Volume 2 - Prologue

From the battlements of the Citadel Tzal, one could be forgiven for thinking the city below was engaged in a frenzy of battle.

Everywhere one looked, the signs of activity were constant and frenetic as demons of every shape and type hurried about, gathering resources before the massive, vertical circle at the northern vertex of the roughly teardrop-shaped city, carved of black and grey stone and built over half of a deceased caldera.

Those with wings, mostly imps, held much smaller loads in bags on their fronts as they waited on rooftops. Their wings and tails twitched with nervous energy as the hundreds of magic circles inscribed on the circle gently pulsed with gathering mana, a sickly green color washing on and off as it darkened towards blue slowly.

Before the aperture, the largest demons held staves the size of pillars as they guarded it against the crowd, while in the air dozens of similarly sized demons hovered in deterrence of their winged siblings.