***The Infernal Planes of Lust***

***Ashley***

I watched Amon’s latest victim struggle against the spear that pinned him to the ground. Normally, the demon should have been able to free himself already, but some invisible energy field prevented that. It apparently also held the spear in place. Additionally, the weapon seemed to counteract a demon’s natural healing ability, because the fiend’s wounds were still bleeding freely.

From what I had seen of the weapon's capabilities, it was more on the scale of a grand artefact. Something that should normally be out of reach of a low-ranking demon like Amon.

His reaction to the offending minion had surprised me. There was no question that the fiend who had been turned into a 'display piece' was in the right – strictly spoken. He had obeyed his master and had allowed Amon to scan him. Khorne had never clarified not to resist the soul mage's mental intrusion.

On the other hand, such tomfoolery couldn't go on with such a serious situation at hand.

It was only right that Amon had established unmistakably that he was nobody to be messed with.

Nonetheless, I hadn’t expected such a reaction from someone of his age. Not to misunderstand, our species was generally wilful and bone-headed, but it was my experience that it took even the most dominating of men a few decades to walk through life just as Amon did. Most still ended up as the submissive followers of some Demon Lord.

The soul mage was too dominating for that. Amon was Demon Lord material as far as I was concerned.

What were the chances of someone like him to be invited to my castle? For every true Demon Lord, the Infernum had to spawn countless multitudes of us. I wasn’t aware of exact statistics, but I wouldn’t be surprised if hundreds of millions of demonlings had to hatch and die for a single Demon Lord to ascend the ranks.

Every demon who reached above the rank of a mere imp had done so by climbing a hill of corpses, leaving countless multitudes beneath him.

Had Khorne seen something in the young demon? A spark that hinted at Amon's potential?

A few millennia of life, and I still could be surprised by some things. I chuckled, remembering every moment of Amon’s ultra-violent reaction to being messed with.

Witnessing someone's eyelids ripped off was certainly a first.

The soul mage was a strange conundrum, though I wished that he had entered my castle at another point in time. It was a most unfortunate circumstance.

“Hellith?” I called for my dear daughter while I checked on Khorne.

The Demon Lord was still busy with establishing order among his minions, though I found his method of beating up his minions somewhat ineffective. Even I hadn’t expected so many of them to refuse a direct order in public. It made it look like Khorne’s grasp on his people wasn’t quite as complete as I had feared. Maybe a little more subversive tactic was an option after all.

I watched as Khorne busily hacked one of the defiant demons to pieces for the third time. The stubborn fool had already respawned twice and was still refusing to be checked by the soul mage.

Why wouldn't Khorne just use his sword's ability? I knew that it was a soul weapon with the capability of dealing a final blow, but for some reason he was holding back – which made him look weak. He probably intended to preserve as much of his forces as possible.

It would be a chore to watch Khorne killing his men down to the last soul.

Although, it was likely that they would give up and follow orders once they lost the hope of defeating him or changing their master’s mind.

Even if they were weaker than the Demon Lord, without soul magic, it would take sixty or eighty consecutive kills to end even the weakest of Khorne’s men permanently. At least that was what my daughters had concluded after indulging the men. Khorne had brought only his personal elite and legion commanders.

I winced when Khorne’s sword caught one of his victim’s horns at the base and sheered it off cleanly.

Horn injuries were generally seen as especially humiliating. Horns were one of the traits that most demons had in common, no matter how grotesque their evolution. Tails, horns and claws were signs that connected the largest part of our species with each other, no matter the wide variations of appearances. A demon who had none of those traits was generally seen as worthless. Losing one’s horns or having them deliberately taken away was like being demoted to the status of an outcast. It meant that something had gone seriously wrong with someone’s evolution.

“Yes, mother?” My daughter finally reached my side. Previously, she had hidden herself among the crowd so that she wouldn't intrude between Khorne and myself. But right now the other Demon Lord was busy.

I freely shared what concerned me. “I understand that we have no way of gaining more information about Amon right now, but can we at least find out what his current evolution is?” I mused. “I have thought about it, but I don’t believe that I have seen one quite like him before. His appearance is too much like a human’s to be some type of Fiend- or Titan-evolution and his power level is far too high to be a newly born incubus. The eyes are distinctive, but there are always some variations in appearance even among those who share the same abilities. Nonetheless, someone so young shouldn’t be able to put down a Nar Karask as if it was just some demonling.”

