That day, the city of Cadeyrn was rocked by an attack from one of the feared and reviled, Fiendlord’s of Agartha’s wonderland wastes.

One of the immortal monsters that warred with the people’s gods and the immortal kings. A small army of high level, Snail-fiends descended from the sky, spewing mantra while they sucked the life from every living thing within their reach.

They landed like golden meteorites, their spiral shells tearing through man and building alike. Creating craters whenever they landed on the open roads.

Blood and fire rained down from a broken sky as the world was reduced to bedlam.

Their leader, Fiendlord Aspersum descended, his body bathed in golden light. Rather than being a mere man-shaped snail, or snail-shaped man like the other, what he was, was an amalgam of millions of radiant garden snails, all of them merging together to form his main body.

Which was a thing that was almost beyond words. Heavily armored, broad shouldered, made of spirals stacked upon spiral.

His body was powerfully made, undeniable in a way, seeming stretch towards perfection and over-reach.

Being a snail that stood head and shoulders amongst other snails, Fiendlord Aspersum was covered in mucus.

His skin glistening, crawling upon itself, as he power manifested itself as the viscous floods that oozed all over his body. The mucus shining like quicksilver beneath the afternoon sun.

Aspersum set his minions loose on the city while he marched to towards the halls of the Black-Sky Union. The home of the powers that lay behind the powers, that ultimately ruled the city of Cadeyrn and all its neighbors.

The fiendlord's attack was too sudden, the ordinary authorities were too weak to react, the adventurers guild to scattered, and the sects too unsure, waiting on their elders because sending the people they had on hand, would only be sending them to their deaths.

Buildings crumbled, cars were crushed and the people cried to be saved, but in that moment it seemed to that it was all to no avail.

Then suddenly they appeared, a group of skull and star masked first responders. All of them uniformed, dressed in black body armor. Their backs emblazoned with the smiling moon and stars of a certain Foundation that many had heard of, but no one really knew about.

The first team of Samhain agents was soon joined by a second group of leithe figure elites, who appeared from out of the shadows. Their faces hidden behind plain white masks.

It was these elite that took on the snail-fiends while the others rescued the troubled citizens of Cadeyrn.

They leapt into action, with flashy spin-kicks and multi-colored fireworks like spells. Thing that were meant to distract and pull while the real elites within their ranks swept through the wasteland, like evil razors and poisoned needles, hidden within a pile of clown scarves.

Fiendlord Aspersum would get halfway to the Union HQ before being stopped by a being covered in black and pink flames. A being with eyes of crimson flame. A being with great black horns sprouting from its head. The horns sweeping back and then jutting forwards like crooked bolts of lightning. His face hidden behind a mask of fire and shadow, His head crowned with spikes of metallic bone. This being would be known to the media as the horned king.

Eyewitnesses wouldn’t be able to catch what the two sinister creatures ended up saying to each other.

What they and several traffic cameras and news drones “would” be able to catch, was what came after the little tet-de-tet ended.

The two monsters slammed into each like two speeding trains, the shock wave from the collision shattering all the glass in a mile radius.

Aspersum might well have still continued speaking as it threw its bolts of corrupted mental-energy at the horned man.

As for the horned man, there was no mistaking the haughty sneer that contorted what little that could be seen of his face.

Again the words were lost, but honestly at this point there wasn’t anyone who cared.

The citizenry were all too busy running for their lives, the leveller response teams from the sects and guilds were all too busy saving imperilled people and facing off against the lesser snail-fiends.

Only the few lookie-loos and lucky reporters who happened to be close enough but safe enough to have the leeway to simply just bare witness to all that was happening around them, had time to pay the two titanic beings any mind.

The fiendlord and his mysterious, equally monstrous, opponent exchanged punches like the drunkest patrons in a bar brawl.

Neither of them seeming to exercise any restraint, finesse or self-preservation. They simply wailed at each other delivering blows that sounded like thunderclaps.

One couldn’t seem to dodge, its every attempt at warding his fiery opponents blows all coming to naught, only serving as waste of effort and flesh. Its magics and techniques sealed by the relentless assault of its opponent.

WIth blows that rocked both body and mind forcing it into a mental corner.

The other side simply didn’t care to dodge, seeming to suffer no damage, no matter how many time he was hit.

