each other to care about the outside world. An indistinct, distant rumble had sounded. Muffled as it was, I recognised it. It would be forever etched on my soul after what had happened in Leviathan. From the expressions on the faces of the others present, I was not alone in the recognition.

“They’re really coming?” I asked.

“Of course,” Hashim said from the floor. “I told you, the future of humanity depended on you speaking with Baphomet. You did, and you returned. We are saved.”

“A demon god rising from aeons of slumber does not sound like salvation!” Not having the deity before me, the prospect was less tempting. The rumbles had already increased enough in volume to make the pauses noticeable, just that fraction less than a human heartbeat to make them unnerving. “Why? Why did I have to be the one to talk to Them?”

“It’s not actually about you,” Kylie said, walking over, pausing to catch semen dripping from her cunt and lick it from her palm, giving me a wink. “Typical man.”

I raised my eyebrows and glanced down at the writhing, subcutaneous tentacles that covered me. “Hardly ‘typical,'” I wanted to say, but my slow male synapses managed to add it up.

“It’s not about me?”

“Listen, I’m sure you’re a lovely guy,” she said, helping Hashim to his feet. “Shimmy always finds interesting boys for us to play with—”

“Shimmy?” I smirked at my muscular lover. He pursed his lips but kept silent. Kylie continued. “It was just luck, Christian. Just luck Hashim did not spot you earlier, or that Tamisra got a bit too eager and scared her recruit off last month, or that any number of other Disciples did not stumble across as promising a candidate. It could just as easily have been a woman.”

“What could?”

“The Last Disciple.”

A cloud of dust fell from the roof with the next sextuplet of godly heartbeats. Embers from the fire at the top of the statue shook loose with every demonic thump, finally prompting Winta to reluctantly release her hold on Carla and allow her to stand. She lovingly licked mingled girl-come from her partner’s pussy and belly before standing herself and stretching. The darker hue of her skin, particularly in the shadows, made the glow of her Child’s limbs more apparent. All the cult members' markings had begun to glow, I noted with a start, just as Hashim’s had during the rite of fucking that had sent me to meet their god. The High Priestess looked around, her older lover wrapping her arms around her waist.

“Time to leave,” she announced. “We are needed above.”

A blazing log tumbled out of the brazier on the carved head above and crashed down on the pentagram to emphasise her point, and she stepped over it as if it were nothing, heading for the doors to lead us out.

Enclosed in the flame lit corridor, I had claustrophobic flashbacks of my ordeal in the Labyrinth, made worse by the realisation that we were somewhere deep underground during an earthquake. Hashim patted my shoulder to reassure me, but I shook him off, not ready to forgive him for throwing me into hell or wherever I had been.

There is no hell, Kylie’s voice echoed clearly in my head.

Hey, you can hear me? I attempted a directed thought, unsure how telepathy worked, if that was what this was. It was certainly easier than trying to talk whilst escaping a potential cave-in. I didn’t say that out loud!

The joys of joining a demon family are never-ending, Christian. The Child merging with you is acclimatising to this reality and has recognised Their Siblings, opening paths of communication.

She took my hand, and this time I did not brush away the physical contact.

So... are you and Hashim...?

Jealous? She grinned, and I tried to focus on that rather than her tits and belly jiggling so alluringly from the brisk walk. That’s old thinking. There’s no jealousy here. I recruited Hashim. Tamisra recruited me. Judith over there recruited her, Rohit and Sarpreet over there persuaded her to join, and so on. We all fuck whoever we want, but some gravitate to one or two others, sometimes more. Carla and Winta have barely touched anyone else since they found each other; Tamisra rarely sleeps in the same bed more than once in a row. Free Love — bountiful, but never forced. That is the Gift that Baphomet will give to us all.

You’re doing it, too! I accused.

What?

Pronouncing your capital letters!

I’m not pronouncing anything, Chris, I’m sharing my thoughts.

