[Espy]

And then that panic changed to flame. He was back in the burning house of thirteen years ago, reliving the nightmare he had time and time again, carrying his brother, pushed out into the chilly night wind by his father...

...But something was wrong. The fire followed him out, latching onto his limbs, his skin. Gasping for air, he shoved Gabe ahead of him, trying to speak, but his whole body was burning up, and then everything around him besides the flames was gone. The inferno bore into him, set every molecule of his flesh on fire, and he curled up into the tightest ball he could manage, screaming, desperate to escape from the burning agony. Even death, he could cope with. This was unbearable.

Too abruptly, the fire was swept clean by an empty nothingness.

Dante screamed, still, or rather, tried to, before realizing his mouth was shut and he was choking. Managing to claw his way into some approximation of "sitting", he tried to take a deep breath, failing as a violent shiver shot up his spine. Not yet processing the details of what had happened, he staggered upright and careened into the wall next to him.

Then it clicked into place. He whirled around and grabbed Thomas by the collar.

"WHAT. DID YOU DO TO ME?! Wha--" Coughs tore the remaining wind out of his lungs and he dropped down to all fours, wheezing for breath. But something felt...different. Suddenly aware of the few people staring at him, he waved a hand exasperatedly and immediately regretted it, collapsing sideways.

"...Go on. Go ahead. I'll...catch up when I...recover." He flopped onto his back, content for his back to be in contact with icy cold once again, a coldness that was different from the bone-chilling grip of death.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Thomas ignores Dante's hands upon him. He ignores the man's very existence, sitting transfixed, exhausted, drained in his very soul -- staring at Lev.

He cannot bring himself to rise, cannot even move. His hands remain braced on the floor, away from the weapons that might destroy the creature before it attacks them in this moment of vulnerability.

"What..." he speaks on shuddering breath, "are you?"

He can sense the creature's aura, its maleficence, its sublime hunger, shameless wantonness and manifest rage. An ancient spirit, fallen from Heaven so long ago, twisted, corrupted, beaten down in shame by the golden scepter, and somehow... evolved.

The priest weighs his options. Diogenes shows no weakness, but he felt the damage in his flesh and knows the warrior is in no shape for such a battle. His men still have their grenades, but would it be enough? The damage he would sustain in the crossfire would be... devastating. It would certainly end the mission.

Hatred seethes through the priest -- helpless hatred of his own powerlessness. They hedge failure here, the Law is in tatters, and Hell has gained a foothold on the doorstep of their empire.

Almost pathetically, he demands of the demon, "What in God's name do you want?"

[Lawtan]

Kadia swerved her head, looking for the presence that spoke in her mind. Never had she felt such a force within – usually she was the one coordinating via mind. Spotting Diogenesis, she made the connection.
What did he mean, though…surely such a miracle worker had some good in him…Then she thought about the priest’s reaction, not to her hiding, but to her connection. Looking at Thomas, she wondered what he was…
Seeing Thomas look upon something, and hearing his voice, Kadia turned towards Lev, and felt sick fear.

--------

Rurik watched as the –friend– was engulfed in flames. With Kadia’s aura-sensing, he saw Dante bolt from darkness and grasp at the priest who saved him. Then, a sound alerted him…another person. A gun-toting fellow tossed off the last of the snakes, but smelled…unclean. The man fell.

target.man_04 == ally
ally.life == 0
initiating..

…The man rose, with a reeking bile-smell…

initiation stopped…
ally.life == 1
ally.life == 0
ERROR: Multiple values for “ally.life”

Rurik, pausing in confusion, tilted his head back with a clank. A recording played a long, mournful wolf howl. Tilting forward on the rubber balls of his paws, Rurik felt Kadia’s fear. Growling, Rurik started towards Lev.

target.man_04 == cause.fear
initiate program Stop.target()? Y/N

--------

Kadia, sensing the gun-toting man, blanched. Behind her, a firewheel rose. In unconscious fear, she started spinning a firewheel, about to send it towards the presence. It radiating of burned atmosphere and gorged toxins. It was an impulse to kill the threat, but she killed the impulse, recalling that Dante and the priest were now vulnerable. Mentally, she commanded Rurik to stop his charge and fall back from what felt like possessed Lev.

“Such an…unbalance…unnatural…”

[Salone]

"What am I?"

Na'lsa looked at his, or rather, Lev's hands. He grinned as he touched one hand and then the other. Dropping them to his sides, he looked back up to the priest. Malevolent eyes stared madness as his mouth broke in to a toothy, wide smile.

"I am, Priest. I simply am."

The grin melted abruptly as he coughed. A strange feeling indeed. Blood welled up in his throat, attempting to remove itself from a now functioning body. Na'lsa ungracefully bent to the side, retching for a moment before coughing up more blood. He took a moment to gather himself before rising again, somewhat less inflated than he was before. The wild-eyed face returned though, as well as his toothy grin as he surveyed those around him.

