Chapter 4
=========

I readied myself for the evening's festivities, dressing myself in the latest
fashion provided by my own Lady Nifilhema who had so graciously allowed me to
stay with her for who knows how long. My ruined silken pants had been replaced
with a pair that was so immaculately tailored by the tailor of Shallamar that I
could hardly complain. Blue was my colour tonight as it had seemed to match the
colour that my skin had took on in transformation from my time on the cosmic
plane.

The villa provided by Lord Gorgaliel was the most beautiful in all the lands of
Shallamar, a palace for his Queen and the highest mark of beauty and envy. She
collected treasures of the aesthetic sort, including people. Her menservants
were able-bodied though rendered eunuchs at the behest of the Lord while her
handmaidens were flawless and fit to win any beauty pageant amongst Viscanti
women on prime.

I finished buttoning my overcoat as I drew through the wing of the estate
towards the rapturous sound of the melody from the ball room. And when I entered
I saw a skylight of crystal, showering the room with rainbow luminescence.
Dancing partners twirled and turned, stepping in a tight rigid fashion of
control and discipline. One. Two. One. Two. Each man was clad in the latest
style of scaly overcoat ranging from blues, reds, and green skins and the women
were clad in lacy whites and seemed similarly dressed as if in uniform. A single
couple stood out in the crowd, dressed in a sheer silken dress and her partner
was clad in a black suit unlike the other men of the ball. They were enamoured,
their steps passionate, their bodies close. All others were accessories to this
very couple. It was their court and their ball and as the highlights of the
evening, they were destined to enjoy the evening centre floor as a whirlwind of
love and nobility.

And then I saw another man approach, his steps were calculated and his stride
to the couple forbade a sense that the lovely dance would soon come to a end. He
bypassed the dancers, those accessories that twirled about in time with their
lord and lady or stood alongside the floor in awe of the court. All danced in
time with the steps, save the trespasser who no one seemed to notice but I.

I longed only to watch the dancers until I might catch a break in the song to
join with this evening's love who seemed to be watching me from a table nearest
the feast that was being brought in. She was a beauty but even her charm and wry
smiles were unable to tear me from the atrocity amidst the floor. What gall did
this man have to ruin this song, what standing in the lands might he have to
cross through the very hall of our Lord to disrupt our Queen's dance.

He stopped by the couple, resolute in his stance and leaned in to whisper a
message about apologies for his late arrival and how he might steal this dance
and the couple stopped suddenly. The Queen paused, I could not see her face or
the emotion. Perhaps she was enraged, perhaps she was taken aback. Oh, but I
could see the man's face. I could see the anger building, the hate, the rage,
the jealousy. I folded my arms about my chest thinking of what blasphemies and
barbarism might come to this most noble of dance halls on this eve, something to
swell the courts of Nifilhema and lend chatter to the dull mornings I had spent
with the other nobles. My daydream for violence in such a place was snapped away
as I heard the lady squeak with utter giddiness as she leapt into the arms of
the trespasser leaving behind the enraged man. The face of rage had changed into
complacency as he looked on at his woman hugging another man and he simply bowed
and turned towards me, leaving the floor and coming to a halt at my side to
stare back on at the couple in silence. A silence which I hesitantly broke.

"My dear Lord. What treachery is this, he stands with your woman on your
floor?" I asked with open curiosity, my eyes shifting between him to the couple.

The lord glanced aside and down to me, for he was quite tall nearly a foot over
me, but this can be expected of the half-formed. His lip curled into a sneer,
"What mockery? You would taunt me, subject?"

The dance had resumed as if nothing had happened, as if no interference had
occurred and Lady Nifilhema danced on with the new man with no attention or even
the simplest of glances in our direction. It was as entrancing as before I am so
sure, but I was not able to look that way as the near red-faced Lord looked down
at me.

"No disrespect, my lord. Simple conversation." I stammered, clearing my throat
and bowing my head.

Before he could respond, my night's love and her companion came rushing over
towards us but it was not my attention they sought as I had thought. "Duke
Ashtorath. It is so good to see you." The two said in unison with a dainty
curtsey towards the man at my side. "You looked so enthralling on the floor, my
lord."