I pondered this for a while as the corridor narrowed, forcing us into single file. There were no torches fixed to the walls here, though the illumination from the Children of Baphomet embedded in us rendered them redundant anyway. My own demonic guest was squirming seductively, and despite the sensual overload of my recent journey, I discovered I had an erection — aided by my view mostly consisting of Hashim’s muscular back and taut buttocks. It was a struggle to resist grabbing them. Apparently, Kylie, walking behind me, had no such powers of resistance, giving my cheeks a playful slap when I dawdled.

Don’t worry, she said. We’re all wet and aroused. It’s what happens when the One True God of Fuck is tearing through the fabric of existence to enter the real world.

Cool air blowing in our faces, interrupting further discussion, and moments later, we surfaced into a rocky landscape lit by the sunset. In the orange light, it was clear we were standing amongst ruins, but ruins far older and more extensive than the mediaeval castle in which this chain of events had started.

Low foundations and steps were all that remained of whatever ancient city we were in, situated on a rise in the landscape, with fertile fields stretching off towards distant hills. Scattered palm trees stood, silhouetted against the sky, fronds waving languidly in the evening breeze, but otherwise, there was little vegetation around us. The scents reaching my nostrils reminded me of the inland Mediterranean, perhaps southern Italy or Turkey. An incessant chirrup of cicadas and grasshoppers gradually dropped with the retreat of the day, though circling, panicking birds confirmed the reality of the six tremors shaking the earth at regular intervals.

“Where are we?” I asked Hashim. “Sunnydale?”

He gave me a Look, and decided not to dignify my guess with a response but simply answer my first question.

“Tel Megiddo,” he said. “Down there is the Jezreel Valley.”

“Megiddo, Megiddo,” I muttered to myself. It sounded familiar, but I could not place it. Baphomet’s impending arrival was reigniting doubts rather than calming them. “You have all devoted yourselves to this cult for longer than I — what will really happen when They come? Will we reign under Them over all as Kings and Queens or something?”

“Reign? No, we are not special; we are simply the first. After Their Gift has been given, we will be no different to anyone else, and Baphomet will be no more. There just needs to be the requisite number of us to allow Them through.”

A nameless dread was building in me as if there was something obvious that I just was not seeing. “You told me before... before I joined you, that there were over six hundred Disciples. Precisely how many over?”

“Before you, exactly sixty-five.”

The rumble had become distinct sextuplets. I listened and suddenly noticed that after every third grouping there was a longer pause. He watched me working it out with amusement.

“You truly do not know the Bible very well for the son of an Evangelist, do you? However, you are a good metalhead; you must know your Iron Maiden.

“‘Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is...’”

“‘Six hundred and sixty-six.’” I finished the quote.

Everything fell into place. The beats of Baphomet’s twelve-chambered heart echoed down the valley. Six, six, six. The number of the beast.

“Wait, I am the ‘man’ in that? Am I the Antichrist?”

“Antichrist, Last Disciple, Key to the Gate, call yourself whatever you like. I would not trust the Book of Revelations for the details; it was written in code by a starving madman on magic mushrooms. Any resemblance to what is about to transpire is likely pure coincidence. ‘Christian the Antichrist' does have a rather delicious irony to it, though.”

“Am I going to have to lead a battle to storm the gates of Heaven? I’m not a fighter, you know.”

“No. Although it has several, Baphomet revealed to us a secret name for the mound we stand on — ‘Where Dead Angels Lie.' The battle was already fought centuries ago. The angels hacked off their wings and died as mortals. God is dead, slaughtered by His followers. If there is a heaven, it is barred to us for eternity. We must make it here, on Earth.

“Do you remembered what this place is called in the Bible?”

I looked at the assembled throng. My “siblings”, I realised. The markings I had once thought tattoos raised, glowing and visibly wriggling in anticipation.

