Chapter Text
The Infernal Abyss is a hellish place that serves its purpose as a torturous prison well. Demons, Wraiths, and damned souls littered the abyss; the screams of damned souls being tortured filled the air and would be a sign for most sane and insane people to find the nearest way out as soon as possible, but for the Abyss’ master, it was what had become normal. The Infernal Overlord stood before the ruined portal out of the Abyss. He idly wondered how long he had been trying to find a way out, to find a way to force the portal to open again. He quickly shook such thoughts from his mind, to dwell on how many thousands of years he had tried and failed to escape would only discourage his current efforts.
The Infernal Overlord, once known as a lowly knight, then the personal guard for Sir William the Black, then the Eighth Hero, then the Overlord, now the Infernal Overlord; God of the Infernal Abyss, Master of Demons and Wraiths. But he didn’t feel like a master, only a prisoner. The Abyss portal gate was a golden slab with a sunburst design engraved on it, surrounded by a greyish-black stone with the section before the Infernal Overlord being carved out into steps. Surrounding the slab were several dozen jagged black rocks with orange lightning streaking across their faces, floating in a wide dome around it. Orange light pulsed in the center of the slab and for a moment seemed to expand slightly before fizzling out into nothingness.
The Infernal Overlord felt a slight pang of irritation as that marked failed attempt number-whatever it was; it was closer than he had ever gotten before, but that was a hollow comfort. He then felt a presence behind him as well as a feeling of muted sorrow and pity. “Another failure, Master?” The succubus Rayne asked as she flew closer. She has shoulder-length fiery-orange hair, tied back in a tight bun to keep it from falling into her face, four reddish-purple wings, a pair of ridged horns protruding from her head, a slender tail that ends in a sharp bone spike, and she is wearing a robe that, while loose, was more for comfort rather than sensuality.
“And how did you figure that out?” He “said” sarcastically; he couldn’t actually talk due to an injury gained from when he was mortal, but being the god of the Abyss allowed him to project his thoughts and emotions onto the denizens of the Abyss. So while he couldn’t speak, he could force the words into her mind and the emotions he wanted to connect the words to get the same effect. She had gotten used to this after becoming his advisor and his voice; the former position is obvious, but the latter essentially boiled down to listening to what he had to say and repeating it when he wanted to put someone in their place or was just too tired to “speak” himself.
“The fact that you are still here is the first big clue, the other being that there isn’t an Abyss-wide party being thrown for someone getting out.” She said matter-of-factly, as she briefly glanced over the portal, as if the answer to escape would simply jump out at her. “I hate to say this, but as your advisor, I must. Don’t you think that you’ve tried everything by now?” She said in a small, pained voice, as if the mere suggestion burned her like fire. He grunted as he answered her.
“The Forgotten God opened a portal out of the Abyss.” He “said” as he tried to think of variations of the ritual he could do for the next attempt.
“The Forgotten God was also a lot older than you, and he was always a god, so he had a lot more experience than you do, Master.” She pointed out as she loosened her robe a little more, the Abyss was constantly hot, and there weren’t many places in the Abyss where you could go without running into a fire of some kind. She seemed to hesitate for a moment before she spoke again, “As your advisor, I would recommend that you give up trying to escape the Abyss and just try to enjoy what time you have.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye before he “spoke” to her.
“And as a fellow prisoner of the Abyss?” He “asked” in a curious tone. She gave a small grin that was halfway between a smirk and a smile.
“Don’t ever stop until you get out. This place is hell for everyone, and every moment in it wears you down a little bit more. If you can keep trying, then don’t stop.” She said with passion, one of the worst features of the Abyss was its ability to grind away souls until they became Wraiths. Wraiths were souls that had been inside the Abyss for so long that they became servants of it that were more akin to golems than people, given how they forgot everything about who they were and became a part of the Abyss. This was a purposeful feature made by the goddess who created the Abyss, The Mother Goddess, who did so to serve as a prison for her unfaithful husband, The Forgotten God. The fact that being in the Abyss alone is enough to make you forget yourself, and it affected both the living and dead, was only one of the many little twists of a knife for The Forgotten God, who had forgotten his own name long before the Infernal Overlord killed him.
The Infernal Overlord himself had begun to forget himself, the name he had been given on his birth, the faces of his parents, if he even had any for his childhood, the names of friends from that time, and so much more that he couldn’t even notice was missing. He gave her a small nod and sent a wave of appreciation and sympathy. While he didn’t have to worry about becoming a Wraith due to being a god, she was only a mortal (a dead mortal, but a mortal nonetheless), and with time, she would forget herself like everyone else. With that, he could feel that she didn’t have anything else to say, and indeed, she turned and began to open her wings to fly away before she hesitated and spoke one last time. “For what it’s worth, Master, good luck.” She said in a hopeful tone as she flashed a small smile, and then she flew away, having said her piece.