Their match would come to an end in just fifteen minutes time, when the snail fiend would suddenly tire and the Horned King would grow bored. Ending the snail’s offensive with a devastating backhand that removed the head of creature and the killed off half of the snail monsters that made up its towering mass.

The horned being would then wrap his foe’s torso with his arms and lurch backwards, supplexing Aspersum into the ground with enough force to turn that portion of the street into a desolate crater.

The Fiendlord was then tossed up into the air, with the Horned King standing beneath it sending out a ghastly roar, and a beam of fiery pink light that followed that roar. Roasting the Fiendlord and reducing him into ashes.

With the battle done the horned being would stand in the middle of the devastated city and as he crossed its arms all the worst damage caused by the fiendlord’s invasion would undo itself. The broken glass flying back into the windows and doorways. The damaged buildings righting themselves.

The surviving snail-fiends would all expire at the same time, either struck by some connection to their fallen lord, or falling to whatever magic the horned king might have cast while he repaired the city.

Then with a single bound he took to the air. His body tearing through the upper canopy of the clouds.

Once he’d disappeared, so too, retreated the agents of the Samhain Foundation. Either climbing back into their vans and vehicles, or slinking back into whatever shadows they’d come out from.

The next few weeks would be a media frenzy of people wondering what manner of being the horned king was. Asking questions about his level, and his allegiances.

Questions that couldn’t be answered since all attempts at appraising him had failed on that momentous day.

A few people wondered if the devastation to the city wasn’t in fact all its fault, perhaps due to some grudge between fellow monsters. Such voices seemed to be part of a minority however, seeming to fade just a few hours after they’d been heard.

Grainy footage of the fight would be spread on the web, where posters would discuss the battle itself, and nature of the two combatants.

In the echelons of those in the know, the true nature of what had happened was known, and it was of no particular surprise to anyone that what happened that day. Happened.

The fiends, enlightened monsters that they were, were always trying to take over the civilized territories. Sometimes they could be reasoned with, often they could not. It was just the way of things.

It was the Wonderland waste’s way of pushing back at the forces of man.

Their only questions were concerning, who on earth the Horned King was, and what his ties to the Samhain foundation, that got a majority of the credit for the evacuation efforts that saved most of the city, were.

Aspersum only attacked because he thought he could get away with it. And he would only have thought he could get away with it, if he were stronger than most of their sect elders combined.

Which going by the auras reported by their agents that were present that day, had seemed to be the case.

What troubled these group was that, if Aspersum only had been strong enough to require a full response from all their factions, then it went without saying that the one who beat him was even stronger.

This was a cause of worry for these factions. An unknown player was a fearful thing to have on the board, and a powerful unknown, worthy of losing sleep over.

******

Elsewhere on Agartha, things weren’t quite so, tense. Even if Cadeyrn had actually been destroyed the rest of Ashok, might well, have still gone on with their lives with little more than a few weeks of twenty-four hour news coverage and memorialization.

Never mind the rest of the continent and the rest of Agartha.

In truth, the push and pull of the forces of “man” and the forces of the waste, were so ubiquitous and constant that all but the most catastrophic losses were just considered matter of course.

If the sects and powers were strong then the nation would live, if they were weak, then the monsters would win and the wonderland would take over.

It was on this principle that the new world had been built. It was within such a world that the cycle of conflict and karma, that the leveller system had been created to sustain, continued its endless revolutions.

Thus it came to pass, that even if the rest of the world didn’t necessarily ignore the Cadeyrn crises, they didn’t it pay it too much attention either.

Most of the news cycle for the rest of Venris and its nearest neighboring continent would be focused on politics, leveller celebrity gossip, magical technology breakthroughs, and movie debuts.

If there was anything that “would” manage to get that portion of the world’s full attention it would be a small incident in Cyrillus, one of Ashok’s nearest neighbors.

A certain Edgar Caldwell, brother to of the Caldwell Media Conglomeracy, would be said to have stumbled upon a key and map that led to an old world inheritance.

A discovery that would be celebrated by most of the world, regardless of whether they knew or cared for the Caldwell family or the Empire of Cyrillus.

The discovery of great treasure was always a thing to celebrate. Especially when it was well known that those that had made the discovery, weren’t necessarily strong enough to keep all the benefits to themselves.

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