The emotion in his face drained as a practised courtly nature and chivalry took
its place. "Oh yes, madams. I would think that even after a month or two's work
of making treatises with the divine and using only the verbal tongue, that my
body language would not lose its allure." Ashtorath flashed a charming smile at
them, vainly coaxing back his already perfectly bound hair.

As Ashtorath turned and led them off, I looked back to Gorgaliel and Nifilhema.
Perhaps the couple was not so beautiful as she and Ashtorath or perhaps it was
that Ashtorath had sullied my night by escorting the one I meant to couple with
by the end of the evening away to a table to listen to him drone on about
himself till late hours of the night. I was agitated and I could barely hear the
voice coming from behind me as I was so viciously tapped and prodded on the
shoulder.

"Sir. Sir. Sir. You need-" I glanced back, looking at the fat little man that
was the party's odd butler who had been tending to other's guests wants. The
room still grew darker and I felt a tinge in my stomach as I looked back to the
floor, the sweeping couples now shades of the former beauty that I once had
envisioned. I felt reviled now, sickened as I looked towards Ashtorath's table
and saw a festering darkness curl about the table's legs as if the room suddenly
took on a fog of tainted clouds about the floor. The walls bled with shadow and
the ceiling cracked and began to collapse in on itself.

"Sir. Sir. Sir." Each tap, each syllable that escaped the fat one's mouth
brought out a new shade of darkness and more nausea to my stomach. I clenched my
teeth, cold sweat beading atop my forehead. The place was shrinking, the walls
were closing in.

"Sir. Sir. Sir." Ugh, I hated him and yet how he would not stop until he had my
attention and when I looked back to him from the transformation of the room that
I saw about me, the fat one had taken on the shape of distortion and shadow. I
blinked heavily, wanting to expel this sickness that had overwhelmed my body and
mind. And as if my subconscious answered this call for purity, I doubled over
and heaved out my guts and blood, spitting out all I could to the ground.

I peeled open my eyes, my hands holding my stomach together as I rose to half
my height, still weakened by this endeavour and I looked to where the fat one
was standing. He laughed at me and I mustered up the harshest of swaps at his
head till he flapped his wings, wings I just noticed at the moment of the throw
of my hand and dodged entirely. "Youse need to come wit me, sir." The fat little
imp stated.

As the blood-red haze left my eyes, I looked about me. I was surrounded by the
dead gardens of Nifilhema, the lacklustre beauty of the remains of the twisted
chateau's surroundings amidst the wastes of Nil. And it was at this moment,
newly found from my delusions that I could sense the emptiness that the taint
had wrought on this place.

Chapter 5
=========

The fat demon guided me and led me onward towards the deserts of Nil and left
me for dead there, claiming that the Lord Luciphage would have me receive no
other aid then to endure this trip of hellfire and frostbite alone.

As I regained my bearings and sought some sense of direction from my delusions,
I noticed the extent of my transformation for the first time. My indulgences had
certainly had their toll on me -the tortures I endured and the weight of my
damnation that I faced had twisted my once handsome and noble features into that
of the demonic and damned. My skin was dry as if I had not bathed or been
treated by my servant girls with aloes and herbs in over a thousand years, and
the flesh had begun to transform into the marks of callous scales akin to a weak
exoskeleton that would form on a newly born insect. Behind me drug the weight of
a scorpion tail, barbed with a tip coated in a venomous secretion.

My body ached as I pushed onward over a perilous climb of a dune, each slip of
the foot causing me to bury my hand in the scalding sand below to regain my
footing so that I would not end up burying my face in it. Each plunge of my hand
near burnt my fingers to the bone but each time I would chant the rituals taught
to me in my youth, healing the wounds but leaving the scars.

I remember asking during my teachings, "Father, why is it that we are left with
our scars when we use the power of our healing rituals?" He looked at me with
mixed emotion in those days, a careful love of discipline and contempt. My
spoiled life was not one he was used to, he had brought our family to its
pinnacle and here I was to enjoy it without one bead of sweat from my brow
"Because the mistakes we make are forever borne upon our bodies, minds, and
souls and wounds may fade but the scars are forever with or without magic."

