The air was thick with blood and brimstone. The bodies of the horned and red-skinned demons littered the lands just as dead with many still alive laying waste to one another like hateful dogs. Among them was one of crimson flesh and hair in the shape and the color of an orange flame which snaked down to his ankles. He stood surrounded by over a dozen adversaries at a height of five feet plus nine-twelfths of one, upon a hill high above the field of butchery. His diamond-shaped face possessed somber and aggravated features. Even if he weren't engaged in battle, his face would still be marked by an ever-present scowl, as if ready to bark at the merest slight towards him, intended or otherwise.
Eyes of amber enveloping a red-orange with cat-like pupils, beyond bagged by over a century's lack in sleep. Curved horns above his brow, the right broken. A vertical scar on his left lip, but a mere scratch compared to the dozens upon his body hidden under his black and maroon garments: An open trimmed jacket with a pink wife-beater underneath, pants held up by a dark belt with a circular orange buckle, laced boots above the ankle. A black spot in a naked sea of red.
Circling him, the demons snarled with snaggled teeth and their eyes possessed of murder. A look the fire-haired devil knew well for these demons were of the same stock as he. Demons once human condemned to Hell for sins of rage or those descendant of such fallen men. Wrathions.
Soon enough, one made the first move. It lunged and raised a clawed hand to commence a downward slash. A miss. A miss that cost it his life as the black-clad devil threw two clawed fingers held in a meat hook's shape upwards. They punctured the center of the demon's neck and tore off a fatal chunk of demonflesh. It held on it's throat as it bled to death, it's ink-like ichor flowing from it's open throat. Two more rushed forward and two more were struck down. Then came three, then four, then five. One by one, they all fell at the feet of the flame-headed devil.
After snapping the final foe's neck with a forceful twist, he turned to the battlefield and beheld the sight and sounds of the two armies acting upon their death-craving natures. It would impossible for mortals to tell the difference between them and demons themselves find it difficult, assuming they cared to, but even the most mindless of demons can distinguish friend from foe by the scent of their master imprinted on them. The scent of the devil's allies was fresh and cool with hints of lavender and cut grass. If it had form, it would appear as a purple stream. The scent of the devil's enemies was woody, brunt, and had spots of garlic. If it had form, it would appear as a dark orange cloud.
"Legate Rustam!" A voice called out. The crimson demon, whose name was Rustam, turned and saw a demon of scarlet skin with braided hair the color of summer grass and the horns of a ram approach him, holding a spiked hammer of solid shadow in his right hand.
"The enemy are breaking!" He exclaimed, "The city lays open!"
Rustam turned back to the battlefield and looked to the black spired city that laid beyond. Cities in Hell were not like the cities in the mortal world. Rather than being built, they were grown, like a fungus or some sort of tumor, with the ever-evolving shape of the black structures adding to this sense of cancerous growth. This growth was proportional with the amount of demons that lived within, for their societies functioned on arcane mob mentality, sorcerous personality cults, and the fact that demons could not truly make things of their own. All beginning as a small tower and some hovels and over time becoming a great metropolis housing legions of demons.
The city Rustam and his fellows were aiming to take was somewhere in the middle. Not too small to be so easily conquered, but not so large as to be impossible for his forces to seize, possessing of four layers of great black walls.
"Rally whatever Gluthions you can!" Rustam ordered in a voice rough and coarse as dirt, "Have them hurl themselves at the gates until they break! Berat dies today!"
----
The taking of the city was a bloody, but simple thing. With Berat's horde all but scattered, the outskirts of the city began to crumble. Pieces of the crude black buildings fell to the red earth and melted like ice on a heated pan, for just as a surplus of demons grew a city, a significant enough loss in number caused it to shrink. This fact made the prospect of war between archfiendoms a path afforded only by those whose victory was guaranteed. The state of decay affected the gates that barred invaders out of the lowest levels of the city, making it's breach by Gluthions, demonic behemoths of flesh and muscle, stomachs like bottomless pits and a penchant for cannibalism, all that much easier.
Following the gate's fall, Rustam's throng cleaved through the city's defenders, throwing down any who faced him with fist and boot, utilizing whatever debris and severed demonic limbs that littered the ground as improvised weapons when needed. Layer after layer, they swarmed deeper and deeper towards the city's heart, eventually reaching the mound palace where Berat resided. Rustam ascended the stairs to the palace gates, a large gathering of his warriors in tow, and when they reached the top, their eyes were greeted with the sight of Berat, who stood at the massive open doors with a retinue of his kin behind him.
The lord of the city stood almost two feet taller than Rustam and his scarlet skin marked him as a Trueborn, a demon of pure descent from the first fallen angels, unlike Rustam and his wrathions, who were Humanborn and possessed the same darker crimson skin with the gluthions possessing their own shade of red skin which held a noticeable tint of orange. Not only that, but the trueborn possessed the ability to summon forth weapons of solid shadow, a great advantage against the more animalistic Humanborn. His visage was a stark contrast to the younger demons present in the city. Far more inhuman and akin to some unnatural breed of furless ursine, save the man-hair resting on his head, and his legs were like that of a raven. The man-hair on Berat's aged head was dark, long, and silky straight, reaching the middle of his back, and from his forehead sprouted a single horn. He wore clothes akin to that of a man of ancient Scandinavia coupled with some motifs from the less red-skinned mortals native to the American continent above and resting in his hands, tip of the blade on the ground, was his longsword.
"Rustam Karazov." Berat greeted, his voice deep and humming, "Your very presence here is an insult to all demonkind, as is the actions of your master. Giving a humanborn, a wrathion of all things, a wrathion so young, such power and standing within any society..."
