Interlude: Awareness

The fiendish throne room was a macabre place. It was dimly lit, which was fine for its inhabitants and only accentuated the terror felt by those who were imprisoned in it. Blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids flavored the smell of the throne room. The sounds of hoarse screaming were the auditory backdrops which made being within the throne room a sensory experience.

Demons and mortals alike were imprisoned within the room. In some cases, they were impaled on spikes, or left battered and bleeding within gigantic cages. They were admired as something akin to brutish and senselessly violent art by the non-imprisoned demons within the room.

The room itself was utterly gigantic. It must have been close to twenty meters tall, and around fifty meters wide. It was within a massive palace made of fiendish stone the color of ripe grapes, and the floor, the ceiling, and the walls that surrounded the demons were all the same color. The heart of the room was where a humble-looking dais housed a sleek, ruby-red throne.

The throne itself was being used at this very moment. An eerily human-like demon sat in it, his golden eyes furrowed in frustration and shock. He couldn't believe what he had just heard. He was lost in thought for a moment.

In front of the throne were a number of demons. There were all on their hands and knees, begging their master for mercy. They possessed a number of forms, some were almost humanlike, while others were entirely and obviously monstrous. They whimpered and made disgustingly obsequious sounds, hoping that the sight of their often unseemly bodies in even more unseemly positions would be enough to please the Soluto demon in front of them.

"Son of a bitch. What are the odds?" The demon asked, rhetorically. The creature knew that its servants wouldn't lie to it. And that they couldn't. He had his throne to thank for that. The nearly impossible powerful manifestation of evil and pride let out an angered sigh and then tilted his head to glower at the demons on their knees before him.

"And you all... A god of chaos and evil exists, something that hasn't been the case for half a million years and you come back to tell me, without even bringing it with you?" The demon asked, his delicate voice filling the crowd with an incredible amount of fear. There was anger audible within the demon's strangely soothing voice. And a fury visible within his gaze. A barely contained hurricane of fury.

"It's one thing to fail to secure the acquisition of a new world. It's another thing altogether to confirm that a god walks the universe again, without bringing it back here." The demon hissed, his voice filled with unusual rage and disappointment, mixing into a miasmic rage.

The demon rose a single hand, a distinctly inhuman appendage that ended in scaled claws, and pointed it at one of the demons who was on the floor before it. "Failure." The demon muttered, angered by a number of things and taking it out on a creature that was powerless to stop it.

A bolt of violet light shot out of the tip of the demon's claw and dashed towards the demon until it collided with the evil monstrosity. The creature was effortlessly hit by the destructive and dangerous light, which proceeded to coil around it like a whip, or a snake and lift it into the air.

"Gah!" The victim of Agustino's attack roared, shouting in pain as demonically powered chaos lifted it up and scourged its flesh. The demon, a weirdly bovine creature, began to make unmanly noises as its body was subjected to Agustino's wrath.

"Failures." Agustino muttered, not even bothering to get up from his throne. The strange attack lifted the cow-like demon higher into the air.

"Deserve." The demon continued, as he intensified the amount of power he put into the potent and natural attack. The attack mutated, transforming from a strange burst of lightning into a continuous whip of violet fire that seemed to come out of the demon's fingertip.

"Pain." He finished, a smirk slowly emerging on his face. The fire intensified, causing the temperature of the room to rocket up. The fire visibly intensified to the point that the demon vanished entirely within it.

It was at this point that the other demons reacted to the display of brutality before them, by shooting up and hurrying to their feet. The fastest of them could even manage to turn their heads in the direction of the nearest exits out of the throne room. Not that that helped. Agustino was faster than they were.

The demon simply snapped a few of his other fingers together. The sound rang out and filled the throne room with noise. It was impossibly loud given the cause of the noise. Agustino's minions, aside from the bovine-demon still trapped in the conflagration, froze in fear as the sound echoed far and wide within the palace. And as they heard other things rumble to life and begin a flurry of motion, violence, and action.

The first thing to occur that was immediately visible to the demons was the floor that led them in and out of the throne behind them beginning to explode. The once flat, evenly paved surface was suddenly cracked and destroyed by a sudden earthquake-like burst of gigantic, ebony-colored spikes that smashed through the floor of the throne room. These black-spikes ruptured the floor and sped towards them with frightening accuracy.

The next thing to happen was the sudden appearance of new foes. The empty air above the demons was suddenly not empty. Strange fusions of women and gigantic bats, harpies, seemed to phase into existence just below the throne room's massive ceiling. The monstrous women cackled, their shrill laughter enraging some of the demons who were now facing either enemies or obstacles from three directions.

For a moment the throne room was strangely peaceful. At least relative to other places within the Heart of Darkness, the strange dimension all demons called home. The only real action in the gigantic room was the constant motion of the spikes towards the demons. That changed when the first of the harpies got foolishly brave and attempted to attack one of the demons.

The harpy, a hauntingly beautiful woman who had the wings of a gigantic bat where her arms should have been, sped towards an incubus. The incubus, enraged at his predicament didn't think his response to her aggression through and instead of using his desire-based powers opted to lash out at her. Or at least lash out at her as much as he could, given her protected status that shielded her from true harm, at least by any demon who valued their life.

The winged-woman was almost within arms reach of the demon in an instant, thanks to the demonid blood in her veins that empowered her but before she could viciously tear into the incubus, the mighty demon reacted. The incubus pointed a finger at the creature, aimed squarely at her right wing, and reached deep within himself.