My eyes indicated the pinned demon who was probably already lamenting his choice of inciting Amon's wrath. The Nar Karask were a common evolution, but a powerful one. It was a stone-type evolution that appeared after having taken the path of a Greater Fiend. It was a physical evolution, which made it all the more surprising that Amon had overpowered his opponent so decisively.

Amon was quite obviously focused on magical abilities.

Hellith frowned. “I had the same thoughts and already searched my library a few days ago, but the only thing that comes close in description is some variation of an Animae. Sadly, the evolution is far too rare to be well known. The records are lacking in that regard. The only thing that wasn't in doubt is that it specializes in magical abilities and may or may not appear after ingesting the souls of several powerful mages. There was only one recorded case mentioned in recent history, a Demon Lord who ascended over in Gluttony a few millennia ago. My index only referenced a historic date several millennia ago to look up, which might have given us more detailed information.”

An angry frown stole itself onto my daughter’s face. “When I tried to find the book in question, I realized that it was missing. Someone must have misplaced it. If that’s the case, then it might as well be lost. Finding a single book inside our library is like searching for a specific demonling in a hatchery.” Then she muttered more silently towards herself, “I will teach that certain someone a hard lesson if I ever find out who it was.”

“A Demon Lord in Gluttony? A few millennia ago?” I questioned nobody in particular while I tried to forage through my own memories.

That must have been before Ostreios’s time. The title of Gluttony's Avatar hadn't traded owners in quite some time.

Unfortunately, the part of history before that had been a time of strife and war for Gluttony and I admittedly hadn’t paid a lot of attention at the time. Demon Lords had tried claiming the title of Gluttony’s Avatar left and right. Every few decades or century another contender was pushed off his throne until Ostreios eventually established a more permanent rule.

It had been going on for so long that the fleeting reports about who was currently the most likely to gain control over Gluttony had gone in through one of my ears and directly out the other. Nothing in the Infernum would have convinced me to join in on that infernal cesspit!

I sighed inwardly. What was I complaining about?

It wasn’t like Lust was a better place to be right now. Not as long as Khorne still lived.

My expression must have scrunched up, because Hellith looked at me with concern. “Is everything alright? Would the date help? The missing tome covered the time from 33-2-30-13 to 33-7-30-13.”

“Oh, it is, and no,” I replied quickly to reassure her. “I just tried to remember that time, but I am afraid that it won’t come without meditating on it. Maybe I will find some time to try in the evening.”

“Should I go and find Elbred? She could take a look-”

“Let me stop you right there. I don’t need Elbred's healing arts.” I placed a hand on Hellith’s shoulder. “I am not sick, nor getting senile, darling. You younglings just don’t realize that a demon’s perfect memories may be helpful when you are a newborn and you have to learn quickly just to survive, but once you get to my age things are a little different. When I try to remember things so far back, I actually suffer from information overload.”

I sighed and gestured with my hand, trying to explain it. “There are just too many insignificant things that come to mind when I go that far back. I could probably stand here for hours or days before I manage to dig up the piece of information that I actually want. It’s like when you are foraging through the memories of your many souls. Hellith, you could spend years in meditation going through all of them. That’s the reason why we demons keep written records at all. In certain cases it’s simply more convenient to have a few indexed keywords to search through than to dive into a sea of suffocating memories.”

My daughter nodded, but still looked concerned. “You haven’t ever brought that up.”

“Because it’s of no concern to you, normally at least. As one of my oldest, you have seen a few millennia of your own, but none of my daughters are old enough to be truly troubled by such things yet.”

Hellith pursed her dainty lips. “But I think that I may know what you are talking about. When I try to remember what the castle was like with just you and me and a handful of the others, I am sometimes not certain which time-frame a set of similar events belongs to.” She shook her head, finding it hard to describe the experience of recalling a time so far back.

I nodded. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have assumed that you can’t relate at all. In any case, the time we are talking about was even before I decided to settle down permanently. I had other concerns than to follow what was going on in the rest of the Infernum and I was still visiting the mortal realms regularily. Oh, I am certain that I heard something of value about the events before Ostreios became Gluttony's avatar, but I would have to retreat to my rooms for a few days and spend the time in meditation. Leaving you alone with Khorne for that long…”

I glared at the other Demon Lord who had just chopped off another head. My courtyard was getting dirty again and I had just sent Ebandon to the woods.