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Berat tightened the grip on his sword.
"It is betrayal to all trueborn, a spit in the face of the natural order."
"Not my problem." Rustam replied bluntly, " You should have just accepted the Princeps' offer if all you wanted to do was complain."
"The Princeps..." Berat scoffed, "Her fetish for the old Latins knows no bounds. What's next? Will she make an imp a consul or whatever equivalent she pulls from her backside? Perhaps she will declare herself the daughter of an Archbeast or, God forbid, Lucifer reborn and lay claim to Belphegor's failed empire."
Rustam's angered face appeared deadpan at the fiend's words.
"Are you going to keep whining like a child or are you going to fight like a man?"
"Oh I intend to, but I wish it to be known that regardless of whatever maddness she has planned, I will stand against it."
Berat lifted his sword with one hand and pointed it at the wrathion.
"You will not live to see the end of this day, Widow's Dog. I will drive my sword into your filthy heart and send your mass of mongrels crawling back to your blasphemous bitch of a king!"
"You're welcome to try."
Rustam then ordered his mob to attack with Berat doing the same with his trueborn retinue. The fight was just as savage as the one that took place outside the walls. Four wrathions tore apart a trueborn with their bare hands, three trueborn brought down a gluthion with spear and axe, and one gluthion bit into the skull of a distracted trueborn with a sickening crunch. At the center of the conflict was Rustam and Berat, engaged in their own match. Berat was, by all accounts, superior to Rustam and it showed. His sword skill was superb and his age betrayed his experience. No humanborn, especially one as young as Rustam, could come close to matching a being like Berat in single combat, much less without a weapon of his own. But nevertheless, the wrathion fought on even as the trueborn delivered blow after painful blow for every measly two or three Rustam could sneak in.
With one eye blackened, several teeth dislodged from their roots, a mouth full of black blood which he spat out, and his clothing in ribbons, Rustam continued to stand tall against what was likely to be his second death.
"My better nature demands that I compliment you." Berat began as he attempted another slash of his sword, only for Rustam to once more evade the strike, "Many years has it been since anyone has been able to last this long against me. You take my strikes in stride, while your's, though pathetic, have always hit their mark. A shame that you are so lowly born. You would have made an excellent-"
The sudden blow to Berat's face silenced his tongue as quickly as the fist came. It made him reel back a few steps before steadying himself, holding his jaw with his free hand as the found-again sensation of pain took hold. He removed his hand to see specks of blood, his blood, upon it. He then looked up and saw Rustam, the dour expression on his face unchanged, in a stance that indicated that he was indeed the one landed that shockingly effective strike. A fluke, surely. A mistake on Berat's part, allowing himself to become distracted with the sound of his own voice. The lesson learned, he corrected his footing and continued the duel.
Another blow of true pain planted itself in the archfiend's side as he swung and let out a deep yelp. He turned his gaze to Rustam who had dodged the swing and had indeed landed a strike with his elbow. For a split moment, a thought crossed the archfiend's mind. A thought he was quick to dismiss. The thought that this wrathion, this lowly, inferior creature, actually had a chance in beating him. The unthinkable. The impossible. The unacceptable! As if without thinking, Berat again lunged at the wrathion, his teeth bared and angry.
Two blows became three. Three became four, then five, and so on. What was first seemed a desperate defense turned into a gradual offensive for Rustam, seeming to predict the archfiend's every move while being untouchable himself.
Though Berat was steadily losing his own composure, it was not gone completely. Following a well-timed dodge, he knocked Rustam to the ground on his back.
"Die, you wretch!" Berat shouted as he lifted his sword and thrusted it down towards the wrathion's chest. There was little time for Rustam to recover and none at all to dodge the blade. Instead, he halted it's fall by grabbing it with both hands, the metallic darkness sinking into the flesh of his fingers as he gripped harder to keep it in place.
"I will not be undone by an apelover and her mutt!" Berat proclaimed loudly as he pressed down the sword harder, slipping closer towards Rustam's chest due the blood from his hands wetting the blade. Death was imminent. Or so it seemed.
Gritting his teeth and digging the blade deeper into his fingers, Rustam summoned forth a great tide of strength and slowly rose back up to his feet before shoving the blade to the side with a ghastly snarl. The shock on the Berat's face prevented him from seeing the brutal punch to the side of his head that followed, which knocked the archfiend back first to the ground. The tables had now turned.
Dizzy and disoriented, Berat attempted to pick himself up, but recieved a swift kick to the jaw from Rustam in response. The wrathion then grabbed the archfiend's head and pulled it with great force. Berat resisted greatly, but that was put to an end when Rustam delivered a hard fist to the archfiend's back.
His spine broken and his hands limp, Rustam once more grabbed the archfiend's head and, with the same effort and strength as before, tore it from his torso with his dying screams alerting those nearby to what was happening. Shock and fear was clear on their faces as Rustam held the severed head up high for all to see. The pocket of silence within the thunder, rings, and distant roars caused by this seemingly impossible feat was then broken by Rustam's warriors who letting out a hellish roar of their own in victory while the trueborn sorrowed in surrender with others running away as they cried:
"Berat is dead! Flee! flee!
Our lord is dead! Flee! Flee!
The Stone has been shattered! Flee! Flee!
All is lost! Flee! Flee!"
----
When Berat fell, so did his city. Without the sorcerous magnetism of the archfiend, the city's spires and walls fell to the dark earth and the armies of the victorious invaders marched with much laughing and singing of songs that mocked the defeated and the dead, all except Rustam, who was silent the whole way as he led the horde to the domain of their master: The City of Noden.