A bead of sweat rolled down the tip of my nose and dripped off, never touching
the scalding ground as the moisture disappeared in the air. My throat was dry, I
cared nothing for the desires of greed nor lust. These desires I held were
purely physiological. How I hated that man for making me endure this, how I
hated myself for agreeing to it. Murder. Treachery. Poison. Anything would have
taken him out of his misery and left me the head of the family as I chose to do
things the honourable way and submit myself to this final task for him. Death
wishes. May his be that I succeed in this as he wished and may mine be that he
rots in the pits of Nil.

Each grain of sand was like a needle of pure fire. It filled my boots, it
clogged my pours, the winds whipped them into my hair and mouth and choked with
me smoke and fire. The enormity of my task weighed on me, this was the realm of
Lord Ashtorath and as I climbed the next dune on I looked out at the barren
kingdom of ice and fire, I paused to contemplate on the vast stretches of land
in this domain of hate and suffering. And despite its great proportions with
lands fit to torture vast armies of the Duke of Inescapable Rage, it remains
empty aside from the occasional mess of charred bone of a creature or humanoid.

Unlike the Queen's, whose holdings showed a fragmented shade of life and
prosperity from the days before and even now teemed with servants and victims of
suffering, nothing could endure the raging elements of this land for long and
the souls bound to the Duke were either destroyed outright or kept elsewhere for
it seemed none of his damned were within this realm. Despite that, centred upon
the realm of hellish nothing, was a tower of great magnitude. It dominated and
ruled this land, carved of volcanic rock and penetrating the hellish skies of
fire and soot.

I approached the Tower of the Duke, battling the harshest, most hateful
elements that this pit of Nil might afford, a fear welled up in my heart that
might cause me to turn back and run in terror. But the thought of enduring those
wastelands yet again for nothing caused the fear to subside. I would not blame
it on a strength of character for enduring the court of Duke Ashtorath, my own
weak willpower would not let me turn back for I knew that I would be a charred
mess of skeleton before I escaped these lands without his pact. And I stood at
the foot of His tower in front of a large door that was flanked by two demons
that worked as centurions for Him alongside the mockery of two crucified
paladins who barely lived and kept watch with their demon counterparts. They
were dressed in rusted armour emblazoned with the mark of Ashtorath and beyond
skeletal, their sunken eyes assessed me and nodded me onward, prompting the
demons to open the gates.

I ascended the tower of Lord Ashtorath, each step groaning out like one of
those tortured. The walls were decorated with the barely living with people
nailed to it at odd angles and screaming out in pain and rage. These were the
sinners of emotions. They had taken their battle rage, lust, hate, and anger too
far. They had been consumed and now they were left there to bellow out for
eternity, the screaming drowned out only by the sound of bells from the tower's
peak.

I ascended to the pinnacle of this mammoth structure, climbing flight after
flight of stairs to an apex that would perhaps be over the height of three
mortal castles stacked atop each other. And as my phobia of heights intensified
and each step became a measure of balance and poise to keep from falling, a hand
lashed out to grab me. It latched onto me and nearly made me fall but I held
its grasped and it held my attention, my black eyes turning on the wall to which
it hung, its owner crucified with this spare limb having been turned from the
arm of the cross with no doubt the most painful of efforts.

"Save me." The woman was perhaps beautiful once, patches of hair of a copper
hue falling from her charred scalp and her green eyes shining with luminescence
that they probably did as a mortal. She was marked with the highest bonds of
praise due to a Celestine, her own pacts evident to all the Supernals and yet
marring the centre of her forehead was the sigil of Ashtorath, glowing like a
fiery red brand that left her in eternal revulsion. But when she noticed my own
marks she cried out in revulsion, "Infidel!" Tears ran down her charred face,
pain evident in her features. She released my hand, scorning my help as the only
one who might save her. She knew how long till the next traveller might come
along, perhaps a decade, a century, never. But her pride would not let me save
her, her arrogance was unmatched, and at that moment of her rejection her body
scorched aflame and she cried out in pain as she writhed helplessly on the
cross. Another man nearby, marked with the same sigils roared in rage for his
beloved, swearing the death of all those betrayers and demons most foul if only
he should free himself, and the demons flocked to goad him and taunt him before
he too was set alight to burn like a shrub in a dry brushfire.

