[h2]Meanwhile...[/h2]
[h3]Oratory of Fate, Kreshtaat’s Domain, the Lower Plane[/h3]
It was never what one would refer to as “quiet” in Hell, with the constant infighting of demons and widespread torture, murder and rape going on everywhere at all times, but even by the standards of the Lower Plane the cacophonous pandemonium around Wagor was bad. On the ground, in the air, even under the ground and merged into ethereal shadows demons were clashing in the tens of thousands, if not [I]hundreds[/I] of thousands; it had reached a scale where numbers stopped making sense, nor did they really matter. Two huge swarms of demons were simply throwing themselves at each other in droves, killing and maiming each other with wild abandon, only to dissipate and reconstitute themselves upon death so they could come back and fight on.
[I]Pointless,[/I] he thought, faintly registering that a hostile thalk was apparently attacking him with bolts of purple lightning, though such lowly creatures were no threat to a demon lord like himself. He waved a hand at the thalk, releasing a small burst of energy that made the vaguely human-shaped demon explode in a mess of black gore and white bones. Lowly demons should just fight among themselves instead of trying to mingle with their betters.
A fourteen feet tall orlgarh came at him next, roaring thunderously and flexing its absurd muscles as it swung its giant flaming axe, apparently intending to use it to cleave Wagor down the middle. Wagor simply held up the back of his left hand and called his relic, though, manifesting his heater shield, Black Mirror. The axe struck, resulting in the orlgarh’s entire right arm vanishing into a cloud of black mist, before the Lord of Vengeance made a cleaving motion with his right hand and tore the brute in half.

He looked up into the sky, watching how the churning green, red and black soup of nightmares up there spat out multicolored lightning, rained fire and got pulled toward the ground by chaotically forming tornadoes everywhere but here. Immediately above him, unlike in most of the Underworld, the uniform black sky was uniquely docile, tamed by Wagor’s liege to protect the Oratory of Fate. This place was the most precious, most holy place in all of the Lower Plane, and for these heretics to try to seize it was unforgivable... so why was he the only demon lord here, defending it?
Of course he knew that Valderoth was on the other side of the oratory – even if Kreshtaat had not assigned them each their own side, it was impossible not to notice the dense aura of power over there – but he was the only one. It was both a good and a bad thing; on one hand it meant that the invaders would focus all of their attention here, with Wagor, since none of them dared to risk annoying Valderoth. On the other, the lazy bastard would never drag himself to this side, even if someone broke through. In fact, Wagor suspected Valderoth would not lift a finger even if the oratory was lost and was being torn to shreds right in front of him.
The truth of the other lords’ absence was simple, though, and he knew it: most demon lords wanted nothing to do with the battle, and while some might feel that such a battle was beneath them, Wagor knew most simply wanted to avoid punishment while at the same time hoping for the oratory to fall.
The Oratory of Fate was where Kreshtaat kept the Oracle, of course; everyone knew that. Everyone also knew that the Oracle was due to wake in just a year’s time, and that for one day only her limitless knowledge would be offered. They [I]also[/I] knew, however, that the Lord of Darkness only allowed a few to approach the Oracle, and even then he permitted them only to ask the questions he provided them with. The Oracle was for Kreshtaat only, and no one else, not even his greatest demon lords, were allowed to even see her. These insurgents wanted to “liberate” the Oracle from Kreshtaat’s control, which probably meant that the winners would be the ones with exclusive right to ask her questions... though no matter who took her, taking her from [I]them[/I] would be far simpler than taking her from Kreshtaat. If there was one universal rule in the Lower Plane, it was to never cross Kreshtaat.