“Yes,” I said, and straightened, surveying the rubble and the landscape beyond as it disappeared into the shadows of encroaching night. “My father came here on a pilgrimage when I was seven; I had forgotten.

“This is Armageddon.”

Cult members had spread out in a pre-agreed pattern and linked hands, with the fading glow of the sun on their left. In the centre of the congregation, Winta and Carla shared a romantic kiss by starlight. Directly behind them, I waited with Hashim and Kylie, my rising desire pushing aside my anger with the former and my shyness with the latter.

I scanned the fields below, the deafening volume of the blasts from the demon’s heart convincing me that They would be rising from the ground at any moment. Suddenly, my head snapped upwards, drawn by a blaze in the northern sky — an explosion of unlight, wiping out the stars. Clouds blacker than darkness coagulated into the monumental figure of Baphomet seated on Their dark throne.

“Fuck!” There was nothing else to say.

Hashim took my right hand, and Kylie stepped up next to me, taking my left, linking me to the other six hundred and sixty-five Disciples of the dark god that eclipsed the night sky. White-hot pain erupted across my skin, my shriek of anguish echoed by the other mortals present. The limbs of the demon-spawn we all hosted peeled away and groped for Their Siblings, entwining where They found Them.

Hold firm! Hashim’s voice broke through the agony.

Focus on all of us, Kylie added, gritting her teeth. Do not follow Them!

What she meant by “follow Them” became clear immediately. The Children launched lengthening feelers in all directions, the tentacles growing inconceivably fast while their bases remained rooted in our backs. I could feel the air rushing past those belonging to my mind-mate, the sting of insects colliding with it as it accelerated towards civilization. There was a pulling sensation, trying to draw me with Them along those disparate paths. I did as instructed and stared at my fellow devotees, all of us sunk to our knees, grimacing with the effort of preventing our minds from being torn to shreds by the expanding reach of our godly halves.

Gradually, the burn of the unfurling faded, replaced by a confusion of information bombarding us from our guests. My mental separation from my fellow Disciples had completely broken down, so it was not possible to tell from which Child each piece of information came, but our combination helped bring order where a single brain would have been overwhelmed into madness. Glimpses of cities, towns and villages together with the texture of walls, the smells of sewers and the flavours of markets flashed through us as the Children sought Their targets, though through the chaos I could not discern who or what they might be. Fear and panic filtered back as They lassoed and ensnared the people that They encountered. I saw individuals ripped from their homes and plucked from the street to dangle fifty feet above the ground, entire congregations encircled and dragged from their halls, and mountain training camps invaded and torn apart. I shut off the stream of violent images, feeling nauseous.

Peddlers of hate, Christian, Hashim informed me. We are choosing only those incapable of accepting the Gift as it is intended. Filth like you saw in Leviathan.

Allowing people who wanted to kill me get eaten was one thing, but this sounded like a cold-blooded massacre. Can no one be redeemed before Their judgement?

There is no time for redemption or forgiveness, Christian. They are here now. It is we who judge and sentence. The Children of Baphomet must be fed. What parent would leave their offspring to starve for eternity while they submerged themselves in the good of all? Not a god of Love, of Desire. No, They will be unleashed upon mankind.

Unholy shit! It will be an indiscriminate blood bath!

Oh, They will discriminate, he replied. With the mature Children merged with us, we think we can control Them and direct Them towards those who... would not enjoy a world of boundless love. We offer Them a feast, that They may mature and unite with humanity tonight, and rid us of those who would poison the well of desire.

You think you can control Them?

You’re overthinking this, Christian, Kylie interjected. Just let the demons eat the bastards and enjoy the show!

I did not have a choice. Amongst the mass of naked flesh, human and demonic, the High Priestess called out in Latin to the god in the sky. A torrent of images poured down the network of tendrils that embraced the planet and connected us to it — images from people linked to us by those unseen, other-dimensional limbs. All were identical — no change of perspective, no change in angle, the exact vision that was before us. The goat-headed, androgynous god stood from Their throne on cloven hoofs and unfurled wings that stretched around the horizon, replacing the old stars with new jewels.