I have to give credit to the couple, for even in death they were either
incredibly stupid or incredibly overzealous or some combination of the two but
perhaps that was the crime of all those who cross Ashtorath. But as I neared the
apex of the tower that challenged the heavens themselves, the screams seemed
distant as I came upon yet another pair of doors guarded by demons and paladins.
Accepted once again, I moved forward as they were opened to reveal the grandeur
of suffering and hatred that was the Duke's inner sanctum.

The Duke enjoyed a throne of blackened bone and ruby amidst a feigned noble
court. Ragged, damned old men dressed in shackles and silks about him all spoke
of strategy, war, and history of olden times and attempted to humour the Duke
with tales of the future conquests that the Demon Lord might accomplish and of
how the stars foretold his coming victory. Women chattered nearby, some masking
tears as their anklets and bracelets of metal that bound them seared scars into
once flawless skin. They offered loveless smiles to the Duke when he afforded
them attention with each smile attempting to purvey the message of submission to
the almighty Demon Lord. The throne-room was a hive of activity as it bustled
with those sophisticated of Nil who bore the mark of Ashtorath. Their crimes
were simple - great ambition, passion that fuelled them to beyond moral
boundaries. Scientists who defied the concepts of the Fates, lovers who had
slain others in jealousy, nobles who sought great fortunes, traitors who denied
kinship for their own wellbeing, warriors who sought glory. The most perverse
court of nobility flawed to the very core of its existence for those marked as
such were not the nobles of Nil. It was what they were made to seem whilst they
were the worst rabble.

And yet the Duke looked out on them with amusement for they amused him and yet
he seemed to quietly seethe all the while. "Babelion, come." His nostrils flared
when he spoke as he snapped his fingers and a loyal demon general reported
promptly to his side, "Yes, my liege." Ashtorath eyed the demon with a beady red
stare, his hand jerking up and curling about the creatures throat. "Why have the
newest damned have yet to arrive from the river of souls, I hunger for more
entertainment and these bore me. What kingdom is this with dull entertainers and
old, worn hags for my lady accompaniment." He gestured aside to the shackled
beauties which hid their reaction of insult, probably far too tired from the
years spent there appeasing this master.

The demon general continued on with excuses, his face clearly showing one of
regret, "My lord it seems others are committing more reasonable sins these days,
not flying into the fits of rage but using calculation and reason or else
succumbing the whims of lust and desire. And to be honest, you ate the last
batch of merian entertainers without even bothering to be entertained first."

I begin to meander about the crowds and a demon found me, grabbing my arm and
waiting to herald my entrance after the Lord had conducted his business. And so
there I stood, uninvited and waiting to endure the leftover wrath of what
Ashtorath would not expend on this worthless peon.

Ashtorath wrenched the demon's neck in one smooth snap, twisting it about so
the back of his head saw to the front and the front to the back and to make it
more appropriate, he turned the creature about so its back and face now looked
upon him. "Bring me of worth to this court NOW or I will make you take a look at
your insides, THRALL."

The demon next to me then piped up as the general had trouble, with his now
backwards head, finding his way off to view the various damned and bound that
might please the Duke.

"I announce to the most high court of Nil, the blood and direct descendant of
our Champion Amarot." Ashtorath feigned a short clap that ended after two taps
which ignited the court with a rapturous applause of my presence. Arrogance
swelled in me and it showed but that prompted the Lord Ashtorath sneer as he
called me forth.

"Come forward, metamortal, I can see your transformation is not complete and
that must be your want of me. You want power from me." The court was silent as
it looked on at us, we were the new spectacle for all. "It is not an easy
exchange but I shall see what it is we can barter, come kneel to the master of
the domain and ruler of all that you see." His voice was unlike anything I had
ever heard, perhaps like a divine's but to see such a thing manifest unnerved
me.