The very air – thick, heavy and foul-smelling as it was down here – trembled for a second as Wagor sensed a sizable discharge of energy, and a quick look around confirmed that hundreds of demons on the defending side abruptly collapsed, crippled and incapacitated by the volatile debilitating magic affecting them. Truth be told even he felt somewhat weakened by the destructive energy burrowing into his flesh, though a minor effort on his part was all it took to dispel it from himself. The others affected could just go ahead and die. They were inconsequential anyway.
A shadow suddenly leaped out of the crowd in front of him, moving much too quickly for him to properly react, and abruptly Wagor found himself raised into the air and moving backwards at breakneck speeds, a hand around his throat and a vile, crumbling, rotting grin in front of his face. The hand holding his armor-clad throat was skeletal, flaky and crawling with maggots... as was the hand that now seized his right wrist, and the third hand grabbing the left one.
Wagor swung a leg in a powerful kick, easily shattering the ghoulish creature laying hands on him in time to catch himself with a burst of energy, stopping himself in mid-air before he was carried too close to the oratory. He let himself down onto the dry, frozen and barren ground gently, all while preparing himself for what was to come.
A second later the skeletal figure came at him again; it was a shapeless mass of bones, carrion insects, mold and dripping slime held within a cloak of rat-skins, shrieking wildly as its eyes burned a venomous green and hands emerged from the tangle, stretching their wicked fingers toward him greedily.
Wagor held up both hands as he pulsed dark energy, just in time to counter the blast of power emerging from his enemy. The force of the two shock waves colliding sent demons sprawling through the air in all directions and cracked the the earth beneath, but barely bothered Wagor’s regal humanoid form or the other’s – Myrtoloin’s – hideous skeletal one. Lesser demons were retreating all around them, most of them smart enough to realize that they did not want to be caught anywhere near where two demon lords clashed.
Myrtoloin screeched and filled the air with green lightning, arcing into Wagor’s body and trying to sap his strength. Wagor groaned, scowling under his hood as he channeled destructive energy into his right hand before shooting it at the other as a shapeless blob of darkness that exploded on impact, shattering Myrtoloin into dust... only for a new vessel to form immediately and Myrtoloin rushing him again, all the while crying out in rage.
The fight went on for a little while, but Wagor found that it was a very discernible difference between how he and the Lord of Decay fought, specifically in terms of how each of them had decided to make their vessels. Wagor had opted to spend a significant amount of energy to create a sturdy and powerful form, making it so dense and durable that it took minimal damage from attacks, requiring less repairs, and had high offensive power. Myrtoloin, on the other hand, seemed to spend as little energy on his vessel as possible, making it so fragile that it was literally falling apart on its own, but in turn making it disposable. Wagor could destroy Myrtoloin as many times as he wanted, but Myrtoloin just kept making new vessels; sometimes Wagor even found himself fighting multiple Myrtoloin vessels at the same time, being abruptly seized by one Myrtoloin from behind while fending off another in front of him, but the other demon lord was too cunning to overuse the trick. In the end it came down to who would tire first; Wagor from maintaining his vessel, or Myrtoloin from regenerating his.