He felt despair and hopelessness tug at his heart once again as he thought of his fate as the Master of the Abyss and the fate that every demon and damned soul in the Abyss was doomed to. He chose to push those feelings down again and resolved to try again before calling it a day, not that time really passed in the Abyss, given the constant noontime sun that roasted everything. And so he forced the magic of the Abyss to bend to his will once more and directed it into the floating stones. Once again, the magic latched onto and into the stones and began to fuel the portal gate, which glowed with orange light, once again the magic began to build, but then there was something different. “I don’t want to die.” As a god, he could hear prayers directed to him, but he could also hear prayers that were without direction, to anything that would listen. The simplest way to describe it would be the difference between someone talking to you and someone across the room yelling out. So to hear an open prayer was a surprise to be sure, but not anything new, given how many open prayers are given every day; in fact, he had almost ignored it in favor of focusing on his latest attempt at escape, but there was something about this one prayer that made him listen and then “follow” it with his magic.
“Someone, please help me!” To his surprise, the portal actually held stable and even progressed farther than any of his attempts, taking this as a sign he followed the prayer even harder until his magic created a “window” out of the Abyss, and he saw who had made the prayer. She was a meek-looking human, hanging onto a golden colored axe with a shattered blade. She wore a fairly plain outfit with a skirt; really, the only interesting things about her were that her eyes were a silver color that radiated magic and the white cloak on her back that was stained with her own blood. He gave a light brush against her soul with his magic and learned that her name is Summer Rose, she is a huntress who is trying to stop an immortal witch named Salem, she has a husband, a daughter, and a niece, and that the man trying to kill her works for Salem. The man was wearing clothes that would fit right in with a lower noble, fine clothes made of silk and gold accents but very minimalist with the accents being sparse and patchwork at times, armed with nothing but a fencing rapier and a slightly torn cape, his face was twisted into a smug grin as he effortlessly dodged a clumsy strike from Summer and gave a quick stab into her left shoulder before skipping back out of her range.
While The Infernal Overlord was grateful that she helped him create a hole in the Abyss that he could easily widen to escape, a part of him that sounded like Gnarl, his former advisor before he became trapped, pointed out that he could just leave her to her fate. He owed her nothing, and she was just one mortal; to simply turn his back on her would be beyond easy. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, the voice of Rose, his former wife, even if the minions didn’t understand what the word meant and continued to refer to her as Mistress, scolded him for considering leaving a potential worshiper and the reason he came this far to die, with her last shred of hope being snuffed out. “Please, I just want to see my family again!” With that prayer, his mind drifted for a moment to the family he never got to have, the wife he never got to hold again, the child he never got to hold or watch as they grew up, seeing his son or daughter’s triumphs and the pride he would have felt. With his mind made up, he forced the portal open.
POV CHANGE
Silas Smith was a man who was born for greatness. As a child, he had been a prodigy with any weapon he picked up, but he favored the rapier. The elegance and skill needed to wield a rapier against other weapons was a challenge that appealed to him greatly as a child. By the time he became a teen, he had grown fond of beating his fellow huntsman hopefuls within an inch of their lives, all without breaking a sweat. Such feats gave him fear and awe from his “peers,” and constant scolding from his teachers, who deemed him “too violent,” “unhinged,” and “a threat to everyone around him,” and eventually kicked him out of their school. After being expelled, he struck out on his own for several years before he found a new hobby: learning everything he could from master fencers, then killing them to prove he was the best. A touch simplistic, but who could stop him? Turns out Colonel Ironwood could, as from the moment the bastard saw him leaving his latest victim in a pool of blood and gore, he made it his life’s work to catch him. From Atlas to Mantle to a fishing village on the edge of Atlas, to Argus, then halfway across Mistral, Colonel Ironwood chased him like a drugged-out bloodhound before he got caught. It was in his cell that Salem approached him with an offer, well, one of her lackeys approached him, but the offer came from her, and he had been a loyal soldier ever since.