My voice cracked when I spoke, a mixture of the dryness from outside and an
inner fear. "My L-lord." I dropped down to both knees, forehead kissing the cold
volcanic rock beneath.

A faint laughter echoed from Him and all of His within the hall, brief
entertainment to the eternity before them. And I saw the demon general leading
forth a flamboyant elfen of the Wilde towards the centre of the hall. He was
shackled and clearly vain for he attempted to hold the black shackles at arm's
length from the white, fresh silk that was clad on him.

"Sing, Elfen." The demon general said with a shove of the creature forward. The
elfen winced and stumbled forward, his gait awkward and exaggerated as he closed
the distance to the Lord's throne.

Ashtorath beckoned me forth to a chair at his right hand, patting the seat and
gesturing that I sit to enjoy the show alongside him so that we might discuss
after the festivities.

The elfen smiled charismatically, still unmarked from the harshness of these
lands and he bowed to his audience. He parted his lips, twirling about like a
true performer as he began to sing. "When I was homeeee, there was a placeeeee,
that I could goooooo-oooHOHOAH-AHHHHHHHH." Just as he hit the high-note a cross
emerged from the ground itself, spiking him to it and causing him to scream out
in anguish and suffering that all within the hall applauded for.

Ashtorath clearly enjoyed his own doing, laughing joyously and clapping his
hands together. "Oh, another line of that and I fear I would have slain the
entire room. He sounds much better on the cross than on his own two feet." The
screaming never stopped as Ashtorath spoke, the accompanying 'song' lasting for
quite some time until the elfen lost his endurance and passed out from loss of
blood.

His silks ruined and his body weak and huffing near lifelessly, some demons
scampered in and uprooted the cross, taking it to a nearby wall to hang it from
a large hook to add to the decoration of the room.

Ashtorath leaned back into his throne, flaring his nostrils once again as he
drew in the smell off fresh blood. His eyes then alight with fire, turning
promptly to me to which he grabbed me up by what remained of my collar and drew
me in close. He smelled once, and then again. "I know that scent. YOU HAVE BEEN
WITH HER!" He tossed me aside like a doll, rising up from his seat to stand at a
gigantic height. "SHE IS MINE AND YOU BEAR HER SCENT. I SMELL THE PACT ITSELF,
SON OF AMAROT, WHAT GIFTS DID YOU GIVE HER. WHAT TRIALS DID SHE HAVE OF YOU."

I scampered away like a swatted fly, reeling back on the floor on my backside
using my feet and hands to repel me backwards from the approaching monster. I
had to be quick, I had to be smart lest I be crushed and made an example of
before this court of unholy jesters, fools, and 'nobles.' "I promised her
suffering, Lord. And I promise you her as your queen. I am but always your
servant, Master of Nil."

He was pleased and my promises that exceeded the imagination were accepted.
Flames engulfed me and I felt the pact of our strengths collide as I writhed
helplessly on the floor. The scales of my body reflexively seemed to grow
stronger in this moment, quenching the fire's thirst and protecting me as I
writhed about. "My strength is with you, now OUT OF MY COURT." A demon gathered
me up and escorted me out, tossing me down a chute of fire and garbage that
tossed me aside to the wastes of the desert.

It was not as hot as I remembered it, or perhaps I had bartered my soul to
endure these pains but I knew I was almost done and where the fires of the
desert lacked, my hatred burned for I would kill the man that sent me on this
trip and all that he had would be mine.

Chapter 6
=========

The black demon who had so promptly tossed me out of Lord Ashtorath's tower
emerged from the sand in a twist of shadow and smoke. "Come, your task is not
over. You handled yourself well, metamortal. Baalphegar has sent me to collect
you and ensure that the rage of Ashtorath did not destroy you entirely."

I rose to my feet, the tattered remains of my clothing were barely clinging to
my form and I sighed tiredly as I nodded in compliance with the demon. I
appreciated an intelligent guide for once and began to be led on through the
deserts to where he might take me.

