He reached out. The bone did not burn him. It fused. The ichor crawled up his arm, and for the first time in ten years, the broken horn on his head began to glow.
That word— Before —made Zagan's blood, still thick and hot despite the decade of decay, stir for the first time in years. Before the defeat. Before the seal. Before his shame.
The Demonion. The Heart of Chaos. The God-Machine. It had been the source of his power, a living fortress of bone and brass that ate souls and birthed armies. When the Liberators struck, they had shattered it. They believed they had scattered its pieces to the ends of the mortal realm, sealed in blessed shrines and sunken temples. Demonion Gaiden 01
Zagan didn't turn. "Vizier Kael. I thought you’d abandoned me for the goblin courts."
Below, the city of Malachar sprawled in ruin. Where once legions of demons marched in perfect terror, now only ragged ghouls and orphaned imps scavenged. The human heroes—the so-called "Liberators"—had won a decade ago. They had sealed the Hell Gates, shattered his generals, and driven the remnants of his army into the deep places of the world. He reached out
Kael's mandibles clicked in a dry approximation of a smile. "A fragment. Of the Demonion."
To be continued in Demonion Gaiden 02: The Blooding of Thornwood. The ichor crawled up his arm, and for
"The village of Thornwood," Kael hissed. "A day's march west. They found something in the old mine shaft. Something from the Before."
The sky over the Demon Lord’s Citadel was the color of a bruise. Not the vibrant, angry purple of a fresh wound, but the sickly yellow-gray of one that had festered for a decade.
Lord Zagan, once the Scourge of the Six Realms, stood alone on the obsidian battlements. His armor, a masterpiece of hell-forged carapace, was cracked. His great horns, one broken at the tip, no longer blazed with crimson fire. In his hand, he held not a sword, but a half-empty bottle of fermented void-grapes.