The Wastes

Hot.

Hot was the best way to describe hell. While not all of it is hot, that goes for the majority of it, and Akros was sick of the heat.

How many years had it been since they where thrown out of that false paradise, Hell's Eden, and how much had they regretted it.

To long and too much was the answer.

But they had found an out, some small glimmer of hope to let them return to that glorious land.

"Are you sure about this?" One of Akros' brothers asked, his voiced a garbled wreck from breathing nothing but sulphur and ash for the unholy one knows how long.

"It's either this, or we return to the wastes, and be torn to shreds by a greater demon" Akros demanded firmly.

He had already lost twenty brothers, when you come from a family of a hundred, it didn't seem like much, but each death hurt.

They where all imps, their limbs where frail and thin as twigs, their bodies where small and petit, barley able to keep their organs inside, their skin was frail and ripped as easily as paper, and despite the fact that they had wings, they where too frail to ever carry them more than an inch of the ground.

Worst of all, they only had one hellish pyre, a single candle melted on each of their heads.

The source of all demons power, allowing them to emit and control their own form of hellfire, in short, the more pyres a demon had, the more powerful they where.

Imps where the lowest on the food-chain for all demons, if not for their absurd reproduction rate, and subservient nature, they would have gone extinct eons ago.

As they say, no one could kiss ass like an imp.

They had survived through sheer luck up to this point, it was a miracle that they hadn't all been wiped out in the wastes.

But now, safety was in their grasp, long awaited relief from the sleepless nights, of watching the wastes light up with hellfire, hoping against hope that a stray bolt would not vaporise him.

All that stood between them and that glorious dream, was the metal behemoth sitting at the bottom of the gorge they where overlooking.

Imps where small, barely reaching 4 foot tall, so most demons seemed massive to them, but this one was still a cut above the rest.

While it didn't compare to the monstrosities that wandered the wastes, it still easily cleared twelve feet.

Its entire body seemed to be made of some kind of metal, its joints looked like massive gears, and pistons and valves covered each of its impressive limbs, creaking and whirring every time the metal behemoth moved.

It had a row of exhaust pipes running down it head, in fact, its entire body was dotted with exhaust pipes.

The creatures back was slightly hunched, though it didn't look like a deformity, more like it was too muscular for its own good, if it actually had muscles.

Though the most intimidating feature of the behemoth was its face, a massive grill that almost looked the the helmets that Akros remembered seeing on a few lost souls when he was still in Hell's Eden.

He was pretty sure they called themselves knights.

Behind the grill was to blazing balls of hellfire so intense that Akros swore he could feel an abnormal rise in temperature whenever the behemoth looked his way.

One of the worst criminals of Lemegeton, Torque, the protector of the stains.

Though he wasn't the brothers target, he would still be a pain in the ass if not dealt with quickly.

"Is it time to begin?" One of the brothers asked hesitantly, they where all terrified of Torque.

"Now or never" Akros said with a determined scowl, pulling his ragged scarf higher up his face.

They had already gone through extensive lengths to make sure the dog was far away, so Torque was all that was left.

With a small nod, the plan was set into motion, Akros watched with a pained expressions as most of his brothers begin to charge down that hulking mass of metal and fire.

Akros and the brothers that stayed behind new the others where most likely rushing to their deaths, but they had to for the plan to work.

They had paid a hefty price to find out that Torque was extremely sensitive to the use of hellfire, so a distraction had to be made to make the plan work.

The moment the brothers abandoned their cover, hellish pyres ablaze, singling their approach, Torque swivelled around to face them, crushing its small, rocky seat from how fast it rose.

The beast let out a terrible roar, somewhere between the howl of a wounded beast, and the roar of a starting engine.

The brothers responded in tern, their shrill war cries drowned out almost instantly by the unnatural gargle coming from Torque.

The brother leading the pack drew back his arm, a ball of molten wax forming in his hand.

The imp hurled the bubbling ball straight at Torque's face with pin point precision.

The molten wax exploded inches from Torque's face, forming a small blanket of wax that covered his grating, quickly hardening and obscuring his vision.

The imp who threw the ball laughed in maniacal glee, seeing how he had hit his mark. Only to be stifled immediately as a massive metal fist came crashing down on his head, reducing him to a pile of meat paste.

The rest of the brothers backed away in horror, the gusto that had once filled them gone in a puff of smoke, or blood in this case.

They knew it wouldn't hold for long, but even still, imp wax could withstand bathing in the lava of an active volcano without melting even slightly, yet the mask of wax had been evaporated in an instance.

The brothers watched in horror as the metal monster raised its fist from the mangled body as it turned to dust and blew away in the wind, leaving nothing but a small candle where it once stood.

When a demon died, all that would remain was its hellish pyre, leaving not even a body to mourn.

One of the braver brothers charged forward, yelling a high pitched war cry, brandishing a wax sword.

A fist closed around the imps head, as it was lifted off the ground, flailing wildly, striking Torques ar again an again with its wax blade to no avail.

Torque inspected the little creature for a while, before closing his hand into a fist, popping the imps head like a grape.

Two down, forty eight left to go.

