“TAKE COVER!” Maria bellowed, her party already dashing to join her for cover behind a pile of debris within the streets of the embattled city.
“Blessed is the light which protects us from harm, Divine Shield Wall!” Maria chanted quickly as her melodic song unleashed a wave of golden streams crisscrossing into a barrier behind them.
*KRA-KOOM!*
The shield went up not a moment too soon; the sonorous impact of steel on stone sent a shockwave of sound roiling through the city streets. A hurricane of concrete chunks tore through the dozens of red-and-black humanoid demons that flooded the road between the party and the extremely out-of-place ruins of an ancient castle.
Countless chunks of debris, black blood, and hunks of viscera collided with the shield wall, sending out white ripples with each impact before being repelled, while the force of the wind danced with Maria’s golden locks of hair.
“Gods be praised! I can understand getting the elves and demi-humans together, but it still astounds me that you even brought the giants to our side!” the paladin crowed, even as he looked mournfully at his unused tower shield. “Still… you could have let me block that one.”
However, the paladin seemed to have second thoughts as the ground shook under their feet, and a long shadow blocked out the sun.
“Amplify Voice. Divine Communication. THANKS FOR THE COVER, BROMI. WATCH OUR BACKS FROM THERE. WE’RE GOING IN!” Maria’s voice resonated with a force tenfold as loud as an average man’s shout, prompting her party to cover their ears.
The humanoid skyscraper roared in response, rattling the remaining unbroken glass windows with another gust of wind.
“Ssseeee here, you need to warn usss when you’re going to do that!” a snake-like hiss escaped from under the hooded wraps of their assassin.
“Ah, sorry Si-Khola. C’mon, we need to hurry! Oh, and Parth… Bromi said your shield ain’t shit,” Maria jabbed mercilessly, with the sweetest voice and purest expression. To add insult to injury, she knocked twice on Parth’s shield before dashing toward the castle.
“Geralt, that means you too! We need you to give us cover fire, and we can’t miss our rendezvous!” Maria’s words startled the archer from his trance. He looked away from the colossal creature and ran after the group as it charged into a hailstorm of magic and arrows.
“Amplification. Greater Range. Greater Strength. Hurricane Force. Perfect Strike. Dragon Arrow!” Geralt grimaced as he layered on a multitude of rapid-cast spells and notched a bolt the size of a javelin onto his great bow. A mana vortex encircled the bolt, which he released with a heavy twang.
The bolt shattered all the windows along its path as it soared over the party’s heads and blew a hole through a bus-sized demon as it stepped out of the door from the castle. His eyes narrowed uneasily at the supernatural flow of miasma coming from the castle.
“Tch. This is too damn easy.”
Tendrils of the murky clouds overflowed from the walls and poured out from the cracks, and yet, for all its show and lack of delivery, he still couldn’t shake the dying words of the Plague Demon Lord from his mind.
“Though I have met my end, you shall all still fall! Foolish mortals! We… were all that held back… those monsters… from the wastelands… ”
The Demon Lord’s dying words and blood-curdling raspy laugh felt almost regretful that he couldn’t witness this himself. So why did it feel so damn easy in comparison? Even his generals put up a better fight than this… I would have expected more from something as insane as a second demon lord’s appearance.
Almost as if to spite and curse his thoughts when they were mere feet from the castle gates, the earth trembled violently beneath them—the crack and roar of shattering stone and breaking concrete rippled through the air.
“THE DAMN HELL IS THAT DAFT GIANT TRYING TO DO NOW?!” Parth howled in rage as he tried to steady himself against the castle walls. Geralt saw the blood drain from Maria’s once flush face, her beauty shining through the horror.
Amidst the overwhelming noise of the collapsing skyscrapers, another deafening roar steadily grew as the quake only worsened.
“GET IN THE CASTLE NOW!” Maria shrieked as a plume of lava tore a hole through the earth beneath Bromi’s feat. Geralt scrambled to dive into the castle as Maria, Parth, and Si-Khola slammed the doors shut.
Before the doors slammed shut, and through the waves of superheated smoke and debris, Geralt caught a glimpse of a towering nightmare cloaked in bone and flame. He shivered as a single red eye opened from the creature’s shoulder and stared straight through his soul, as a sea of lava and melted flesh flowed past the demon’s feet.
Nothing could block the deafening cries of pain from the giant, and there was no solace to be had when it finally fell silent.
image [https://cdn.midjourney.com/31438658-0f79-4cc7-8b5b-0e9ab03579ff/grid_0.png]
“The fuck did you say that was?” Geralt cried as they rushed through the silent halls into the inner court of the ruin.