Truthfully, he was a bit bored with this fight. Summer Rose, one of the last of the Silver Eyed Warriors, was supposed to be the best huntress of her generation. So far, he wasn’t impressed. Half an hour of probing her defences, of glancing cuts against her aura until it shattered, then nicks and cuts against her flesh as he toyed with her and she threw everything she had at him, all to lead to this. A child tearfully clinging to her life as he played with her, if Salem hadn’t wanted her brought back alive, he would have killed this child within the first ten minutes out of boredom. At this point, he was debating whether to finish this now or continue dragging it out. “I wonder how much longer this child can keep going without all that blood?” He thought to himself as he dodged another easily telegraphed attack. “Can’t be much longer until she passes out from blood loss. Although that look of fear and despair mixed with the blood running down her face is quite the look. I’ll have to find some whore and recreate that look when I’m done here.” He thought to himself as he cast an appraising eye over her face, and then that eye slowly drifted downward.
“Hmm, despite being half my age, she is quite easy on the eye.” He began to smirk as the gears turned in his mind and he gave a lazy jab with his rapier to keep her moving. “Salem’s only demand was that she be brought back alive. Salem never mentioned what state the child needed to be in. Besides, why go to the effort of finding someone else and recreating this look when I have the original right here?” He had to suppress a chuckle as his imagination began to show the child broken, bleeding, and terrified under him. He imagined the sounds she’d make, the screams, the moans, the sobbing, the defeated silence as she gave up resisting him. “Yes, I’ll have my fun with the child, then I’ll deliver her to Salem.“ With his mind made up, he quickly changed his stance and delivered a stab to her shoulder, jumping out of her range, intending to finish this fight quickly so he could begin.
All of a sudden, the ground began to shake, at first it was a simple tremor, no stronger than a cat’s purr beneath their feet. Then the world seemed to lurch as Summer was thrown off her feet, and he was tossed halfway up a tree. He chose to cling to it as the sudden earthquake grew stronger. As he turned his head to look around, he noticed that the early afternoon sun had grown dark and seemed to be pulsing as if it were about to explode, dark storm clouds had gathered and shot lightning out at random. He let out a gasp as one of the trees near him was wrenched out of the ground from the roots and was launched across the clearing into other trees. Summer Rose was lying on her back, clutching onto an exposed tree root for dear life. Her broken axe was long forgotten as it bounced like a ball across the clearing. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the earthquake stopped. There were a few moments of lingering rumbles, but those passed quickly, and the sun had gone back to normal; the storm clouds dissipated as quickly as they appeared. He let out a relieved sigh as the adrenaline from that freak natural disaster began to lessen. Only for his every instinct to scream all at once one word, RUN, as a bright light filled the clearing.
When the light disappeared, and he had blinked the spots out of his vision, he saw that there was a giant statue standing right between him and Summer Rose. The statue was of a knight clad in jagged black armor with a tattered and faded red cape wrapped loosely around the shoulders. To call the statue giant was barely an exaggeration; while he wasn’t short by any measure, the statue dwarfed him by several feet to the point that, standing flatfooted, his head was only slightly above the statue’s waist. The statue had a huge sword hanging loosely at its side, though it was more like a giant, slender cleaver than a sword.
The most notable thing about the statue was its glowing blue eyes, which locked onto him as it turned its head to get a better look. “Wait, that’s not a statue!” He thought as he jumped slightly from the shock of the knight moving, and quickly moved into a defensive stance. He gave the knight a deeper look over, tallying up all of the weaknesses he could find, the neck and eyes, and making a list of places that he shouldn’t attack on the knight, everywhere but the neck and eyes. He gave the knight a more careful look, this time focusing on how he held himself, how quickly he drew his blade, how steady he held it, how strong his stance was. “He holds himself like a seasoned warrior. This is a man who has seen war and triumphed through it. This will be my final fight!” Silas thought as excitement filled him. While serving Salem was all well and good, it wasn’t what he could see himself doing for the rest of his life. “I still have about 86% on my aura left from my earlier fight. I’ll beat this knight, celebrate my victory with the child, deliver him and the silver eyes to Salem, and then live the rest of my life fat and happy.” With that thought, he got into an offensive stance and prepared to shove his blade into the eye holes of the helmet.
“I don’t know who you are, but Salem will want to meet you.” He said with a sneer as he leapt forward and activated his semblance, Precision. Precision, as you may expect, makes his strikes more accurate. He felt his sneer fall from his face as the knight simply sidestepped him and swung his blade faster than anyone that size covered in heavy armor should be able to. Silas got about two steps before half of him hit the ground, and with one more step, his other half fell as well. He had been cut diagonally with one strike, as Silas stared at his lower half in shock, many thoughts ran through his mind. But his final thought, one that ran through his mind as the knight turned and approached Summer Rose, was two simple words that he had uttered rarely, and when he did, it was with much contempt. “I lost.”