Sombra and I made our way through the eerie holy city, walking in the direction of an odd, jet black temple. One I could see but Sombra could not.
As we approached the strange temple, we saw many sorts of people. We saw blind priests and priestesses, preaching the splendor of a life without sight, advocating that those who dwelled in the city commit sins and snuff out light wherever they could.
Their voices were loud, fanatical, and in some cases were even competing among themselves to be heard and to gain an audience made up of various onlookers. They preached fanatical devotion to me, in my capacity as an evil god of darkness. They said I desired for all things to be shrouded in darkness, and for all sins to be committed in my name.
Sombra listened to them and had a dry smile on her face. As I walked and led us to the temple at the heart of the city I studied her subtle facial shifts. She would arch an eyebrow in amusement every once in a while when she heard something particularly accurate or outlandish. A remark made by a dark elf priest, one of the first of his kind to ritually blind himself, about the joys of living underground made her smile, as she knew that I was fond of living in subterranean areas.
Because we had decided to walk it would take us a few minutes to get within sight, or rather it took Sombra a few minutes to get within sight, of the lightless temple. It was a looming, ominous structure, and one that I quite liked. As it began to become visible to Sombra's demonic vision, the demoness studied it. It was a place of fanatical worship devoted entirely to me, and run almost entirely by blind priests and priestesses of my faith.
Within a few minutes from arriving we had made it to the entrance of the temple, a large door-like hole located in the southern portion of the temple. Since it was a temple to me, I didn't hesitate to walk through it boldly and brazenly. As I did I began to listen to the preaching done by one of the local priests.
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"On this day, as the Shadowy Lord of the Unseen prowls the city streets, remind yourselves of one simple fact! Our mighty god is a demanding master. He demands sacrifice. He demands destruction! He demands the end of all light!" The preacher said, practically shouting "my" demands.
The area just beyond the entrance to the temple was a wide common space devoted to mass services like this. It was a place where those who had yet to perform the sacrifice of their vision could come and listen to preachers extoll what those in this specific religion believed my tenets were.
The preacher at this moment was a young, male dark elf vampire. He was a handsome member of his kind, and he was dressed in pitch-black robes that hid all but his eyeless face from view.
"I have been blessed by our god! As a reward for loyalty and devotion to the cause of ending all light, to the point that I cut out my own eyes, he embraced me and gave me a form more fitting for a universe without light: he made me into a vampire!" The dark elf proclaimed, lying to his audience. His audience didn't know he was lying and ate it up, cheering loudly in response to his words.
The dark elf was actually a minor relative of Milene, and as such he was a lesser member of the Ardor family. He was also one of the first victims of the three dark elven vampires I had created when dealing with the Ardor family and making them into my servants.
They had fed on various members of that family in the months since I had created them, turning them into vampires, or sometimes just killing them and sending their souls to my divine realm, until recently. Now, since I had living worshipers of mine in my realm, if someone who worshiped me and was truly alive died in my realm they just came back to life automatically, since I was a potent deity of life and my realm, and unless I willed it they could freely return to their old lives outside of my realm.
I listened to his sermon for a bit longer, as Sombra and I made our way deeper into the temple. Sombra listened too, but merely chuckled every once in a while. The dark elf himself turned his focus to the importance of sacrifice, a common theme in this particular faith, and as I walked deeper and deeper into the temple I began to focus less and less on his sermon.
This temple was one of my few structures where the least important rooms and chambers were on the lower levels and where more important things were in the upper chambers and floors. The area I was in now was a wide space inside the temple, and in order to get to the higher levels one had to go to the middle of this place and begin an arduous climb up many flights of stairs. I led Sombra towards that place, a small hole in the wall that revealed stairs to those who were at just the right angle, and we began to climb the stairs.
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I was headed towards the highest floor of the temple. That was where Paimon lived, as he was the high priest of this faith. Along the way I intended to examine the dark horrors this place hid from view, and kept stored in its bowels. As Sombra and I made our way up flight after flight of stairs she questioned me.
