As the former Heroes began the march back towards the place that nearly saw their end, a single creature flew high overhead. Its scales were blacker than pitch and its eyes seemed to glow with malign power. The massive winged lizard (although you would not want to call him that to his face) gazed down upon the superhumans beneath his mighty frame. The idiots; They were completely oblivious to the fact that he could, at any time, swoop down and destroy them. Even their speed and strength were no match for himself, the mighty and indomitable Pluton!

He had no idea why his master had sent him to deliver that toy. He could have delivered the message himself and saved the summoned human with skin slightly reminiscent of his own scales the trouble of making such a device. Argh! Just thinking of that one was enough to make the rancid blood in his veins boil with rage! He dared to try and ask that he be allowed to mount weapons and explosives on his wings!

“It would increase your ability to act as Close Air Support or even help with fortress-busting!”

As if! Such devices were unwieldy and looked very unsafe. He would not permit such dangerous and unproven machines to be anywhere near his master while said master was riding upon his bare back! And that the Mosquito that called itself the wife of the master had the utter audacity to suggest that a saddle would be a better seat for the master. A Saddle! What was he, a horse? No! He was not some frail creature, no mere beast of burden or pathetic herbivore! He was a Dragon, and a Dragon that had surpassed death itself at that!

Honestly! The nerve of some of these parasites that rode the coat-tails of the only truly great being in existence (aside from himself, who was a close second, of course)!

“Why must I keep an eye on these mewling brats when I could instead be at the side of my great master…? Is this… perhaps… rejection play?!”

As the definitely male and quite massive undead black dragon fussed with itself about how it was totally in love with, but also totally not in love with and just admiring the power of its master, it failed to notice a flare being shot up from the fort that its wards were walking away from. Unfortunately, neither did the former Heroes.

…

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

“How about now?”

“No.”

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Are we, perhaps, at the place that is the destination at which we seek to arrive?”

“No.”

“We should really have taken one of the horses. We would be there by now if we did.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jesus. No one wants to hear that from the person who has to ride a cart everywhere because horses freeze to death as he rides them.”

“But-!”

“Seriously, man. Just shut up. We get that you’re trying to fill the void, but it is getting on everyone’s nerves.”

The Heroes, scratch that, former Heroes had made their way a decent distance back from whence they had come. They had to give props to the civil engineers of Darksol. Even after having only a few short years to work, they managed to do what would take some Earth construction crews decades of long work. Long work that was elongated to the extreme to drain tax money, waste time and provide graft, but certainly long, hard and very difficult work nonetheless.

The Darksol road crews, on the other hand, managed to pave the road AND provide multiple rest stops and walking trails. Then again, Darksol had a fuckton of Skeletons, Zombies and other undead to throw at a problem until it went away. A house needed to be built? Congrats; You now had a large number of bone-boys doing work non-stop, day and night, rain or shine. Throw in some of those Deepfaith Cultists to keep the rain from falling on a specific area, and presto chango you have a construction project that gets done at ludicrous speeds due to workers that never needed breaks and could do their job the right way every time and with absurd precision.

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Truly, the Undead labor force were the envy of every nation that didn’t have robots or nanomachine swarms to do those jobs.

But the Heroes had other shit to worry about than the amazing roads that they were walking upon. They were still wanted men… err… teens… and thus they had to keep moving until they managed to get to Necrograd.

“Hey…”

“What the fuck do you want, Jesus?”

“Do you feel the ground trembling?”

“What the he-… Oh shit, look.”

The Heroes looked behind themselves and beheld the charge of a group of armored equestrians barreling at them, lances lowered and aimed to kill.

“Huh.”

“Neat.”

“They think that what their doing is a good idea.”

“That’s funny.”

The former Heroes were less scared than one would expect. But in their position, why would they be afraid? They were superpowered people who had experience with their gifts. They each were either capable of curb stomping these mooks themselves or, in the case of Alice, making the mooks do so to themselves. Plus, there was another, more delectably malicious method they had for dealing with these valiant knights. It was why Jesus had been positioned where he was, in the rear of their group.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three…”

“And, jump!”

Those with the most power grabbed those who had less and leapt to the side of the road. The charging knights were unprepared for this and tried to correct their course, but…

“Neigh!”

“Whinny!”

“Argh!”

“Shit!”

The entire road that Jesus had been walking on (or at least a decent chunk of it, around a fourth of a kilometer long and following the path he took) was covered in nothing but black ice. The horses set foot upon that slick surface and instantly both they and their riders regretted it. Only a handful of the mounted men avoided slipping, sliding and breaking the legs of their horses as they watched man and beast fall to the ground and skid across the now red, yellow, black and brown painted frozen water that covered the pavement.

“Huh.”

“That was like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion.”

“Like watching ice ballet, but more violent.”

“Ice ballet as a full-contact sport.”

“That’s hockey. I think.”

“Nice work, Jesus. Now please walk on that frozen water, turn some of it to wine and then multiply some bread and fish. I’m kinda hungry and I could use a drink.”

“Oh, so witty. So very witty.”

“Thank you, thank you, I’m here all week.”

As the former Heroes watched the members of the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” gang do their thing, they and the knights (both on the ground, trying to stand up and failing miserably) and on horseback (watching with growing anger as their comrades fought a desperate and losing battle against the slippery floor), failed to notice the shadow that was growing in size around them.

The slipping and sliding of the Knights of the Order of the Wounded Ego drew everyone’s attention, and it wasn’t until the massive black monstrosity that was Pluton, the chosen mount of the Abominable King himself, slammed into the ground and sent gore, ice, excretions and pavement flying everywhere that people realized that he was even here.

“HA! See now, you fool?! I need not those metal tubes and explosive-filled containers! I am FURY! I am DEATH! I AM PLUTON THE BLACK, AND WITH THE POWER OF MY MASTER I HAVE CONQUERED DEATH ITSELF! ROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAR!”

As Pluton entered the scene, the gust of wind from his landing sent people, body parts and horses flying. The former Heroes were the first to get to their feet, take one look at the massive and extremely powerful undead dragon and decided to nope the f*ck out of there, running towards Necrograd with all due haste. The mounted warriors, on the other hand, were not so lucky.

“You bastards dared to try and harm the wards that my great master had instructed me to watch over. For that great sin, there is only one punishment!”

Pluton opened his jaws wide and swallowed both a knight and his armored horse whole in a single bite. His neck bulged slightly as the mass of man and mount went down to his stomach. Pluton opened his mouth and the agonized screams of man and beast flowed out through the undead creature’s mouth, the hellish acid within him melting flesh and bone alike with brutal cruelty. Pluton made certain that his esophagus was opened just enough that the horrible death of the knight and his trusted steed could be heard, but not enough that they could attempt a desperate escape.

As the cries died down, drowned out by the molecular acid within his gut finishing the first stages of digestion, Pluton eyed the other knights and their mounts with a gaze not fit for a predator but instead fit more for a man trying to pick which french fry (onion ring, chicken nugget, pretzel bite, tortilla chip etc.) he should eat first. His growls of sadistic pleasure at the shock and horror on the faces of the knights was ended when he opened his massive maw again to devour another victim. As his jaws reached forward, he only had one thing to say.

“Now then, face your punishment, and Get In My Belly!”