"You have come far for one so weak." The shapeless demon said, seeming to be
made of the shadows themselves, its voice a hoarse whisper.

The rage I felt for the demon's words was drowned out merely by the fact I
wished to be done with this and return home. I thought of throttling my father,
of spitting on him as he breathed his last breath. My daydreams kept me going
through the twisted lands up till the very fields of Baalphegar.

Spidery webs weave their way before us, seeming to go on forever and clinging
to the odd tree, cross, or any other thing that might maintain their structure
and vast sovereignty over the lands. As one might imagine fog on the horizon
going on for ages, this was how the spiderwebs of Lord Baalphegar's fields were
built to trap any and all who passed through into his domain. Though ironically
there was one place that was left without webbing though it had the thickest
surroundings with the other areas thinning out so as to confuse those who
approached to think that they went deeper into the domain.

The damned of Baalphegar remained entangled and upon closer inspection, none
had eyes or ears and instead were left with empty sockets and stumps of ears as
they wandered the featureless fields in attempt to escape their damnation. The
shambling hordes of zombie-like sufferers kept close together, falling into the
webbing and remaining trapped for some time before crossing the empty fields
with no evidence to any sign of escape and as they might go on without any
nearby webbing for some time and hope might find them, they would eventually
come upon another wall which would usually prompt the deaf, dumb, and blind to
cry out and scream in despair as they hoped for some way to end their existence.

These here, the plotters, the planners, the ones who sought forbidden knowledge
in exchange for their souls, the ones who committed treason or great treachery
against friends and family for the sake of conniving hate. They were the ones
who lacked the emotion in their crimes against their fellows but rather
committed them with cruel calculation for their own benefit or the downfall of
others.

The dull lands of Baalphegar offered little obstacle to those who saw purpose
in what they were doing and the demon led me onward to a monastery surrounded by
another wall of webbing to keep out trespassers of the damned.

We entered the dank cloister of the monastery that was filled with a deadened
silence and the faint drip-drop of fluid from the nearby moisture of Lord
Gorgulu's realms that no doubt infested the damp halls. The demon led me onward,
not breaking the silence until we found a library with walls of books and
counters filled with jars of eyes of various sizes and colours, ears of various
shapes, and tongues of various lengths. The shadows possessed this room and
drown out all light save for a candle in the centre of a table and the shapeless
demon dispersed into a black cloud before reforming into a replica of yours
truly. It looked like my old self before the pacts had changed me in every way,
a weak, frail spoiled young brat clad in silks and gaudy jewellery.

"I am Lord Baalphegar, your former guide and now your councillor and judge. You
will answer to me before you pass further into the lands of Nil for your pact
with Luciphage."

A devious smirk crossed the lips of Baalphegar as me, he was no doubt pleased
that I came to his inner sanctum with no protest. He took up his residence at
the centre table, drawing forth a jar of eyeballs and taking out matching set
and crushing them in his hands as a fluid drained into a pot of ink. "Sit."

I watched in fascination as he dipped the quill into the pot of eye juices and
ink and began to dutifully scribe. This is what I would look like if I cared for
my studies, such refinement, such control, such sweeping motions in his
penmanship as he titled some parchment and set to work. I saw a mirror image of
me from when I might return, scribing out the will of my favour and
appropriating all good things to my name and how I was giddy with enjoyment.

"You wish a pact but you are not ready for what I would ask."

I opened my mouth to speak but my shade of a clone spoke first, Baalphegar
speaking with my own voice towards me. "Your weakness is still there and I would
not have my mark set upon you. Those outside sacrificed all the had so that they
might achieve some greatness and you still give faulty gifts to the emotional
and baseless Demon Lords. You give an empty soul to the forgotten King. You give
sacrifices of passion which are easily found to the Queen. You give promises of
emotion to a frenzied Duke. But I am without such needs and am beyond that...
you, son of Amarot, are not ready for the pact I would ask."

"Tell me, Lord Baalphegar. What is it I must do to be ready for what you would
have of me?" I sat across from him, surely we were in some odd world where two
of me sat on each side of a table one with quill and paper and the other
without. One with infinite knowledge and one ignorant. One with all the markings
of nobility and another clad in rags.

