Everyone split up for showers, food, and refreshment before meeting back in front of the elevator that led down into the caverns. Joe was the first to get there and wait. He was standing there, an annoyed look on his face as Grim and the others arrived.
“What’s got your panties in a twist?” asked Grim, annoyed that the large spy had been less than helpful over the last few days. While he understood that he couldn’t completely blow his cover, the man had access to information and resources they didn’t.
Resources that could help a lot.
“I need to know if you were serious, or if your humor is as bad as your attitude and temperament,” Joe said, staring down Grim.
For all that it was worth, Grim was impressed. Not many confronted him like this, and even fewer who did would walk away from such an interaction alive. However, Joe was, if not annoyingly respectfully about it, at least willing to be civil. He could get behind that.
“Yes,” he grunted, before getting into the elevator. The rest of the team, and several imps followed him in. Joe nabbed a large imp and tossed him out, taking his place just as the doors shut. Right before they were fully closed, the spy caught the imp pointing at its own eyes before directing them at his face.
There was a promise of retribution.
Shivering a little bit, Joe turned to the amused Grim. “Seriously? You’re from Hell? When you fell out of the sky that was the last place that I would have imagined you were from.”
“Direction has little to do if you are from a good plane or a bad one. Fuck, even the words good and bad are subjective to intense scrutiny and are only ever employed by the victors,” Grim said, surprising those in the elevator with the eloquent words.
The elevator stopped moving and the doors opened. Everyone within spilled out into the large cavern that the imps were, even now, continuing to improve upon. The floor was smooth, compacted stone and the final support pillars being finished as they watched. Imps were, if nothing else, extremely focused when they had a task.
“Yes. I was raised, grew up, was trained, and have most of my family in one of the primary realms of the underworld, Inferno,” Grim explained as he moved to the pit that stored all the organic matter. He pulled out the bag of gems that he had been working on during their down time since arriving back at the lair. Then he unceremoniously dumped all the gems into the pile of bodies, decaying matter, and shit.
“Uh, isn’t there, like, some kind of process to this?” wondered Rat. “Like a big spell circle, chanting, or some kind ritual sacrifice?”
Grim turned to him, “Want me to add your body to the pile?” he asked as the Anubis demon shook his head violently side to side. “Didn’t think so. Not everything has to be complicated. Mastery through practice. Once you have thoroughly mastered something, you can alter it, usually to make it far more efficient.”
“So you’re from Hell Boss?” Tetra asked, excited. “That’s fucking awesome!”
Grim grunted. “Not Hell, exactly. That’s further up, a lesser hell if you would. I grew up in Inferno with my Dad and a bunch of grumpy ass Demon Lords. Inferno is a place where only the strongest, most powerful, or most prestigious of the demonic blood lines reside.”
“So, it’s like, what? A retirement community for devils?” Joe asked, becoming genuinely curious.
Stella shook her head, “No. I don’t think so. I think its more like a super high scale neighborhood. A gated neighborhood. With very large, very scary guards.”
Grim grunted. “Yeah. Kinda like that. Only everyone who lives there are beings of terrifying power.”
“How do you rank up to them Boss?” Rat asked, genuinely curious. “Are you stronger than most of them?”
Grim paused, thinking about that for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Somewhere towards the top of the middle. There are plenty of things there I can’t beat. Many of the engineered creatures are stronger than I am. My Dad, Sam, is way stronger than I am.”
Joe shivered at that. His job as a spy was to gather information… only he was learning things that he never intended to. And wasn’t sure he wanted to. But he had to get this back to his country somehow. If this was a new kind of invasion… well at least he was getting to know the architect of the entire event. Quite well in fact.
Grim was, to Joe at least, a man of power, vicious savagery, and unrelenting focus who pursued his goals with a determination that outstripped anyone the spy had ever met. By orders of magnitude. His abilities were terrifying in and of themselves, but it was his creativity that was truly dangerous. Joe recognized a mad scientist type when he met one… only Grim had that, and the strength, speed, and literal firepower to match. It was as if he was an amalgamation of nearly every super ability he had ever encountered.
“Alright everyone, stand the fuck back. I don’t want to suck anyone into this I don’t have to,” warned Grim as he spread his hands apart. Every backed away quickly, unwilling to figure out just what he meant by that.
“Right. If I hit ten percent, deploy the damn Shard. I don’t want to use it if we don’t have to… but if we need to we are seriously going to need to. Don’t let my hesitation melt us,” Grim replied mentally.
A massive overlay of the put and gems appeared in his vision, courtesy of his demonic assistant. Contrary to what he had told Rat, there were other steps needed. Complete and total mastery over something didn’t mean you could just ignore the magical or material requirements. Bags calculations told him that even as it was he would be short on organic material. He was hoping to make up the difference in raw energy.
Once Bag had the calculations in place, Grim triggered the magic circle. Raw energy began to be dumped into the pit, infusing the gems with power. Each of the gems, that Grim had spent hours painstakingly carving with runes and glyphs, soaked up the energy and began converting the raw material into a slurry of pink soup.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Grunting, Grim opened the flood gate. The energy he poured into the slurry causing it to bubble and roil, the surface of it expanding upward into the air. He distantly heard some gasps behind him, but ignored them as he focused on his work.
The slurry rapidly flowed upward, against gravity, to form the outline of a tree like structure with a pointed spike at the top. Multiple spikes came off below that, giving the construct a look like it was crossed between a sadistically designed crown of thorns and a dead tree.
