Once the screaming Lamia had evaporated in a cloud of purple gas, Horatio sheathed his sword and looked around himself, getting his bearings with the rest of the party.
Having now emerged from the other end of the tunnel, they now found themselves standing in the middle of a barren, hellish red landscape Horatio hadn’t been able to pay proper attention to when they had been fighting the lamia. The same hard, uneven rock was underfoot as further north in Braxia, where they had traveled from, but here it was lit with a red and orange glow by rivers of bright bubbling lava which oozed across the ground, down from the peaks of the many jagged volcanoes that thrust up into the sky like broken teeth in the mouth of a monster. The sky itself was lit oranges and reds the colour of an infernal sunset, where it wasn’t obscured by the black, bilious smoke that belched from the volcanoes, though Horatio could see no sun. Monsters walked and crawled and swarmed and flew over the ground, as if on patrol, oer perhaps just aimlessly milling around. The whole Qind-forsaken place stank of sulfur that it stung his nose.
‘So is this Hell?’ Horatio asked of whoever was listening.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
‘No, this isn’t Hell,’ said Ursula. ‘Hell isn’t a physical place–Hell is a spiritual reality. Hell is where the spirit of Brax is currently confined; where the Cult are seeking to summon him from. But this is as close as you will get to Hell anywhere in Gard. The Cult are seeking to perform a ritual here to re-emobody the Demon King here in physical form, and their activity and demon worship have scarred and marred the landscape, perhaps irreparably. This place is a physical embodiment of Hell. This is a place where the King of Demons, where the Kingdom of Darkness reigns supreme. What little light is here is plaigarised from Qind, and only serves to try to glorify Brax. Be on your guard. Expect particularly vicious and deadly monsters from hereon in. This is where the Cult originally breeds them, and where they summon them from the true Hell, and the place is rife with them.’
The party was quiet a moment, surveying the ruined country apprehensively as Ursula’s words sank in.
In confirmation of them, a group of monsters spotted them, and ran at them over the glowing stones.
Battle 1