He hardly had time for me, he was more enraptured with some story he was
weaving on the parchment before him. "These eyes, Amarot... they are the eyes of
those who have seen crimes, seen treachery, seen undoings. And so I take them
from my damned and scribe them in the books that you see lining the walls. With
their tongues and ears, I hear the secrets, know their thoughts, and speak their
lies. I know all... even without these keepsakes. But I prefer to take them so
that it leaves those within my realms without the things that they used.
Sacrifice, son of Amarot. You must be ready to sacrifice. He plucked two more
eyes from the jar and rolled them towards me and they looked eerily up at me,
lifeless. I scooped up the eyes at his bidding and pocketed them.

"Go to the Supreme Lord." And with that I found myself in darkness, suffocating
darkness so that I fell to the floor and held myself through but I could see
some shifting flicker of a light deeper into the darkness. And despite the fear
that overwhelmed me, I forced myself deeper into that which I feared and emerged
in a labyrinth crafted of the tortured souls bond to Luciphage. All that he had
damned protected his passageway to him and they misguided me, lurching out of
the wall and pointing different ways, grabbing at me, trying to lure me along
the wrong path or into the wall itself.

I lacked for a sense of direction but the demons floated about as if they knew
where they were going but none responded to me as if I were a ghost to them. I
continued going up stairs, down stairs, taking a right and ending up at the same
turn only a moment later. Desperation and sickness made me tired and I wished
only to escape so that this pent up rage within me might be unleashed on that
sickly old man in his deathbed. How I would make him suffer for this. I pressed
forward and took another turn but then I heard a laughter behind me. I turned
about with a start and rushed around the corner I had just turned as if
something might be there waiting for me...

And it was, the Supreme Lord stood there in all his strength and power, a
swirling aura of the dark and damned souls empowering him and shifting about his
very form. He held no court here for it was an empty throne-room with a small
study off to the side. An hourglass was at a table next to him and he laughed
once again as I entered the unworldly light of his chamber.

"Just. In. Time. Blood of Amarot. And here I thought your father had failed me.
You have come for the pact, no doubt?" Each syllable was said with a step closer
to me and I watched him draw closer. I smiled, nodding along to the words of
Luciphage as he watched me with much amusement. "I have watched you for some
time blood of Amarot, and I had thought that your father would never get you to
come here. You are a spoiled, privileged little brat. You are vengeful, full of
hatred and greed. You are more than a fitting replacement for your father."

Luciphage moved suddenly and I realised how akin we had grown in looks, I had
the horns, scales, and barbed tail of the Supreme Lord and I muttered a humble
prayer for the gifts I had been bestowed in my time upon the tainted plane.
"Tell me, Amarot. What guise did your father lure you to me under?"

"He said that I would replace him in all ways for he is your champion and most
prized fighter and it is through you that I must gain power and seek my pact,
Supreme Lord." I called out with certainty, I was ready. Forget Baalphegar with
the Supreme Master's blessing surely I could end that man's miserable life.

He picked a warped soul from his dark aura and displayed it in his palm, a
clear view of my father carrying on about town much like I did, healthy beyond
anything he had been in the last twenty years at least. "Yes, yes... replace
him. But to what degree, young one. I called for his soul and he has sent yours
instead. His time is up and since you are here to take his place, he shall have
a few more years to enjoy the prime plane but you... no, you are mine." At the
moment of this dark revelation my body reeled with immeasurable pain and the
demons of the realm uplifted their voices in one harsh screech as a dark sigil
formed on my forehead and a deep pact of damnation formed with the Supreme Lord.
Twin posts equipped with shackles emerged from the ground and wrapped about my
wrists and ankles. I felt the absence of my tongue as I called out to scream but
couldn't.

Luciphage in all his dark glory looked on at me with that handsome smirk that
might have wooed so many in his days of Shallamar and said, "I am the tainted
Supreme Lord of Nil, false and empty promises bear no weight with me. I am your
Lord, and you are now damned."