"Althos... Why is it that you make the faiths you make? By and large you've directly decided at least the basic objectives of most of the cults that exist to you. Why do you have ones like this?" The shadowy demoness asked. I was silent for a moment before I answered her.
"Sombra you know that I gain power, in part, due to how creatures worship me. I like to design cults in such a way that they empower me." I explained to the demoness.
"You don't... Actually dislike light, do you?" She asked me, curiosity audible in her voice even as we reached a new level of the temple and passed by an opening that showed us a strange sight.
Just beyond the opening was a large chamber filled with an impressively diverse host of sleeping creatures. Demons, dark elves, minor draconic beings like kobolds and drakes, and orcs, all slept soundlessly in a circular chamber. They were all also naked, and unarmed. Sombra looked into the chamber and gasped. I chuckled at her reaction.
"They are dreaming. It's a mini cult of apathy and dreams." I told her.
"In this chamber their bodies are immortal, and so they'll sleep forever. I filled them with apathy and through magic and my powers I brought them here. For the most part they are in dreams that are perfectly tailored to be blissful for them. A few are in unending nightmares. And some, like the succubi in that corner," I tell the demoness, before pointing to a group of very young looking succubi, ones who looked like they were barely out of their teens.
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"Are recruits. I've empowered them to be able to more easily visit the realm of dreams, and also to be able to invade the dreams of mortals. They are quite good at their jobs. I really like when one of them targets a single mortal and begins to persuade them that dreams are the only experiences worth having." I tell my pet.
"It's a slow process. So far only three mortals have begun to be persuaded, but the succubi know how to make the arguments disturbingly persuasive, even without their powers over lust." I say, speaking fondly of the succubi. Eventually I was going to reward them for their work.
"As for your earlier question... I mean I like being underground, underwater, and generally in lightless places. I don't actually mind the light, but between light and darkness I do have a clear preference." I state simply. Sombra stared into the strange chamber for a bit longer, finding it odd and a little disturbing even by her standards. After a few moments she shook her head, steeled her resolve, and we continued upwards.
Over the course of many minutes we climbed up countless flights of stairs. We got to see more strange sights, such as a chamber inhabited by a pair of eyeless, blind driders and several humans wrapped from head to toe in webs, and we got to hear equally odd sounds.
One of the sounds we heard as we drew close to the top of the tower was the agonized wails of the creatures who were becoming priests and priestesses in my faith as their eyes were gouged out. Sombra winched when she heard the sounds of pained wailing.
"Are those the people who are sacrificing their sight?" She asked, a pang of sympathy in her voice. I chuckled and nodded.
"It's one of the few rituals devoted to me as a demon lord so I decided to make it cruel to act as a demon lord should. It involves taking a hot blade and jamming it into one's eyes. It is perhaps the most painful thing I can imagine, that doesn't kill someone. I also refuse to allow any healing be done or anything be used that numbs the pain. I personally prevent it from killing anyone, but it is a life-changing amount of pain to endure for any amount of time." I told my pet. I was a god of pain, so I decided to embrace that when devising the ritual.
"Those who sacrifice their sight are accepted into the true priesthood of the faith. The pain only lasts for a few moments before I strip it away and replace it with euphoria." I explained, while grinning. Sombra noticeably sped up until she was out of earshot of the screams. It made me laugh that an assassin like her wasn't fond of pain, but I supposed that a good assassin didn't let their victims feel pain, they were more efficient than that.
We pushed higher and higher into the strange temple, and as we did I thought about a boost to my power I'd be receiving soon. The minute I became a demon lord or an archdevil, I'd be able to acquire the next tier of influence over the subdomain of corruption. And when I did so I planned to acquire power over at least one of the other seven deadly sins.
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At the moment I had power over lust and sloth. Both of those were powerful sins to have influence over. With one I had power over things like obssession, fetishes, and desire, and with the other I had power over despair and apathy.
The remaining deadly sins were gluttony, greed, pride, envy, and wrath. All of them were amazingly powerful things to gain power over.
With gluttony I'd be tremendously more powerful in a direct way. With power over famine, which I already had thanks to my power over agriculture, I'd be able to speed up the rate at which people starve, and I'd also be able to more directly control creatures like ghouls.
