Chapter 33

Chapter

Thirty-Three

ASMODEUS

T he veil to the realm of the living shimmered in the distance, its ethereal glow blinding my demons with its light. Brimstone smoke billowed out from behind me as I inhaled the sweet perfume of the fallen king's blood. His chant calling on the power of Infernum sang to the deepest pits within my cursed soul and called forth my forces of darkness.

His diction was proper, the words ringing through loud and clear as he chanted.

Potentia of Infernum, power of hell

Ignis of Infernum, fire of hell

Princeps of Infernum, Ruler of hell

Audire meus clamor, hear my cry

The dead language of the Divine was forgotten over time, its guttural pronunciation repressed from memories by our Creators. Only a select few mortals could decipher that dialect, an uncommon skill in their world. Some had learned that knowledge through years of precision and practice in tattered texts, while it came naturally to others, through dreams and delusions at my will.

And the High King of Atrium was no exception.

I had watched the mortal since his birth, his darkness calling to my own even through the veil of our worlds. There was no telling who the male would've become without my interception but I knew within the deepest depths of my realm, that he would be the key to my destiny. Hundreds of years of furtive nightmares and callings steered Durreos to this moment in history.

He was an impeccable pawn for the recreation of chaos within the living realm. He had given those forlorn mortals just a minuscule taste of the wrath that was to come upon my awakening.

And now they danced and rejoiced, thinking that darkness was vanquished once and for all.

Nothing but ignorant, hopeful fools…

All of them.

The fissure crackled, embers of sulfuric fire falling to the sodden terrain beneath us as the portal opened an inch wider. We were on our ninth and final day of waiting for the veil to collapse.

One by one, the Nine Levels of Infernum had opened into one another.

Starting with the three upper levels, Limbus, Libidine, and Gula, overseen by the original Gods of the Divine, Akuma, Helel, and Hyperion. Their leathery, taloned wings led those cursed and deformed souls from one torturous prison and into their next. Over the next five days, the final levels began to crawl towards the lowest pit of hell, reserved for the most wicked souls—my domain—Insidiae.

The levels of Cupiditas, Ira, Haeresis, Violentiam, and Fraus gathered with the abominable souls. Their snaggled faces, hooved feet, and rotting teeth permeated a stench of death, the smell so profound that it began to overpower the brimstone essence.

Every ill-fated soul had to face the atrocities they committed within the realm of the living, that was the karma of the stars. Whichever level of Infernum they were damned to, was the punishment assigned by our Creators.

And that karma was also showcased in their unliving flesh.

Hooves, scales, feathers, horns, and fur littered their bodies in unnatural ways, making even the simplest of movements painful and retching. Their ruddy skins were unsavory, drab colors of putrid yellow, rotting green, and dull gray. Only the remaining Gods that had been cast down into Infernum had kept their beastly corporeal forms, myself not included.

My opalescent scales and talons had been replaced with humanoid skin, the color of crimson. Eyes once the brightest and purest shade of gold were now flaming scarlet. Hooved feet replaced my hulking talons as my body shrunk in size, no larger than the average man.

Upon my revolution against the damnable and hypocritical Creators, they had stripped me of everything .

My power, my world, my talons and scales.

Even my fucking teeth.

I spent millennia building my power back up again, pulling from the brimstone and sulfur and obsidian within this hellscape. Because of that draw of the raw magic, mine was now different from what I was given before by the Creators.

It was coarse and unnerving and sinewy.

I had taken that crude alchemy and had absorbed it with ferocity until onyx bled from my eyes. Then I took that dread and unease, pure angst and horror, and embedded it within my diadem. My power needed an outlet and an anchor. It needed a source to ground it, to keep me from getting lost in that force.

With the assistance of the fellow Gods that followed me in our Rebellion, we forged the Crown of Daemonium within the level of Insidiae. The hellfire shaped my sacrificed bones into obsidian thorns, my opalescent soul traveling into the center stone, a small fraction of myself within.

It answered to me and only me, my very essence embedded within the circlet.

That simple mortal king was convinced he could really bind himself to it, bind himself to me . The very thought was laughable, that the insufferable male could surmount to my power. But the ludicrous idea was needed to convince that power-hungry fool to make a sacrifice of his blood. To speak the Infernal enchantment that would shred the veil placed by our Creators, bridging the gap between the living and the damned.

Charcoal hellfire danced around me as elation built in my gut, the veil continuing to fade by the second. I had waited eons for this moment but that patience waned. Tendrils of flame and darkness stretched out towards that shimmering light, testing its barrier. They withered under the veil's might of the Divine magic that protected it instantly, disintegrating the darkness and flame in mid-air.

Suspense and vehemence warred within me, my impatience building.

"Soon…" I growled, my minions' hooves clicking on the stones behind me. The banished Gods were silent, their crimson eyes blazing into the opening crevice. Smoke billowed out from Fenrir's nostrils as he bared his fangs, the veil becoming thinner and thinner.

Soon I would enter the mortal realm along with the army of hell behind me, reclaiming it as mine once more. So fucking soon that I could taste the earth's sweet soil on the tip of my tongue.

More blood pooled into the soil beneath the light, sinking further and sizzling on the stones. My magic grew stronger, fire burning hotter and brighter than before, snapping out at the veil. The Crown of Daemonium was whispering its sweet song of endless power to me, calling to my soul to place it upon my fiery skull and bask in its glory.

The bright golden light of the veil dimmed as the High King of Atrium's blood finished oozing into my realm as a sacrifice. My fire reached out again and engulfed the passage, no longer snuffed out by the Divine magic in place.

So fucking close.

My creatures stirred restlessly, their hooves stomping into the cracked and scorched stones. They had also waited millennia for this moment. Planned endlessly while living in our shadows, pulled the strings of the puppets within the living realm, and defied the laws set in place by the Fates. We could not cross over into the land of the living without our souls being lost into the nothingness we feared.

We did not fear much because we were what most had nightmares of.

We were terror personified.

We were fear.

But that nothingness that would suspend our souls for all of eternity?

No feeling, no body, no nothing.

That was something that could make even the most vile of creatures shiver and cower. And that threat was enough to keep us in this Infernal place that the Divine had placed us in centuries ago.

Until now.

Crimson sank beneath the veil, the last of the king's blood darkening that once luminous glow into nothing but a black endless void. "Master," one of my creatures snarled, its jagged and yellowed teeth illuminated by the hellfire surrounding us. "Is it time?"

A bolt of flame shot out from my outstretched palm but it disappeared into the abyss, the light blinking out. My little chess pieces, the Gods and the mortal rulers, moved upon the board, directly into the game I had designed. I smiled cruelly, my rotting face stretching harshly from the movement as I raised my clawed hands into the air.

"It is time to take what is rightfully ours!" My command echoed, all Nine Levels of Infernum trembling as the army of nightmares raged on into the night. The inferno thickened around me, the power of Infernum filling my blackened veins as I took a powerful step forward and straight into the realm of the living.