What followed could not be considered a fight, even in the most charitable terms, no, it was a one sided slaughter.

Torque tore through each of the imps with laughable ease.

They dropped like flies in an inferno, smashed to pieces, ripped in two, flattened to paste, all gruesome fates they suffered.

The number of imps began to dwindle, to forty, then thirty, twenty, ten, then five.

The last remaining brothers huddled together, shaking like baby dear, pointing their wax swords, that may as well be tooth picks, at the hulking behemoth that was bearing down upon them.

Just as Torque raised his fist to smash the last of the terrified imps, a voice rang out across the canyon.

"IT'S DONE, GET OUT OF THERE"

The imps began to book it, though Torque managed to smash one of them as they fled, reducing him to a cloud of bloody mist.

But as he moved to chase the rest, he was stopped momentarily as a glob of wax burst from the ground and hardened around his leg.

Torque looked at the wax for a moment, before yanking his leg with more force, tearing up the ground and taking some of it with him as the wax refused to give.

Torque was only stopped for a minute, but that was enough.

Akros and the brothers that stayed behind took hold of all the wax they had been carefully navigating through the cracks in the walls of the narrow gorge, and in unison, forced to wax to expand with as much force as they could muster.

Torque watched in silence as the entire gorge began to collapse in on him, seemingly accepting his fate.

Akros and his remaining brothers watched as the metal giant was buried under hundreds, if not thousands of tons of rock.

"Is, is it over?" one of the brothers asked tentatively.

"We can only hope" Akros said with a weary voice, collapsing the mountain had taken too much hellfire, he was spent.

"Are we going to have to clear all that rubble?" another brother asked.

"Do you think we could make it to Hell's Eden carrying that thing?" Akros asked incredulously, "he'd just be dead wait, even if he does have a bounty high enough to by half of Hell's Eden, let's just get the girl and get out of here"

...

The brothers ran past the gorge as quickly as they could, booking it non stop for ten minutes, till they reached a small, ramshackle hut, a small trail of smoke rising from the chimney.

With ragged breath, the brothers burst through the door, pyres alight, ready to face any threat that came their way.

What greeted them was a small demon girl, lazily doodling on a table, using a piece of charcoal as her pen.

She had a small build, just clearing five foot ten, and that was only due to the long horns protruding from the top of her head giving her a few extra inches, and her skin and hair was a fire red in colour.

Her figure was also hard to put pin down, as she wore rather baggy and loose fitting clothes, a pair of black cargo pants, a loose fitting tee with some kind of death metal band cover printed on the front, and stripped white and black detached sleeves on each arm.

Though her clothes were baggy and not much skin was exposed, a look at her face told Akros all he needed to know about her physical condition.

Her face was sallow, her cheeks looked as though they where offering themselves to her mouth as her next meal, and two black bags hung under her eyes.

She was a wreck, Akros just hoped her looks weren't deceiving.

"Oh hey" the demon girl mumbled, barley acknowledging the thirty four imps that had burst through the door, "what you want?"

"Choose ten to guard the door, the rest with me" Akros barked.

"You seem stressed" The girl drawled in an irritating tone.

"Listen here, I'm giving you an ultimatum" Akros roared, storming over to the girl, " either you come with us back to Hell's Eden, and turn yourself in obediently, or I turn you into a demon candle stick and we drag your corpse back to Hell's Eden, understand"

"I understand" the girl said with an air of confidence.

"Then get up an-" Akros began.

"But I have to interrupt as I see a small flaw in your plan"

"I would suggest it's important, otherwise I'll fill your lungs with wax"

"Oh nothing much" the girl said with a smirk, "just him"

As the girl spoke, Akros felt something soft hit his head, then another, and another, till it was a veritable deluge.

Picking up one of the items, Akros found a familiar candle in his hand.

Only then did Akros notice that both he and the demon girl where in the shade of a massive shadow.

Akros turned around in dread to find Torque towering over him, and none of his brothers in the room.

"You gave me an ultimatum" the girl said calmly as Torque grabbed Akros by the throat and lifted him kicking and screaming into the air, "so I'll give you mine"

Akros looked into the eyes of Torque, those two soulless balls of fire, like two terrible suns staring him down.

He waited for the girl to finish, but the next words where not spoken by the girl, no, they came from the hulking, metal giant currently holding him aloft.

The voice was hoarse and strained, and sounded more like a hellish rasp rather than an actual voice, and it gave its ultimatum.

"Burn"

In that instant, Torques eyes burst into a raging inferno that spilled out of Torques grating and raced towards Akros, engulfing him in the terrible flames.

A beam of hell fire washed over Akros, vaporising him in an instant.

...

In a barren stretch of the wastes, two demons faced each other down.

"Brachos, today is the day you die" One roared brandishing his sword at his opponents.

"The same to you Crios" Brachos roared in response, his spear raised high.

The two charged at each other, ready to kill.

But they never reached each other, as all of a sudden, Crios was engulfed in a bright beam of hellfire, and was vaporised in an instance.

Brachos stood dumbfounded for a minute, before fleeing the the opposite direction as fast as he could.