“Again, that wasn’t the demon lord! Our target is further in, so just keep yourself together!” Maria pressed onward, her voice strained.
“Even if you’re the legendary hero, how would you know that? Not even the Plague Demon Lord could take out the king of the giants like that!” Geralt nervously twitched, his whining voice shaking as he glanced over his shoulder.
“From my peopless’s hisstory, the ancient dragonssss were once capable of ssssuch featsss.” Si-Khola mused back, his snake-like tongue slithering between his wrappings.
“Hmph. And your people’s continued reverence of a heretical and extinct race is why we keep hunting you!” Parth exclaimed in self-righteous indignation.
“What do you mean, you people? Jussst because we didn’t want to join Ishhtar in her genocide, you think itss’s right to kill usss too?” Si-Khola countered, his black daggers gleaming while his tongue practically flung spittle as he stormed toward Parth.
The kling of a cap bouncing across the stone floor snagged their attention, along with a silvery radiance that danced across the floor.
“Through purity, there is peace. Through peace, there is love. From love, there is light. And from light, there is hope. Together, let the light and hope of our souls drive back the darkness! Heavenly Blessing!” Maria held the glass bottle and focused on it with absolute zeal. Its contents radiated out and cleansed away the darkness, revealing a malevolent vortex of dark energy hidden in the shadows and purging away the miasma pouring from it.
“Have you calmed yourselves? The void realm lies beyond here… we cannot falter when we face him.” Maria glanced back between Parth and Si-Khola, pouting just mildly enough to guilt them.
“Ah, sorry ’bout that mate.” Parth’s eyes stared downwards shamefully as he dropped his clerical piety and let a hint of his Aussie accent through. He held his hand on Si-Khola’s shoulder firmly. “This damn miasma’s getting to my head.”
“Ahhh, itss’s fine. At leassst—”
The reptilian closed his eyes and suddenly dropped to his knees in a reverent bow as waves of golden light flowed into the room from another portal.
“Praise be, the gods have come!” Parth exclaimed in pure, unfiltered joy.
They didn’t dare raise their heads, enraptured as they were by a divine voice sweeter than honey.
“You have done well to make it here, your blessing has opened our way. It is as I feared, the nine would never have let you through if they knew we were coming. The fey are barely holding on, and the other armies are collapsing.”
“What?! There are NINE of them?! Why didn’t you t—” Geralt leaped up, eyes wide, staring at the goddess in disbelief.
“Hush child, there is no need to worry. This is the only way, so do not be alarmed.” The goddess cradled the man’s head between soft white hands as a golden glow poured over his body.
“Ahh, you’re right. This is… no time to worry.” Geralt smiled, entranced as the goddess stared deeply into his soul through her golden eye, and a stupid smile stretched across his face.
“That’s enough chatter, Almalexia. We have work to do, before this rock goes the way of the dragons.” A stout god wielding a lightning-clad hammer barreled through the golden portal, his gruff Nordic voice starkly contrasting with Almalexia’s enrapturing melody.
“It’s the Thunderer himself! And… and…!” the paladin chirped up, the visage of childish excitement and joy in its purest form as if someone had finally met their greatest childhood heroes as more gods and goddesses came through the portal.
Stolen story; please report.
“With this… with this we can truly save the world! We can kill the Demon Lord!” Parth exclaimed; in his manic joy, he completely missed the guilt-ridden glance between Maria and Almalexia.
----------------------------------------
A tyrannical figure rose from behind a large, black granite pedestal interlaced with lines of copper and arcane diagrams.
It was a towering monster, standing taller than two men. It walked around the pedestal, its jet-black gauntlets scraping across the stone as it passed by.
Numerous mana crystals attached to small towers at even junctures around the inner and outer rings of a diagram that spanned the center of the room. Their singular purpose was clear: they gathered a relentless torrent of miasma and dark energy and redirected it into countless mana crystals and mystical towers scattered throughout the expansive lair. Numerous mirrors lined the outer walls, reflecting the faint magical glow emanating from everything in the room.
They reflected various distorted shapes and sizes and enhanced the crimson colors that stained the joints of the monster’s armor. A long sharp bone protruded from each arm and curved like a wicked talon.
“It has been… so very long,” the monster murmured to itself, its voice barely a low, sonorous growl.
The monster reached up and touched one of the four black horns that grew from his head, slowly feeling how each one curved to one of four points by each corner of his face.
“I wonder… if there are any still left who remember my name?” The creature spoke again as if expecting an answer from the shadows. His yellow eyes narrowed like a predator, hunting through each and every stone.
Scars from ten thousand years of research combed the walls, forged from failed experiments and weapons tests, as well as the extensive patchwork repairs from those that succeeded.