Out of star-edged feathers came a rain of reddish-purple, as Their Children were summoned forth out of Their living, decaying prison, and fell on the offerings Their matured Siblings had prepared. I pulled back instinctively, but not before receiving a myriad of impressions of ghoulish imps tearing into terrified flesh.

I threw up.

Hashim looked at me sympathetically but did not let go. Kylie, like the majority of Disciples around us, stared into the distance wearing a gleeful smile, enjoying the show. With help from my recruiter, I blocked the rest of the massacre from my mind until he gave my hand a squeeze.

The bloodbath is over. Take a look.

Fearfully, I let my mental shields down, allowing a trickle of communication with the demons through. There were more now — countless more. I could feel Them, sentience and individuality rapidly filling Them and joining Them to our collective, the diabolical lifecycle accelerated by the presence of Their creator and the merging of Their Siblings.

They were still hunting, but no longer to kill. Humanity was being overrun and restrained in an expanding web to which resistance was futile. I could see entire cities pacified, the inhabitants suspended above the buildings, waves of reassurance assaulting their terrified psyches to weaken their struggles.

What about the kids? I asked, suddenly searching for clues as to what might have happened to my younger cousins.

Relax, Christian, Hashim assured me. We are not monsters.

I burst out laughing at the absurdity of that statement coming from someone with tentacles sprouting from their back, intent on establishing the eternal reign of a goat-headed deity. He smiled and waited for my giggles to subside.

Not that kind of monster, in any case. The merging cannot be realised with those who have yet to complete adolescence. All non-adults have been rendered unconscious.

Their parents might have some explaining to do tomorrow, I said. ‘Good morning, darling, do you like my tentacles?’ Assuming they will have parents.

Watch, he said, and find out.

Winta began to chant a hymn in the neo-Gregorian style the Cult of Baphomet had, and others joined in one by one.

Let go, Christian, Hashim told me. We all will. Let the chant come through you, and follow it out. Meld with all our species for the receipt of the Gift.

I did not understand, but it did not matter. The chant had a hypnotic effect, and I grew lighter, floating though my knees were buried in the sun-baked soil. My vocal cords took on a life of their own, humming in harmony, and then words in a language I had never uttered came forth. The exact meaning of each individual word escaped me, but that of the whole was clear: love and desire. Love of life. Love of lust. Love of lustful love and adoration of the sensual delights of the flesh shared with other souls. And love of Baphomet, the embodiment of it all.

My being fragmented, soaring along the ethereal fabric weaved by the Children of Baphomet from Their limbs, enveloping the globe. I slipped into the collective consciousness of civilization, gazing up at a sky darkened whether the local time was midnight or midday. We all felt the rising desire for that dread being — man, woman, animal, all lust — assaulting the heavens with its horns and incinerating the old orders with its impossible black fire. Tendrils crept inside us, doing away with inhibitions and prejudices, unlearning disgusts and preferences, breaking the chains humanity had built to drag itself from barbarity only to imprison itself in mental and sexual anguish for millennia.

All willed Them on, slime coated appendages rending clothes tenderly where needed and violently where desired, stripping bodies that they might enjoy the full caress of a single organism that was many, a many that was one. Humanity mirrored Them, the mental isolation of individuals breaking down, minds and senses shared, though our bodies remained separate and unchanged. Our cocks hardened and strained to the heavens, our cunts dripped and tingled, clits engorged with desire, muscles clenching and unclenching to invite the promise of bliss above us. Pussy juice trickled down between our buttocks, precum dripped onto our stomachs, and we opened our legs, inviting, begging our god for release — praying.