"I am Na'lsa. The Consumer. Cast out. Stricken. Reduced to nothing. I subsisted my very existence on the single celled organisms that infested this Earth for millenia. I shoved myself from organism to organism, latching on to what I could. To be thrown out! To be reduced to mindless hunger! It was a debilitating existence!"

He shouted, jumping forward as he raised his hands. He panted for a moment as he attempted to calm down, shortly regaining his composure.

"Over millenia I clawed my way through the food chain, through the jaws of every animal until that one was consumed by something bigger. I fed upon the feeding. I induced pure, maddening gluttony. I buried myself in the very life of every creature I latched to. And buried in the plains of Africa, I found this one, this...human. This Lev. Oh, to inhabit such a creature! A one and true soul! Tainted, corrupted, fractured, but a soul I could insert myself in to! To have actual consciousness, to have actual thoughts! Agendas! Not just maddening, raving urges, murderous instincts to consume! To be able to ACT and think the ACT beforehand! To BE once again a shadow of what I was! Just simply to BE, PRIEST!"

He had begun shouting again, waving his arms like a madman preaching to desperate masses. Deep within, there was small pang of hunger.

"I fed from him. In turn, he fed from me. I whispered, and he heard. I manipulated, positioned, and he followed. And through some way, some power unknown, I have implanted myself in to this body so deeply that it has become my own."

Hunger.

"He will live. That is, if you do not attempt to eradicate me. To do so would be...taxing, to say the least, Priest. Many here who gave service to you would perish. Many may still."

Unbearable hunger.

"For now you see...I Am. And I am so very Hungry."

[Suzerain of Sheol]

They have eyes for none but the thing that speaks. Na'lsa.

The ensuing silence is interminable, alive with fear. Reaching to the slit in his balaclava, Diogenes pulls it down, freeing scar-tracked gray skin and bloodless lips. His flat voice disturbs the impasse, empty of inflection.

"What is this creature? Not resident to this unholy place -- brought here by us. To what end? Thomas!" The priest snaps his attention upward. "What do you sense of this spirit?"

He has not yet drawn a weapon on the thing inside the man called Lev.

Thomas sighs. "It is an Incarnation. Manifest sin. Intrinsic. Diabolically aware on the most fundamental level. A virus. And it does not lie. To destroy such a creature, in this place of all place... it is beyond us."

He pushes himself to his feet, shoulders sagging in defeat. "Do not attempt it."

"Then what would you have us do? Ally with such a creature? What has become of you? We came to this place to battle Hell and you have given battle to everything but, and when the infernal children at last crawl from their fiery wombs, you blanch and surrender? You will hang for this, priest!"

Thomas eyes him for a long moment, then turns away. "I am weary, and surrounded by sinners. If you strike the fiend, you kill us all. The blood is on your hands, Diogenes."

"What is our purpose, if not to die in sacrificial battle against Satan's hordes, as our Savior once sacrificed his own life on the cross?"

"And see the victory he has won!" The priest whirls, the charred metal of his hand waving in forlorn dismissal of earth and heaven.

"You speak of purpose? We have none. Our God is dead. The Law is broken. We are no longer even human! This war is lost, Diogenes, and no barb of scripture nor threat of dogma will change that."

There is movement, disruptive to the eyes, nauseating, faster than thought, and the assassin stands before the priest, his arm outstretched, pistol leveled against Thomas' forehead.

He speaks one word.

"Heretic."

And pulls the trigger. Carved with the Celestrine's blessing, invested with a field of disruptive psykhosis, the bullet erupts from the chamber, shearing through graphene and titanium into the brain. Into the soul.

The back of Thomas' head explodes in a clatter of sundered metal, in a scattering a circuits and a squelch of pulp. Nacreous light leaks from the wound, dimming as it streaks down the ruin of Thomas' face.

The body collapses.

The light goes out.

Before anyone can react, Diogenes screams to the soldiers. "STAND DOWN! Under the law of the Celestrine, I have executed this man for treason. Command of this mission is now mine."

Hesitation. Confusion. Acceptance.

One by one, the warriors kneel, heads bowed, weapons lowered.

Diogenes turns to face Lev.

He says nothing.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Well this was a turn of events. They had walked into hell, and it seemed another sort had followed them in. What was one more beast, really? At least this Na’lsa was upfront about things, if verbose. Still, the demon was a matter unresolved, and Tarja would not feel comfortable around him until she knew where things stood.

The seams of the mission were holding, but the cloth it was made from was starting to wear thin, and much too soon. They still had a hole in the ceiling and something to follow out of it. Perhaps the mechanical wolf had a good nose, though if their quarry was in the habit of leaving big holes and broken stones in its wake, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find, assuming that’s what their new leader decided they would do.

Thomas’ rule of law had been extinguished, puffed out with the light from his corpse. Whatever excuse Diogenes was giving for his action, the end result was still the same. Thomas was dead. Diogenes was in charge now. Simple, really.

Tarja cracked a small smile.

[Salone]

Na'lsa cackled. The sinister laugh was both childlike and diabolical at the same time, a sound that hinted at intense pleasure derived from the current events. The hunger, however, lingered on.

"You would do well here. Oh, so very well."

