Sten the Strongest was already two-thirds dead when he entered the corridor. The bear, and then the imp-bats had taken a lot out of him, physically. And he was even mentally drained after deducing the blood-requirement for getting through the stone door.
That door faded back into existence behind him after he stepped through, so Sten turned his attention to the hallway he had now entered. Its walls and floor were a dark, finished stone, very unlike the raw rock of the cavern before. At the other end of the straight, narrow hall was a blood-red door of faintly glowing metal.
Sten walked forward to examine it, lit torch in hand, but a flash of red on the wall caught his eye. He now saw that there were three large panels on the walls on the way to the door. Each was marked with a word.
It was shining red and written in a scratched script that Sten didn’t know how he understood. It said only “PROTECTOR”. Sten supposed that he was a protector and continued stepping lightly down the narrow hall.
As he passed fully in front of the first wall-panel, all three abruptly fell from the wall and hit the floor with a metallic clang. Sten jumped out of the way, moving back toward the entrance of the hallway. He could see now that the panels had been concealing coffin-sized hollows in the wall.
From each emerged a tall, winged humanoid. Their bodies were a reddish-black material that shined dully in the torch-light. They had vast bat-like wings of the same substance sprouting from their backs. Their eyes, sharp fangs, horns, and clawed fingers were black as pitch, reflecting no light.
They were demons. Sten could tell by the way that they were.
“Who are you, dark one, and why have you come?” asked the third of the creatures, farthest down the hall.
“They call me the Strongest,” Sten answered, “but there is another name some know me by…”
“Your blood smells tainted by human,” sneered the creature.
“We all have our faults, now don’t we,” said Sten, wondering who or what these demons thought he was. “Yours, for instance, is clearly your sense of smell. Or maybe your looks.”
“Enough!” it ordered. “Explain yourself or leave. Or be destroyed.”
Sten considered.
It was another creature of the abyss that had ruined his village — that had caused him to ruin his village in his frenzy to destroy the monster. So Sten had no room in his heart for gentleness when it came to hellspawn. And if he had to fight them… He might need to tap into his deepest fury for the things. Already, his boiling blood was telling him he couldn’t back down, even against these odds.
He felt at his weapon; his battle-rake. (Just as there are axes for woodcutting and battle-axes for war, there are rakes for gardening and battle-rakes for slashing one’s enemies down to shreds of flesh so fine they can scarcely be identified as once-living matter.) The Hell-Rake, as usual, seemed to sing for battle. It was forged from the substance of that powerful demon Sten defeated years ago in the battle whose aftermath left him exiled.
“What I am here for is none of your business, peon,” tried Sten, bluffing.
“Then die!” screeched the leader-demon. “Kill the trespasser!”
All three screamed and flew forward on their dark wings. The closest managed to get a blow in before Sten could move to defend himself.
The demon’s claws bit through his flesh, seemingly without effect, but for an instant Sten’s mind was torn to shreds. He staggered.
Sten felt near death, like he had survived even that first strike with only a desperate, miraculous, inch of his life left.
“No, no, no…” Sten fell to one knee, head bowed.
“Finally seeing your folly in coming here?” called out the same creature as before, mockingly.
“No… No, I just wish it could have been another way,” grunted Sten. His speech growing more guttural, he continued, “No, no…”
The demons all laughed a harsh, grating, cruel laugh.
Sten rose, suddenly. His head snapped forward and his eyes glowed with malice.
The demons stopped laughing.
“YES!”
He lifted the Hell-Rake and swiped it at the first demon; it dodged. Then he swung it back around quick as lightning and scraped the fiend across the chest.
As the teeth of the Hell-Rake tore through the thing’s flesh, each tooth seemed to ignite with a bright blue flame. The gashes left in the demon continued burning with a violent light.
“You dare face the Inferno?!” he growled.
[Soundtrack: “Departure to Destruction” by Andrew Hulshult from the Dusk OST]
And the walls and the floor and the demons sang with the music of blood and violence and fury and rage. The departure to destruction had come at last and the Inferno was here. And his work had just begun.
The first demon looked shocked at the damage, but before it could move, the Inferno attacked again.
“You will BURN,” shouted the Inferno as he raked the monster again down the torso.
Obliterated. The first demon’s corpse exploded into flame as it hit the ground.
“Is that all you’ve got for me!?” The Inferno turned to his next adversary.
The second demon screamed and slashed with its claws. The Inferno merely leaned back to avoid being touched.
