Back in the demon realm, on the 9th layer, the chamber of the ruined portal had become a killing floor.
The great black arch still stood at the edge of the cliff where Ozin had hurled himself through it, with that cat demon of his wailing behind him, and for the first time in a million years the dead stones pulsed with a thin, hungry light that reached out and pulled at anything standing too close.
Miasma hung thick in the air (Ps: there’s millions of Mos in this layer alone).
None of it was new.
None of it mattered.
The only thing that mattered in this chamber anymore was the line.
A line of upper rank demons stretched out of the room, down the corridor, and around the corner beyond it, a queue of the realm’s finest and most decorated warriors, every one of them waiting to give 99.99999% of everything they had ever been to a doorway that did not want to open.
The demon at the front of the line was a brute with tusks like scythes and a chest plate dented so deep it looked like it had been used as an anvil for a century.
He had fought in the great war.
(unc)
He stepped up to the arch, planted his feet, and did exactly what he had been ordered to do, pouring every last drop of his magical power into the dead stone.
The drain was instant and merciless.
His muscles melted off his frame in seconds, his skin went gray and papery, and the portal flickered open, small and tight, barely wide enough for one body.
He lunged for it.
The portal snapped shut on him.
Two pieces of what had been one demon hit the ground from different heights.
The next demon in line stepped over the remains without looking down.
Lane after lane it went, one demon per minute, one body per lane, and the floor grew slick with what the portal had no use for.
The pile by the arch had been growing for a week and would keep growing until somebody smarter than everyone involved figured out the trick of it, or until the realm ran out of demons, whichever came first.
Madam Wrath stood at the center of it all, a monument to a war that had never really ended for her.
She was a tower of a woman, just shy of 11 feet, and the black war armor she wore had not left her body once in the past 1 million years, not since the day the gods finished the great war and banished every demon in every world into this realm.
(musk 🤤… I apologize)
The fiery red hair shot out of her head in all directions, and the red skin that showed through the gaps in her armor was a patchwork of scars, old wounds layered over older wounds.
Five eyes ringed her face in a loose arc, all of them fixed on the line with the same flat impatience.
“You, the one with the horns! Move! Keep the line moving! Every demon in this room opens a portal or I’ll know why! Any of you run and I’ll run you down myself, I’ll pin your corpse to that arch so the rest of the line can see what deserters get!”
The horned demon shuffled forward with knees that were shaking so badly they knocked together.
He opened his mouth, maybe to beg, maybe to argue, but he saw the spear on her shoulder and the five eyes all aimed at him, and he decided against it.
He drained himself dry.
(hehe)
The portal opened, tight and small.
He was a fraction of a second too slow, or the portal was a fraction of a second too fast, and it hardly mattered which.
Two more pieces joined the pile, and the next demon stepped up without being told.
Madam Wrath watched it happen with the flat, professional disappointment of a sergeant who had watched the same recruit fail the same obstacle a thousand times.
“Too slow,” she said to nobody in particular.
“Every last one of them, too slow. The window is small. I have been telling them the window is small for a week. Does anyone listen? No. They just keep getting split in half.”
The door at the back of the chamber slid open, and Nauta slithered in.
The snake fiend moved through the carnage.
Her yellow eyes swept the room once, taking in the line, the arch, the pile of pieces, and the towering woman at the center of it all, and she looked deeply unbothered by any of it.
She had seen worse.
She had caused worse.
“Madam Wrath,” she said, drawing the name out like she was tasting it.
“The massssster ssssends hissss word.”
Madam Wrath turned her full attention on the snake fiend, and all 5 of her eyes narrowed at once.
“The master,” she repeated, and the title came out like a curse.
“What does he want now? More of my demons fed into that thing? I have given him everything I have. The best of my house. The strongest fighters on this floor, drained to husks and split in half, and he is still not satisfied?” Get faster updates on novelping(.)com.
“Not the 7th, no.” Nauta’s head tilted, her serpent hair swaying with the motion.
“The massssster hassss ordered that more demonssss from the lower flooorsss be lined up for the portal opening assss well.”
The air in the room changed.
It was subtle, but the line felt it, and a few of the demons nearest the arch took half a step back.
Madam Wrath stood very still for a long moment, all 5 eyes wide and unblinking, and then she took one enormous step forward, putting her face a foot from Nauta’s.
“The lower circles,” she said, and her voice had dropped from a bark to a growl that was somehow worse.
“The lower circles are proud warriors. They are the spine of this realm. They have held the front line of every war we have ever fought, since before you were a hatchling in the mud. And he wants to feed them to that thing, one at a time, to be cut in half like common fodder?”
Nauta shrugged.
It was a small, elegant motion, entirely at odds with the fury radiating off the woman looming over her.
“Why can’t he use the pride demons?” Madam Wrath demanded, jabbing her free hand toward the ceiling, toward the upper reaches of the realm.
“There are billions of them on the first circle. Billions! They breed like vermin and they are about as useful in an actual fight as a wet leaf. Feed them to the portal. Nobody would miss a single one. The realm would be quieter for a thousand years!”
Nauta shrugged again, because she had nothing else to offer.
“Nauta doessss not know why. The massssster did not ssssay. He only ssssaid to bring the word.”
Something in Madam Wrath snapped.
One moment she was standing there, five eyes blazing, and the next the giant double bladed spear had moved in an arc too fast to track, and the demon standing nearest to her, a cowering little thing who had just shuffled his way toward the front of the line, lost his head in one clean stroke.
The head bounced twice and rolled to a stop against the base of the arch.
The body stood there a moment longer, before it folded to the floor.
Madam Wrath did not look at it.
She planted the other end of her spear on the stone with a crack that echoed through the chamber, turned on her heel, and stormed toward the door, her wild red hair streaming behind her like a banner of fire.
Nauta watched her go, her serpent hair hissing with curiosity.
“Where issss Madam Wrath going?” she called after her.
Madam Wrath did not stop.
“I’M TAKING A FUCKING BREAK! YOU TAKE OVER!”