With greed I'd be able to become more influential and persuasive. Or rather it'd be far easier for me to persuade people of things, especially since I was already capable of granting someone infinite wealth in a number of different ways.
Pride was an important sin, and gaining power over it would be a critical step for me as a demon lord and as an emperor. With power over pride I'd be able to handle prideful beings more effectively, and also able to break creatures mentally with less difficulty.
Envy was a fun and strange one. With envy I could make creatures desire my approval more easily, and probably gain a wealth of thief-related abilities. It was also an important sin and one that I could use to stir up civil unrest in societies that I wanted to acquire power over without directly causing calamities like if I unleashed famine and gluttony on a community.
Wrath was a simple sin. And it was one that I was enormously fond of. Power over it would almost certainly empower my powers over hatred and anger, and perhaps outright allow me to acquire power over anger in all of its forms, as per the emotion domain. With power over it I fully suspected that I'd also gain the ability to nullify it, which would make sense since I already had power over its opposite: patience.
I was too ambitious to settle on any sort of limitations. I wanted to become the god of the Heart of Darkness, and to become a demon lord over everything. The only sort of fellow demon lord I could imagine allowing was one like what I wanted to turn Sombra into, a demon lord of submission, obedience, and servitude. A pet but one of near god-like power.
I intended to become a demon lord with absolute power. A demon lord of tyrants, tyranny, and supremacy. One whose words corrupted even the strongest wills, and whose touch destroyed or reshaped societies.
For the immediate future the sins I felt would be the most powerful to gain influence over would have been ones like gluttony or greed. If I acquired power over gluttony I intended to use it immediately. With it I could easily transform communities into strongholds of faith that worshipped me as a god of hedonism and pleasure, and inflict enemies with tastes for shameful things by infecting them with unpleasant desires and a ravenous hunger.
I could also imagine power over pride being incredibly useful as well. The ability to manipulate the self-worth of a mortal, or at that tier of influence over corruption probably any non-vestige lifeform, would be incredibly useful. Pride and sloth would be an incredibly useful combination, especially with power over love. Pride was incredibly syngergistic with all sorts of things, and was the sin that was the most tempting.
And just as importantly as the sins were the virtues. I had recently acquired the second tier of influence over purity, but I had yet to choose which of the virtues I would gain power over. I only had power over patience at the moment, and so the remaining virtues were humility, compassion, satisification, diligence, faithfulness, and temperance. At a glance the one I was the most interested in was diligence, but the others were intriguing as well.
Diligence had a lot of potential. I could see myself using it for good quite easily, but also for evil. It was stubbornness, and determination. And that could easily be a tool for good, or for evil. Diligence mixed with obsession had a frightening amount of potential for misuse by a clever, evil being like myself.
That said humilty was also a good one. With humility I could more easily show people my power and presumably be able to acquire more followers, especially good aligned ones if I used my own good aligned abilities. I intended to become the god of all things, which included all good things.
Compassion was a potent power for redeeming evil beings and was probably the most truly good-aligned virtue of them all. As an emperor I probably wanted compassion for its ability to inspire people to be moral and ethical leaders of their communities.
I had leaned really hard into being a deity of evil and evil things. Compassion was a good choice for me if I wanted to begin to inch back towards neutrality. That said, diligence offered so many fun things to toy with... This decision was one of the harder ones for me to make.
It was while I was debating it that my companion and I reached the top of the temple, and found ourselves face to face with the high priest of the faith of the Shadowy Lord of the Unseen: Paimon. The praereptor demon was seated at a desk, and when he sensed us approach him he saw wildly and welcomed us into his home.
"Master! Sister Sombra! Welcome to my... Well, your home." He said, speaking warmly. He was behind a desk, and underneath said desk lurked a succubus, whose vigorous ministrations of the high priest's member did not stop just because I had arrived. I chuckled and approached the demons, beckoning for my companion to follow me.
At last it was time for us to sit down and make our next moves against our enemy: Agustino, the Soluto demon.