Suddenly Myrtoloin vanished into smoke, and though Wagor could tell that that the Lord of Decay had teleported behind him just from his aura, skeletal hands wrapped themselves around his limbs before he could react. A toxic yellow miasma filled the air that Wagor instinctively started counteracting, preventing it from corroding his vessel, at the same time as he pulsed destructive energy from his back. Myrtoloin survived the blast, surprisingly, and only clung to him more tightly as more and more hands emerged to wrap the Lord of Vengeance in a tighter stranglehold still, bony fingers clawing viciously at his face and body...
[I]Why did he change tactics?[/I] Wagor thought, jumping high into the air before propelling himself back-first into the ground with rock-shattering force; a maneuver that Myrtoloin shockingly still withstood without being destroyed. [I]His strategy was viable. He has the power to match me blow by blow... but like this, I have the advantage. What is he thinking?[/I]
He elbowed the creature on his back, hearing bones crack and unmentionable things squish, and with some effort he ripped his right arm from the other’s grasp with enough force to tear off the skeletal hands holding it, sending them crumbling into the distance. He started funneling a large amount of energy into that right hand, preparing an attack powerful enough to disintegrate Myrtoloin... when he noticed the ground trembling under his feet.
[I]No![/I] he thought, too late to act, as the ground quaked, bulged and cracked, pushing upward in a surge of rock, dust and molten lava, all while a deafening rumble echoed throughout the domain. The ground finally crumbled away entirely as Wagor, Myrtoloin and any other demon unfortunate enough to have been too close to them were carried into the air on gray lips clad in scales of stone, attached to a creature so gigantic that size as a concept stopped making sense. A serpent of stone ascended out of a hole in the ground so huge that an entire mortal city could have fit in the pit, its body so long that an end was nowhere to be seen, even as it lifted the two demon lords [I]miles[/I] into the air, far into the inky blackness above, where the harmful skies of Hell tore at their bodies and threatened to tear them apart.
Wagor unleashed as much raw power into the serpent’s head as he could muster, but unsurprisingly it neither slowed nor seemed to be any more than superficially singed by the blast; this was Akronos, another demon lord and one with a vessel even more durable than Wagor’s own, not to mention thousands of times as heavy and powerful. Akronos was a being of nothing but brute strength, an unstoppable force once in motion...
This was not something Wagor, the Lord of Vengeance, could stop.
With a sound of grinding stones, though less like rocks rubbing together and more like the motion of the tectonic plates of the world, Akronos’ jaws opened, and Wagor helplessly fell into the darkness of its gullet.

A moment later Wagor was reformed, somewhat annoyed at having to create a new vessel after spending so much energy making the first one, but by then it was too late; even hovering in the air at a distance, held aloft by his magic, Wagor could plainly see Myrtoloin’s abominable form crawling up the now-cracked ashen steps to the Oratory of Fate. It was impossible to teleport that close to the oratory – the same magic that calmed the sky prevented supernatural travel there – so the most Wagor could realistically manage would be to hit Myrtoloin with a blast of power from afar, but even then... Akronos was still there, beside him, a seemingly endless pillar of rock stretching from within the deepest bowels of Hell to far into its hazardous sky, the very movement of his body causing more of the landscape to quake and crumble. The Beast of Time could dive back out of the sky at a moment’s notice, and if it did it would tear a huge chunk of Kreshtaat’s domain asunder.
Wagor prepared his energy, unsure how to attack but knowing that it had to be huge, but it was too late. Myrtoloin reached the white structure at the top of the stairs, his grotesque form reaching for the handles on the colossal double doors into the place...

But then there was a form next to Myrtoloin, materializing out of the shadows. A pale, feeble-looking human man, his body marred by black veins and marks of disease, whose hair was like that of a corpse and whose only clothing was a tattered black skirt. A finger jabbed at Myrtoloin, and the demon lord was summarily obliterated. He did not reform, nor would he for a while, Wagor knew; there was no point. Myrtoloin knew better than to fight the Lord of Darkness himself.
Akronos apparently did not, though; the titanic serpent abruptly shot out of the sky with meteoric force, letting out a roar that shook the entire plane to its core. Wagor considered whether he was supposed to do something, but ultimately decided against it; he would only be in the way or, more likely, get caught in the destruction.
Kreshtaat looked up with annoyance, raised one hand and wagged an admonishing finger at Akronos... before the serpent’s head exploded, sending chunks of rocky flesh and showers of black blood raining down over the entire domain. The rest of Akronos’ body went limp with the destruction of the head and started slowly retracting back underground, though it would never make it that far; Wagor could already see it starting to dissipate into black mist now that the infernal consciousness within was gone.

“I thought I made myself clear,” Kreshtaat’s voice boomed across Hell, the sheer power and authority of him, even with his puny form, was enough to make Wagor fall to his knees in submission.
“No one enters the oratory.” He waved a hand with disinterest, and every demon assembled before the oratory, defenders and attackers alike, were instantly vaporized. Even the crumbling form of Akronos’ body instantaneously dispersed, leaving only a gaping, seemingly bottomless pit where it had emerged.
“No one but me.”