He carried on with his grisly tasks in this mind-numbing eternity, in a prison of his own making.
“Time, time, time… soon, so soon… enough miasma will be ready. It has been long enough.”
Sendrien Dagon, the eldest daemon and the First Demon Lord, born in the Age of Dragons and forged in the flames of Ishtar’s War of Extermination, heralding the beginning of the Era of the Gods.
In the ages of his self-isolation, his sole focus was on perfecting his weapon of destruction and amassing enough power to guarantee the end of the world.
Consequently, he had become genuinely ignorant of the world at large, himself, and his new station as Demon Lord. The miasma, being gathered and concentrated across millennia, leaked through the gate over time into the world he no longer cared to see. All that was left was the gnawing madness from the God of Darkness.
And it was then that the shadows answered once more.
I clutched my forehead as I heard the endless voices again. Sometimes they were silent, and other times they were sonorous echoes ricocheting throughout my head, but most often, they were soft murmurs crawling through the fabric of my reality.
Eat their hearts. Devour them all. Burn and Dominate.
“Shut up!”
Pillage their lands. Break their spirits.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I screamed in rage as my frustrations boiled over once again. I knew it was pointless, but still…
How long has it been?
It got harder and harder to remember as time passed on… endlessly cycling without any sense of actual day or night. My memories… it felt like they filled with more and more blanks. Time… lost… and yet every time I tried to focus on it…
Claim their souls. Take their lands. Make them bleed.
“Never, ah, it can never just be a moment’s peace, can it?”
This damnable voice just won’t stop…
Strip the flesh.
It makes it so damn hard to think…
Salt the wounds.
Sometimes I just wanted to scream it in to silence…
Make them suffer.
“SILENCE!” My frustrations boiled over as I bellowed out once more. Or had I? How many times have I gone through this? At least, it should all be over soon… after ten thousand years everything is finally ready.
Heed my call.
Yeah, right, as if I will ever accept your command, Shitty God.
Eat their hearts. Devour them all. Burn and Dominate.
Here it goes, on repeat again. This madness just never ends… you just stopped trying after only a few centuries, didn’t you?
Pillage their lands. Break their spirits.
God-damned autopilot is what this is…
Claim their souls. Take their lands. Make them bleed.
Hmm? What in the hells wandered in here? Last I checked, this area was uninhabitable when I moved in…
A pair of demons sprinted down the hall, primarily humanoid in shape, with black and red blotched skin. They had a couple of horns atop their head, which had grown to a modest length—nothing compared to mine but respectable enough.
But… weren’t they coming from the direction of the portal? They dropped to their knees and lowered their heads as soon as they saw me. They quaked in the presence of their lord, though I did not yet know it was me.
“Master! We are sorry, for we have failed you! The enemy is coming here, they are trying to stop us!”
Who is here? What enemy? Why does anyone know where I am?! And… what strange-looking daemons? Something feels off about them. What strange behavior too… Do they fear me, or is that reverence? Are they really descendants of the daemons I knew?
“Detect Life. Eyes of Magnus.” My voice rumbled soft yet deep. A shortened incantation would still be plenty for my purposes, and at my age, I certainly had mana to spare.
A pair of magical eyes opened in the clouds above a city spanning wide across an otherwise barren wasteland.
A suffocating magical aura rained down from the great eyes, and I could feel the endless stream of information of every minute detail as it poured into my mind.
Rocky dunes stretched for miles beyond the city’s bounds, and howling winds carried grating sand through the air at speeds that could easily strip the bark from trees. No water… no life… nonetheless, a city was built here with advanced construction techniques, floating defensive platforms, and highways crossing between towers. At least my dilapidated castle stood untouched at the center of it, in stark contrast to the changes that occurred all around it. Needless to say, it was quite shocking.
Since when did a city get built around my castle?! It is overflowing with my miasma, and nothing should be able to survive! Yet these strange daemons are not only living in it… but thriving. How? To top it off… Look at all these other creatures here! Humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, giants, and so many others… all fighting the daemons? They must have come because of these new daemons… but why did those come here in the first place?
I sighed audibly and closed my eyes. I... was tired of it all.
It doesn’t matter if they managed to find out what I was up to; it’s too late for them. The miasma will be unleashed momentarily. The world will perish, and I, too, will die when the miasma runs its course.
I grimaced for a moment.
But… that doesn’t seem right? Why? Ah, it won’t do to dwell on the matter. I have work to finish.
My mind felt hazy again. Broken.
A pool of viscous black formed in the air next to me, and a blade handle dripped out from its inky depths. I grasped the handle and pulled out the lethal weapon from the darkness. Its brutal design was made for a singular purpose.
