Chapter 8:Ben The Champion

In the days following his sealing of the Desolation rifts, tales of Ben's unbelievable exploits battling back the demonic incursion single-handedly raced throughout the kingdom faster than the royal messengers could relay the astonishing news. Songs exalting the new peerless champion who walked with the authority of the gods themselves soon echoed in every village square and noble's court.

Yet the epicenter of delirious fervor proved among the scattered encampments of King Rudolf's beleaguered western armies along the Desolation foothills. Weary battered soldiers had resigned themselves to oblivion against the endless swelling horrors pouring from the volcanically steaming hell-cracked land until salvation marched forth in a single young cloaked mage blithely sealing their eldritch doom.

Few had witnessed more than brief glimpses of scintillating violet energies limning the distant solitary combatant followed by reality itself shuddering. Then utter stillness reigned over Igneous Fields before the seething rifts themselves blinked shut. But it was enough - tired hopeless men fell to their knees in joyous prayer, proclaiming another Ascendant Savior had come!

It mattered not to the masses that in the proceeding days, little more beyond distant tremors transmitted through the earth and odd atmospheric distortions occurred around Desolation Valley where Ben had last stood. Already fantastic myths populated taverns for miles extolling how Savior Benjamin now surely descended the very eternal stair abyssal to sever wicked Ba'althak's terrorizing grip! Why else had all demonic incursion ceased? Clearly unworldly connexions flared bright again.

Ben paid little heed to the burgeoning worship among Rudolf's populace as he focused on navigating the psychic abyssal stairways between realms forged by this planet's slumbering guardian deities in primordial epochs. Connective portals yawned razor sharp and steep beyond mortal fathomings. One misstep would banish the unprepared soul to timeless oblivion. But to transcendental arcanists of Ben's prowess, these represented back ways into Creation's very ontology unbound by normal space-time constraints.

Only here could true gods be challenged within their celestial demesnes...and Ben had unfinished business with Ba'althak for its disastrous invading interference upon his new homeland realm which Ben increasingly considered personal property. Reformatting half the Infernous Realm could not fully salve such effrontery after all!

At last Ben's astral form breached the final fold separating him from Ba'althak's abyssal city of black hellglass surrounded by seas of liquified torment the size of oceans. Hideous bat-winged succubi patrols scattered with echoing alarm crys. Surging straight for the towering volcanic throne citadel at the heart, Ben tore through its obsidian walls with a concussive lance of thunderous force.

Billowing flame heralded the 300 foot horned god form manifesting to meet this unprecedented intrusion while around the chamber, braziers of liquid agony bubbled as lesser contained deities thrashed against their eternal punishments meted by their Ba'althak jailer across eons...