[Suzerain of Sheol]

Still haloed in burnished flame, Cain remains unmoving, his cyclone of stone whipping about him. A lambent darkness begins to descend over the temple, as though Cain is spreading his spirit over them all. His voice whispers from strange heights.

AND WHAT IS ASHMODAI? CUR. SLAVE. SUPPLIANT BEAST TOO TIMID TO DEFEND HIS SAVAGERY, BOWING AND LICKING AT THE FOOT OF MIGHTIER MASTERS. GO, THEN. CALL HIM HERE TO DIE. I AM NO STRANGER TO THE MURDER OF DEMONS.

As though drawn by his words, the ground beneath the Basilica begins to quake, heaving wildly, adding even more destruction to Cain's gyring storm. In the space between Asasiah and the specter, an old aisle to the temple's heart, earth and ancient cobbles erupt skyward, an ear-tearing shriek piercing the cacophony of the storm. A tower of dust and spume billows among Cain's darkness.

In the shadows that remain, it can be glimpsed. Vast. Hellish. Impossible.

Three terrible heads rear in the darkness: leonine, bovine, and human, the last horrendously beautiful. They writhe on the necks of serpents, scaled in adamant, rising from the body of a great dragon on six legs, whose tail is a monstrous cobra. A single arm rises from the creature's right, and in it is clutched a charger's lance, at least 20 feet long, atop which sways the standard of Amaymon in crimson glory. Fire cloaks Ashmodai like a mantle of Hell....