He found his wellspring of magical energy within a second and focused on bending it to his will. When it proved receptive to his desires, he willed it forth, expelling it outward in the form of a potent burst of electrical energy. The air between the harpy and the demon was filled with electric energy in an instant, crackling, loud electricity that collided with the arrogant bird-woman and caused her to lose control of her muscles mid-flight, turning her into an uncontrollable bird-missile for a moment.

Instead of colliding with the demon and cutting into him with her talons as she planned, the bird-woman was sent hurtling uselessly off to the side, smoke radiating off of her form. She hit the floor of the throne room hard, and came to a stop, unconscious due to the force of her collision with the floor, not far from the throne itself. Sadly for the demons who failed Agustino, this was met with an immediate response by the harpies.

There were over two dozen harpies in the air above the throne and throughout the rest of the room. They each began to nonsensically shriek, enraged by the sight of their fallen sister. After a second of enraged wailing, the harpies hurled themselves at the demons they now truly believed were their enemies. They were frighteningly fast, and reached their enemies in a matter of heartbeats, flying far faster than the demons could run and descending on them with an unmatchable fury.

Agustino, a demon known for his cruelty and unmatchable arrogance, enjoyed the sight of his daughters descending on those he deemed failures. He enjoyed it so much that he turned his attention to the theater of violence before him. He watched as his daughters, a veritable flock of half-demon harpies, began to enact senseless violence on their hated enemies.

Harpies landed in front of, beside, behind, and even on top of demons. The beautiful, naked women immediately proceeded to buffet and harass their enemies with a number of attacks, ranging from carefully aimed scratches to battering them with their wings, to even trying to tear out vulnerable parts of their bodies with their sharp teeth. The demons for their part in all of this knew better than to try and truly defend themselves from the harpies.

The only measure the demons took to protect themselves from the flock of bat-women was to try and redirect their attacks, hurl them away, or get into a position to shield themselves from the attacks of their master's daughters. Even the enraged incubus had been careful not to kill the harpy who attacked him, instead doing his best to take the woman out of the fight, all while keeping her alive.

The incubus was quietly relieved when Agustine didn't immediately turn to face him for defending himself from the Soluto's daughter. He was so quietly relieved that he only barely noticed that the tide of stone-spikes rushing towards them stopped short of his kin that were closest to the exits out of the throne room.

This orgy of violence lasted for more than a few minutes, and in time the floor of the throne room beneath the demons was covered in slick, scarlet blood. The blood belonged largely to the true demons, but it also belonged to a number of the half-demon harpies who took blows from their prey. That said, this unstoppable onslaught of violence began to take a toll on the demons. An endless number of limbs and teeth coming for them had the effect of gradually wearing them down, especially when combined with the strain of the demon's having to not try to kill the harpies.

Agustino watched this violence as a mortal human of class and sophistication might watch a play. There was an entertained smile on his face the whole time the violence was occurring. He studied the motion and trajectory of each blow, be it from a harpy or a demon. The demon was especially focused on his fellow demons, and his proud gaze longingly studied each of them. Perhaps twelve minutes after this orgy of violence commenced, Agustino felt satisfied. He wasn't sure why, or how, but he knew that he had his fill of violence. For the moment anyway.

The oldest harpy was in the middle of launching a powerful strike at the incubus who had harmed her sister when Agustino once more snapped his fingers. The sound supernaturally rang out, again, and the harpies ceased their assaults. Even those of them that were mid-attack were able to either stop their attacks or use their momentum to make their attacks miss. A few moments after the sound of the snapping fingers filled the room, the action and violence that had filled the last few minutes were over. The only sounds left in the room were those that were present before.

The demons glared at the half-demon harpies, fury filling their eyes. Many of them mentally swore oaths of vengeance, but they consciously knew they had little chance of exacting that vengeance. Agustino merely laughed, capriciously sated, for now. His laughter filled the room for a moment before it came to an abrupt end. He then glared at the demons present, making eye contact with each of them. And then the demon began to speak.

"Demons." He said, his voice filled with power and pride. The demons froze, terrified of whatever he had left to say.

"I have a mission for you. One more important than bringing Torus into our home." The demon told his somewhat captive audience. The path behind them, out of the palace and towards freedom, was still closed off by spikes and the harpies were still a threat. And demons often enjoyed simple violence. After all, the bovine demon in Agustino's flame-lightning was still trapped in a pillar of fire.

"Bring me the god. I wish to see him face to face. I wish to experience his power." Agustino told the crowd of demons. This surprised them, and they were still out of sheer shock for a moment.

Agustino smiled at them. There was a look of maniacal pride in his gaze. The bloodlust the demon felt earlier was gone. Now there was just pride. The demon was so insanely proud, so convinced of his own power, that he wanted to meet the strange god of chaos and evil that evidently lived in Torus. After silence filled the air for a few moments, irritation wracked Agustino's face and the demon shouted at his followers.

"Well? What are you waiting for?! Go get him!" The demon roared, his voice filling with fury again. This shocked the demons out of their other shock, and they backed away from their master. As they backed away there was a loud rumbling noise as the spikes behind them retracted into the floor of the throne room. This gave the demons a chance to flee from the presence of their master, terrified of failure and of the dark god who had tricked the mortals living in Torus into believing that he was their friend.

It was while the demons were fleeing, that Agustino undid the spell that ensorcelled the bovine demon, causing the creature to fall to his knees, unconscious. His fur was largely burned off, exposing thick patches of ugly, scar-covered skin. The creature clattered to the floor, producing a loud noise as its ugly head smashed into stone tiles that made up the floor of the palace.