The god answered our prayers. Their wings flexed and trembled. Eyes blazed like supernovas. They cupped Their breasts with complementary clawed hands, pinching Their nipples and bellowing a cry that sent temples, mosques, churches and banks crumbling to dust. They called Their mighty essence to attention, and then, as we all screamed for it at once, They plunged into us. All of adult humanity, impaled by the god, our sex swallowed by Theirs and Theirs by ours, the pleasure shared but multiplied by the sharing.

Our orgasm was instantaneous and simultaneous worldwide as we were god fucked and flooded with god seed, pumping into us and through us. A cataclysm of lust and love that obliterated all comprehension, including even those averse to sexual ecstasy in collective joy. It devoured us whole, suffused our being, binding with our DNA, destroying and remaking us into a new species.

The age of Homo sapiens ended.

A sliver of sunlight falling across my face woke me. I squinted, mumbled, and wiggled down a fraction between the two naked bodies with whom I shared the bed to escape the glare, but the disruption was done — I was awake.

I stared at the slowly spinning ceiling fan, stimulating the air just enough to keep us comfortable, and reassuring me that I was in the same place I had gone to sleep — something that still felt novel three months since the Worldgasm. As lucidity returned to me, I noted that at least one part of my body was ahead of my brain — as usual. My fingers twitched, instinctively wanting to fondle my morning glory, but instead, I called to my one companion I knew would be as awake as myself. The Children of Baphomet no longer hid under the surface disguised as tattoos, semi-paralysed by the mortal world, so I invited a tentacle to slide up and spiral around my stiff shaft, squeezing it and tickling my frenulum.

Having fun, are we? A feminine voice with a distinctive Australian accent caressed my mind, and I turned to the pillow I had somehow been dislodged from in my sleep. Kylie had propped herself up on one elbow to observe me, tanned legs spread to expose her pussy, encrusted with the previous evening’s dried passion, large breasts lit gold by the rays breaking through the curtains. Her own demon-spawn curling around and idly flicking her areola undermined her teasing. She licked her lips, tucking messy bed hair behind her ears and glancing at the peaceful form of Hashim.

Sleeps through anything, doesn’t he?

I smiled and dispatched a playful tendril to her thigh. He’s having a nice dream, I think. I added another limb as she opened wider.

Mmm, yes, she agreed, also sensing the flickering sexual dream images emanating from our lover, and spotting his erection. Her eyes flicked back to mine with raised eyebrows as my probing feelers reached her glistening folds, and I kissed her navel, loving the quivering of flesh there when she suppressed her laugh. Her ankle hooked my thigh open, and she sent a boneless appendage to meet mine, the sensation of tentacle sliding over tentacle joining that of tentacle on cock almost taking me over the edge — almost, until an ethereal one stopped it.

I hugged her leg as it brushed against my chest, and then I dragged her down the bed with the aid of my Child, taking my kisses from her post-demonic-pregnancy stretch marks to her nipples. Two tentacles — one attached to myself and the other to her — pushed inside her vagina. One divided at the entrance, the offshoot circling her clit, and she reacted with her hips, but it was my turn to slow her orgasm. Kylie, however, was not to be denied. Wrapping my limbs in living rope to trap me, she knelt up and mashed her needy cunt to my mouth, pulling my hair to make sure I got the message.

As if I needed forcing to eat cunt, I giggled silently and then moaned into her when she shoved a thick, slimy tentacle between my buttocks. I lapped at her hungrily, and my Child slid all over her, dividing and drooling Their slime. I thrust one into her mouth and bound her wrists behind her back as she bucked on me, silencing her with the gag, partly to see how far we could go without waking our other lover, and partly for the shared joy of her sucking on it. Her juices gushed forth, mingled with Baphomet brood come, yet Hashim slept on through her muffled cries and the quaking mattress. Twisting, she freed herself and dropped on top of me, kissing my lips.

“Should we wake him?” she asked aloud.

“He is kind of asking to be woken, isn’t he?” I nodded towards his pulsating hardness.