Such misfortune!

“… is not advisable,” I finished the thought. “Are you sure you can’t find that lost record? Don't I always behold you children to keep the library records immaculate? It’s highly inconvenient to be unable to find an important tome at times like these.”

Hellith clicked her tongue. “I will try my best, but the one who removed the historic record didn’t check it out properly. There was no name in the register.”

I hummed in silent contemplation. “Isn't there a magcial protection on the archive? Such a thing shouldn't be possible without malicious inten-”

Our discussion was cut short by a scream of existential angst.

My head whipped away from my daughter and back to the demons who were waiting in line to be tested.

What I found was complete chaos.

One of Khorne's minions had drawn a black dagger and had used it to stab three of his fellows in quick succession. He was like a rabid animal, swinging his weapon left and right without thought or finesse. Judging by the way in which his victims were writhing on the ground, I also doubted that it was a normal weapon.

It was a freaking soul weapon, and a damned powerful one if a simple cut could fell a demon.

I reached out and quickly guided the castle's barrier formations to box in the offender, but the demon jumped forward, causing me to miss.

Amon and the demon who he was currently checking were still locked in a mental stand-off, with Amon's finger on the testee's forehead. Neither of them was in time to react to the dagger that plunged into the testee's back.

The offender threw his victim to the side, pulling the weapon free.

Amon shuddered with displeasure when the mental connection was forcibly interrupted.

He opened his eyes, looking disoriented, so I could tell that he wouldn't be able to react in time.

I redirected my already existing barrier instead of reforming it, using the energy field to hit the attacker from behind and causing him to stumble. It bought Amon a brief moment.

The result was just enough of an interruption for Amon to catch the blade by moving his palm in front of his chest. A protective barrier flickered briefly before the dagger overcame it and plunged through Amon’s hand.

Then several things happened at once.

Amon's spear glowed in eerily green light and moved on its own. It whirled out of its pinned victim in an arc, splitting the demon open from the belly up to his head. Gore sprayed onto those who were still waiting in line and had been too slow to retreat.

The weapon continued on its arc and formed a halberd's blade at its end. Then it broke through my barrier and hacked into and partly through the attacker, taking a part of the attacker’s upper body and Amon's injured arm with it. The energy blade amputated the limb cleanly through the elbow.

Amon’s tail came up in retaliation and the bladed point burst through his opponent’s chest.

Simultaneously, the largest of Amon's minions grabbed his master by the neck and pulled him away and out of reach of the still wildly stabbing demon who didn’t seem concerned by the grave injuries he had received. The rest of Amon's minions formed a protective wall between their leader and the twitching remains of the assassin.

I finally managed to reform my barrier and immediately used it to shove the flailing body away from Amon and back into Khorne’s men – completely accidentally of course.

The assassin managed to nick the skin of another one of Khorne’s men with the cursed blade before the Demon Lord himself arrived at the scene at last. He roared and brought his sword down on the assassin’s two halves, creating a wave of ghostly energy that passed through the assassin’s flesh without doing any harm to the surroundings.

But the effect on the biological tissue was immediate. The body’s skin lost its colour and shrivelled up, ageing and turning to dust within seconds in front of my eyes.

Khorne turned and looked around with a wild expression, searching for more enemies, but none revealed themselves.

“Was that the Átahsaia?” Hellith asked from her position next to me.

“I don’t know,” I replied, unsure whether the Átahsaia or Amon was the greater threat. Even if it hadn’t been intentional, Amon’s artefact had cut through the castle’s guided formations like butter. That was concerning.

The castle’s barrier formations drew their power from a powerful mana stone that I had acquired from the mortal realms because it could be freely controlled by the owner's will. The castle's barriers weren’t as powerful as my personal protections, but the mana stone had enough power to shield the castle from the storms. Breaking through a barrier that was powered in this manner was no easy feat.

Nonetheless. I shook my head and forced my attention back to what was important right now.

Including the demon who had suddenly gone mad, we now had six permanent deaths on our hands.

Khorne whirled on Amon. “Was it the Átahsaia?”