Clenching his fingers, he then spread them wide, drenching the entire construct in Hellfire. It hardened the slurry into the body of the structure. The remaining slurry was formed into a half circle wall at the base, as if someone built a well wall but left a third of it open. Grim then tempered that section with Hellfire as well.
Now sweating profusely, Grim was feeling fatigued. He would need to finish the creation of at least the structure prior to moving on to the most complex, and energy intensive, portion of the Hell Spike formation. The portal itself.
“Me neither. But if I do that its only good for one portal. Unless…” Grim paused in thought. Usually when creating a Hell Spike the portal was to a single location. This was usually due to the energy limitations of the gems used to power the construct. If he used the Reality Shard? There would be no fucking limitations.
He grinned.
“Only if I fuck up. And I won’t,” Grim quipped back.
Dumping his energy into the gems, he created more slurry from the raw energy he was using. He formed an additional six portal wells that mirrored the first, three on either side. The Hell Spike now scraped the top of the cavern, while the base covered the entirety of the pit. The portal wells themselves, while not active, were arrayed around the base of the construct itself.
“Fuck. This… is going to be close,” he mentally responded. Bag didn’t reply, allowing him to concentrate. Within each of the portal wells was a shallow depression several inches deep. Using his remaining energy, Grim simultaneously carved seven Masterwork Circles within them. The very moment he finished, he collapsed to one knee.
Stella and Rat were beside him within a second, helping him back to his feet. Grim was drenched in sweat, having utilized nearly all of his energy and focus to create the master piece in front of him.
“Reserves?” he asked Bag.
His assistant was silent for a while. Then it responded,
“What the ever loving fuck Bag? Two fucking percent? I said to stop me at ten!” Grim yelled through their mental connection.
Grim took a deep breath and breathed out. He knew the demon wouldn’t allow him to come to harm. He should have trusted that. But it was still fucking scary he had gotten so close to actually dying, and for nothing more than the creation of something that no one but him had any idea how to use.
“That took a long time Boss,” Tetra said, walking up to the trio with Joe in tow. She was practically bouncing in excitement. “My power is giving me so many new ideas for organic constructs, energy generation, and physical enhancements! Watching you was like… watching a master craftsman! You’re amazing!” she said, practically drooling.
Joe was less than enthused, but equally as amazed at what Grim had accomplished. “So is that it? This is the… Hell Spike?” he asked cautiously. “It doesn’t seem to be giving off any energy of any kind. Did you do it right?”
Grim stared at the man, momentarily forgetting that he was the only one there, besides possibly the imps, who knew what a Hell Spike even really did.
“Yeah. Yeah I did it fucking right you prick,” grunted Grim, standing up on his own. Stella and Rat backed off a bit to give their Boss some space. “But that was step one of three. Now comes the hard fucking part, powering the portals.”
He popped off the side of his helmet and withdrew the Shard of Reality. The minute he held it in his hand everyone backed away quickly. Joe’s eyes widened as he fell on his ass and scooted away until his back was against the wall. Even the imps seemed extremely uneasy.
“Yeah, that’s usually how people reacted,” said Grim, the grin in his voice apparent. The diamond like shard was large in the palm of his hand. It felt warm to the touch and glowed softly with an inner white light.
“What in the ever loving convalescent fucking world is that thing?” rasped Stella, breathless like someone had punched her in the gut.
Grim didn’t answer her, or the half dozen other questions that were fielded by the others. He was not going to tell them anything about the Shard of Reality he possessed. That would never happen. Not now. Not later. Them knowing would be far, far too dangerous. Instead, he kept it simple.
“If you touch this, you will die. Period. No second chances. It will rip out your soul, shred your body, and turn you into a temporary energy source until the heat death of the universe. So don’t fucking touch it,” Grim said as the others nodded in rapid agreement to his most recent demand.
Turning back to the Hell Spike, he walked to the center portal, the firs that he had formed. Now that he was here, he saw that he had unconsciously made this one nearly a third as large as the other six. Interesting, that he would prioritize the size and power of his home realm over any others.
Or maybe it wasn’t so strange at all.
Covering his fist in hell fire, the one not holding the thing capable of ending reality, he shoved his arm elbow deep into the trunk of the Hell Spike. Withdrawing his arm, he placed the gem as far in as he could reach. Closing the close by melting the trunk shut, he then closed his eyes and placed his hand where the hold had once been. Then he inserted exactly one percent of his remaining energy.
The world turned upside down and tasted purple. For about three seconds.
When Grim came to he realized that he was hanging off of one of the branches of the Hell Spike. His team and all of the imps were scattered across the floor of the caver in various disheveled states. Joe, however, had apparently been stuck to the roof. The only evidence of this was when he landed a few feet in front of Grim, slamming into the floor with a meaty thud and a groan. At least he was still alive.
Looking down Grim saw that each portal section had been primed. That was the second and, arguably, most important step. It depended on which portal sorcerer you spoke with. The priming of each portal enabled that portal to be programmed for a particular location. Grim now had, what he believe to be the first and only, multiple portal Hell Spike. The power requirements for one usually resulted in large portions of a planet being used as fuel. The living parts, that is.
Not even multiple fusion power plants were capable of powering such a construct. He had tried. With a Shard of Reality, however, powering one became trivial. Apparently power seven became trivial. Now all he had to do was complete the final step, giving each portal a destination. He already knew where three of them were going to go. Inferno, Arboretum, and Niflheim. That was already above and beyond his expectation. But now he had four more to play with.
He grinned under his helmet savagely. He was going to have fun with this.