Its blade was a foot shy from being as long as the average man, with a snake-like trough running down the center to let the blood flow out when someone was stabbed.
I forged it with adamantium and fused the blade with magecite, the base mineral used to develop mana crystals. A laborious, lengthy, and dangerous process, but the ability to store mana into the blade itself and amplify its destructive output was above and beyond worth the risk—anything to destroy things better.
A perfect twin matched the blade at the other end of the handle. As someone who only cared about destroying things better and had eons to master their craft, I hardly gave a damn about the risks anymore.
I have no idea who they are or what they are talking about, but all shall be accompanied by death in the end. This world doesn’t deserve to exist. The people don’t need to suffer in it any longer.
Swiftly and mercilessly, I spun the blade between my fingers like a whirlwind before slicing the heads off the two daemons bowing before me.
“No doubt you’re the monster… you would even cut down your own allies?!” I was greeted by another… visitor, their voice dripping with self-righteous indignation.
It seems a paladin has entered my demesne… full plate armor and a holy sword, blessed by a goddess, no doubt. And with him… an archer, a roguish fellow and… a heroine. Should I even be surprised? She is… quite gorgeous. Yet… she seems so familiar? It can’t… Didn’t she die? When? Was it before I became… the Demon Lord? Why do I know that?! My head… it hurts. It’s getting worse. I… can’t…
I grasped my forehead tightly with my gauntlet, cutting into my flesh. Something… something was changing. I was changing, after so long…
The heroine shouted to her party; her voice echoed like a distant whisper in my ears.
“Something’s wrong… he’s in pain. We have to do something!”
I felt the presence of some gods and goddesses…
I hit the jackpot. With this much firepower, they could end it. But something was wrong. I couldn’t focus anymore. What little clarity I had felt like it was slipping from me too…
Then, in a voice whose low rumble caused the ground and walls to shake, the monster spoke with the full force of its voice for the first time in millennia, almost possessed by a will that was not its own.
“My name is Sendrien Dagon, Demon Lord of Destruction. I am sorry, but this will be the end. Prepare yourselves. It is coming.”
DOOM
Agh… Everything is going black.
Behind me, the magic array activated, unleashing the torrent of stored miasma. Millennia of it erupted with the fury of a raging flood as countless portals opened, connecting across the doomed world.
I could feel my body moving as if it was fighting independently, but I couldn’t see anything. All I heard were the screams. This damned connection to the God of Darkness was throbbing unbearably. I couldn’t resist it any longer.
…
…
“GRAND PURIFICATION!”
FUCK!
Searing pain ripped throughout my body as if a burning meteor had slammed me.
Sight returned to my eyes, with only the heroine left and almost everyone with her… dead. Brutally. In pieces. Everywhere. Except for one man, on the verge of death, hysterically crying, “He ate them! He ate all the gods! The darkness took them all! It’s all over!”
Despite the wreckage left behind, I felt like a complete wreck. I doubted I could ever forget if I had felt like this before. My arm blades and their bones were broken just inches from my flesh. And my armor… was utterly shattered. Damn.
I liked that armor!
And… I couldn’t see them.
Were my horns broken too? Yup.
My connection to the God of Darkness has been severely weakened. How? That spell… Grand Purification… it’s…
I struggled with my memory while barely dodging another series of blows; sweat and blood dripped and splatted with each movement.
It’s supposed to be a spell only able to be used by Legendary Heroes. The kind who can only be called by a high-ranking goddess facing a calamity. It’s so hard to summon one; not even the war against the dragons qualified. Just what… am I now?
Desperation pervaded the heroine’s eyes, carrying only a hint of hope. She was in as bad a state as the Demon Lord she fought.
“It worked! Hold on a little longer, Geralt, please! We can stop the Demon Lord transformation from completing!”
The archer cackled madly, as blood poured out from his shoulder. The arm that should have been there was nowhere to be seen.
The… what? Demon Lord Transformation? Is that… me she is talking about? And the miasma will bring demons?!
I grimaced at the thought; it was something I would have to make better sense of when I actually had time to think about it.
A magic formation appeared beneath the heroine’s feet; its sudden appearance caused her eyes to widen in shock. Any decent magic
magic practitioner could tell what it was instantly: a summoning formation.
KILL! KILL! KILL HER NOW!
The voice in my head reverberated with incredible force, threatening my mind once again. I charged, catching her in the circle as it began to activate…
She didn’t waste a moment, deciding against trying to escape from the formation, and instead, she clad her body in a white, holy aura. She screamed out once more, “GRAND PURIFICATION!” Simultaneously, I stabbed with my blade, enveloped in a thick, malevolent aura. Then, the world around us disappeared.