Amon only raised an eyebrow in response and showed Khorne the bleeding stump that remained of his arm. “I was kind of preoccupied with surviving a soul weapon. Sorry for not checking.” He looked down and nudged his cut-off arm with a foot.

The appendage’s flesh had darkened and turned necrotic in a sickening way.

“Guess that there is no reattaching that,” Amon grumbled.

“Let me help!” One of Amon’s female minions, the djinn, grabbed what was left of his arm and started to cast a sustained healing spell. If Amon had to regrow his hand from scratch it would take at least a few hours, maybe a day, for him to regain his full capabilities.

My own eyes wandered to the black dagger that remained on the ground and I decided to commandeer it quickly before anyone else got stupid ideas. I reached out and summoned the weapon into my hand with telekinesis. “I will take care of that.”

For a moment, it looked like both Amon and Khorne wanted to complain, but neither of them did so because they had their own problems.

Amon was missing a hand and Khorne still had to deal with his minions.

The soul mage sighed and gestured for the remaining demons to get back in line. “Come on, guys. I haven't got all day! Anyone who gives me trouble now will have a bad awakening.” He summoned his spear back to his side and allowed the weapon to perform a chopping motion that had the air hum smoothly in its wake.

I used the meantime to inspect the black dagger.

It was plain and functional, with a straight blade that tapered into a sharp point that was intended for stabbing things. The black metal was the only hint that it might have originated in Hatred's forges, which were known for quality work when it came to implements of death. The enchantment changed the game though. It turned the dagger into a high-level artefact. Sadly, the creator hadn't been proud enough to mark the weapon, which was an indicator that it was an assassin's tool.

I stored the artefact in my spacial storage and looked up.

Amon was again busy with testing demons. He was even whistling some tune that I didn't know.

But Khorne and some of his men were nowhere to be found. A few of those who had refused earlier had now joined Amon's queue.

The noises that came from the open doorway that led into the castle itself drew my attention. Hellith and I exchanged a look, then we went to investigate.

The smell was the first thing that caused me to walk faster. The wet smacking of a body on a stone floor was only an afterthought.

We found Khorne and the part of his men who were still refusing to be tested in the castle's entrance hall with the Anima Stone.

“What is going on here!?” I cursed and covered my mouth and nose with one hand. It smelled like a hatchery in here. I had visited one of those places only once or twice in my life and it gave me all the reason to take care of the upbringing of my daughters myself.

The seven remaining demons who were still fighting with Khorne over being tested stepped aside with expressions of fear on their faces. They looked like frightened demonlings, not like the commanders of Khorne's legions.

The area in front of the Anima Stone was carnage.

Corpses littered the ground. Dozens of them!

“I didn't do it!” Khorne was quick to defend himself when I glared at him.

“I killed my people in the courtyard!” He gestured outside, apparently conscious about having another discussion about my castle's cleanliness. “This is entirely Amon's doing!”

“How...” I wanted to call Khorne out on the blatant lie. There was just no way that Amon could be responsible since he had been in the courtyard the entire time.

But then I recognized the corpses. Or the corpse, depending on how one looked at it.

It was always the same demon's corpse, the Nar Karask that had been slain by Amon's spear!

As I watched, the Anima Stone pulsed with red light and a demon respawned.

The Nar Karask appeared, but not whole and uninjured as it should be. He had been brought back exactly as the spear had injured him. His torso was split from the belly up to his head, where the weapon had exited somewhere above his ear but still beneath his forehead.

Blood welled from the wound and the demon tumbled. His steps were insecure while his eyes rolled around in his head. All the while he was gurgling, trying to communicate. Which was impossible with the wound he had received.

His movements only allowed his guts to spill out of the wound, explaining the stench. And then he fell, joining the other corpses on the ground.

“It doesn't stop!” one of Khorne's minons complained. “Maybe the Anima Stone is broken?”

“It is not,” a voice proclaimed from behind me.

I turned and found Amon standing in the entrance hall's doorway, looking inside. He was scratching his chin with a shrunken down miniature version of his spear.

His expression was euphoric - as if he had managed something remarkable. “I think that my spear is working exactly as intended. Though I will have to do a little more research on how exactly these Anima Stones work. It's such a fascinating subject! At least I know now why the one in Baaar blew up on me!”

He turned his gaze on Khorne's remaining men. “So, will you come freely? Or join the queue as test subjects?”