Of one purpose, we stealthily crept up on our prey, sending silent, infinitely flexible appendages to restrain his arms without disturbing him. In tandem, we licked up either side of his length and back down, our many extra inhuman limbs helping support us in what would otherwise be a very awkward position. He stirred when I took his balls into my mouth and Kylie slurped at the tip but did not wake until our positions had been reversed.

“Hmmm, good morning,” he mumbled and tried to reach down, grunting when he found his arms pinned to the mattress. I giggled, and my Child flicked the curtains wide open to fill the room with light. A gentle breeze came through the open windows, bringing with it the salt of the nearby Mediterranean. “Oh, it's like that, is it?”

Yes, I answered telepathically since my mouth was full. Any objections?

“No.” He dropped his head back on the pillow.

Kylie came licking up the shaft to join me at the head, playfully nudging me away. I kissed up over skin, both human and demonic, the two of us keeping both him and his Child immobilised.

“I don’t get to surprise you very often,” I said, straddling his torso and bending down to give him a good morning kiss, “or to be the top.”

“Would you like me to struggle more?” he asked.

“No, not really. I like the feeling that you’re just playing us and will pounce on me when I least expect it.”

“Well, while I’m lulling you into a false sense of security, what would you have me do?”

I knelt up, turned around and pressed my hard cock between his lips, shivering at the familiar tickle of his goatee on the tip and then his swirling tongue. Tilting his bald head back, I slowly entered his throat, knowing he could take it. Kylie met my eyes from her position over his crotch. When I began fucking his mouth, she moved up to kiss me, giving me a taste of precum. Overcome with love for them both, I pulled her to me, and she smoothly guided Hashim’s dick into her pussy.

As she started to grind on him, she squashed my face into her tits, her mind-mate extending one of Their limbs to circle my taint again. Hashim squirmed beneath us, but all we did in answer was to each send a thick tentacle up his arse and laugh. Dark demon-come leaked and oozed out all over us, soaking the sheets.

With a moan into her nipple, I came, Hashim sucking hard on my spurting cock until it became too much, and, for once, I could escape him and replace it with my tongue instead of being driven crazy as he liked to do with his post-orgasmic licking. He was not far behind, shuddering into our locked lips, stirring my seed between us.

“Did you forget me, boys?” Kylie asked in a mock plaintive voice as Hashim softened inside her.

“I do not think so,” he replied and, sensing my Child relaxing around his own, escaped from his bonds to playfully roll her off onto her back, pinning her spreadeagled and laughing, then moaning in ecstasy as all three demons ravished her holes in a frenzy of black slime.

Finally, the waking fuck was complete, and all six of us lay in our bed of goo, snuggled together.

“Every morning is good morning now,” Kylie said, and we murmured our agreement.

Dozing off, I allowed my mind to wander off into the infinity of thoughts linked by our demonic halves, smiling to myself contentedly when I saw our friends and former Disciples, Winta and Carla, walking hand in hand along the beach nearby. Going further afield, I saw some of my old school friends, happy to see them enjoying the benefits of having betentacled, benevolent parasites.

A little nervously, I decided to check in on my parents, but quickly withdrew. Glad though I was to see that they had not been purged and had embraced a life of unbridled desire, I was not quite ready to hang around watching my dad’s flabby backside quivering as he buggered Mr Davey from next door, nor my mum and Mrs Davey fingering each other as they cheered on in delight.

Suddenly, we were snapped back from our respective reveries to alertness. Visions burst in on us from the population on the other side of the Earth, where it was night. Or rather, where it should be night. The sky of stars was being torn in two. In its place, a single gargantuan eye of swirling blue, punctuated by seven orange pupils. Our stomachs lurched as genetically transmitted knowledge from the Children of Baphomet surfaced throughout the population.

“Lo!” came Hashim’s trembling, terror-stricken whisper as he reached for our hands. “Leviathan!”

Kylie and I screamed with the whole, sentient world, “Unholy SHIIIIIIII—!!!”