“Don’t keep me waiting!” said the Inferno, readying his rake again.
He tore at the demon’s face with the Hell-Rake, sending the fiend sprawling onto the floor clutching at the burning wounds on its eyes, mouth, and forehead. Even one of its horns had a fiery gash through it.
Between its hands, a new emotion could be seen filling the face of the second demon: Fear.
It turned to crawl away and flee, but the Inferno kicked his boot into the miserable creature’s side, flipping it onto its back.
“Please, I’ll do anything!” said the second demon desperately in its deep, guttural voice.
“Then perish.”
The Hell-Rake’s teeth slashed and burned through the demon’s upraised arms, and its neck. The burning head rolled away from its body, face frozen into a terrified grimace.
“MORE!” cried the Inferno. “GIVE! ME! MORE!”
The final demon flew straight at him, clawed hands swiping viciously.
The Inferno parried with the Hell-Rake, shoving the fiend’s wicked talons into the wall of the narrow corridor. He swiped with the rake, but the creature beat its wings and flew back a stride to avoid the attack.
Leaping forward suddenly, the Inferno moved before his enemy could react and stabbed the long, razor-sharp teeth of the Hell-Rake into its abdomen, then kicked the rake deeper still. He grinned.
“Now we see if you have intestines,” he said and dragged the rake sharply downward.
The demon roared with pain, but managed to stay upright and fly backward again, guts spilling out through the blue-ignited flaming ruin of its midsection.
“What ARE you!?” it cried out inchoately, a look of twisted panic and awe on its face.
The Inferno strode forward. The final demon made one more feeble attempt to rend through him with its dark claws. He simply stepped aside and raised his Hell-Rake.
“The depths of hell send the likes of YOU to destroy me!?” bellowed the Inferno. “A FUCKING INSULT.”
In a final ferocious slash, the Hell-Rake ripped and tore its way through the third demon. Bisected diagonally from collar to waist, the smoking corpse fell to the left and to the right. The Inferno stepped between the burning halves toward the metal door.
The music of death and destruction roared in the head of the Inferno and the corridor danced to it.
With the corpses of the three creatures left smoldering on the floor, the Inferno looked back on his work and laughed with mania and with scorn.
“I am beyond you! I am the end of all things! I am the storm at the bottom of the world! I am—”
He staggered.
“NO!” the Inferno screamed, stumbling to the ground.
Sten the Strongest rose slowly to his feet as that last screamed word echoed between the walls of the hall and in his mind. He had given himself fully to his rage, and there would be a reckoning for that. But first…
He strode, slowly, to the glowing metal door at the end of the corridor. It had no handle to afford pulling, so he pushed. It didn’t budge.
Exhausted, Sten sighed and readied himself for one more exertion. With the last of his strength, Sten swung his battle-rake mightily at the door.
Faintly-glowing shards of metal littered the floor of the room beyond. Sten entered and looked around.
It was a large room considering its barrenness. It looked like this might once have been a prison cell for some powerful magus, but all it held now was an out-of-place white marble pedestal. And atop that was—
Without a second thought — or even much of a first thought — Sten grabbed it and started walking back out of the room and through the corridor.
The dead eyes of the slaughtered demons stared dully on as Sten took the thing they had been guarding for unknown decades or centuries back out into the world.
The door of stone that had required blood to enter earlier now faded to mist without complaint. Sten passed through and it appeared once more as another undistinguishable part of the cavern wall. It was a marvel he had discovered its secrets in the first place.
Sten walked on, back out through the natural cave that had been his original destination on this longest of days. He passed his traveling companions who were still waiting, resting there outside.
“Best walk with me while there’s still sunlight,” he said without stopping. It was already dusk. Still, they went back in the direction of the town.
Sten walked slowly but steadily with the last edges of rage burning in his muscles. He willed himself to move, and he did. In his vice-like grip, he still held the Hell-Rake in one hand and the object he had plundered in the other.
It was a horn. The dark twisted spike of some accursed, hellish creature no doubt, now hollowed out and turned into the device a general might blow through to sound a command to their legions. It was wrapped with a purplish cord of sinew, which was now tied around Sten’s wrist, not that his hand could have released the bulk of the thing even if he died. He had fought for it and would be damned if he lost it now.
Sten collapsed as he strode. His companions didn’t dare touch him as they made camp around his unconscious form as best they could. Sten slept the sleep of the nine-tenths dead.
The cost would come, but let the cost come tomorrow.