He stumbled forward a bit in hesitant steps. Hands and arms clutched to a hungering stomach, a stomach craving the fresh flesh of what remained of the priest that was just slain before him. He spoke in a weathered and halted manner, trying to keep his urges in check...for the moment.

"Hell is...broken. I am a stranger to this plane and even I know that. The only reason you still exist is because they spend more time posturing and positioning for power than anything. You forget that we are driven by petty desires. After all, hell is the result of pettiness itself."

He took cautious steps closer. Oh, the flesh of the priest was delectable. What little was left was tantalizing. Someone of holy power, someone alive not seconds ago, someone so divine slain by divine in the bowels of Hell itself. The irony was almost as succulent as the meat.

"I will not twist words. You desire to kill me. And the hunger that drives me pulls me to devour you, or the wonderful meal that you have just prepared. You have a choice. There is always a choice. Let me lay them out for you."

Maddening hunger now.

"You let me feed. Let me suppress my hunger. Allow me to consume the Priest, re-purpose his flesh. Bind it to these bones and blood. I have as much love for this place as you. Allow me to slake my thirsts and there will be more alive here than dead when this ordeal is over. Or...or..."

He had started to pant. Sunken lines were evident under his eyes. He began to take in sharp breaths not unlike an alarmed animal, one on the verge of lashing out.

"Or you sacrifice your comrades. Possibly yourself. Perhaps you do end me, and survive. But mark my words. I will devour the one brought back from death. I will remove the spines from these mere children. I will rend flesh time and time again before I fall. The flesh I touch is tainted. Unclean. I will spread through it. Alter it. Consume it. Like your Priest said, before he was so unceremoniously ejected from his position...I am a virus. He spoke truth. I am a virus, and I have not yet ran my course. Either submit flesh to me, or risk me invading your own."

He stumbled closer to the corpse, still keeping distance between Diogenes and himself. If he lunged he might be upon the body before anyone could try to remove him. Oh, the flesh called. It sang to him. The sweet chorus began to erode his sanity.

"We are not so different, you and I. I see in you a wish to destroy my kind. I share the same, so long as they pass through my jaws first. But I will consume ANYTHING that gets in my way. Think...think on that. Think hard, but think fast. Because even I cannot contain this hungry maw for much longer. Oh the sweet throats call to be crushed by the jaws of the All Consuming! Oh how they cry out for sustenance!"

[Quiet Man Cometh]

So, those were his terms.

Tarja turned and looked at Diogenes through the hollow sockets of her skull helm. "How important is the priest's corpse to you?"

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Focused solely upon the demon with deadly intent, Diogenes is taken aback by the woman's words. Irritated, he mutters,

"Irrelevant. He said as much himself, not even human. Let the buzzards of Hell glut on this artificial carrion, and may it prove a joyless meal."

He returns his attention once more to Na'lsa. "But not you. You have no right to this. Parasite."

[Lawtan]

At first, joy! The blind guy…Dante lived! This faded in moments as the man grabbed at Thomas, leaving Kadia confused. Then, Na’lsa appeared, and Thomas gave up…and died. Kadia looked on in shock at the sudden movement of Diogenes, and almost reflexively acted to defend the people she watched over. However, the moment flew by, and Thomas now lay, dead, upon the floor.

“I was supposed to watch over him…” she muttered, feeling guilt even though the man was content to let a demon walk alongside them. There was guilt even though, or perhaps because of, the fact that she had been asked to do no such thing. A glare towards Diogenes quickly reminded her of the current threat, and her wheels of fire, one bent from battle, looking like a reaper’s scythe, spun nearer to Na’lsa. Kadia’s stance was that of a viper, ready to strike.

“Foul though Thomas was, I will not let a demon of Gluttony feast upon him.” Kadia’s pride remained strong, and she believed strongly in honoring the dead.

------

Rurik, still confused over the Not-man, responded to his mistress’s stance, arcing his tail like the weapon it was, and letting out growls broken by barks.


target.man_04 == identified.(enemy)

Activating Firenet…

ERROR: Firenet device blocked


Rurik hit the tail against the ground, dislodging the blockage.


Reloading Firenet…

Firenet loaded, ready to fire


Rurik gave a purr of fulfillment, and kept his focus on Na’lsa, with his ears open to other dangers in this realm.

------

Kadia looked at Tarja in unpleasant surprise. This person seemed so laconic, so why would she speak now. The sentence distracted her momentarily as Tarja commanded attention. No…she could not let some monster do this. Already, it had hurt the gunman…Kadia realized she did not even know his name…

Think, genius, think! There has to be a better way out of this…

Kadia noticed an uneven flow in Na’lsa/Lev’s aura…could something be done there? If not, could they escape or hide from the sin incarnate? Kadia reached in, seeking the path of the voice that earlier spoke to her.

"Hey, would it be possible to send Na'lsa into "recession" by manipulating his aura?"

[Gallagher]

The somethings were getting... angry? No. Just the Lion. At least, he could see no other reason to kill, yet not feed. There was too much jabbering for him to keep interested in their little scene. Only one made any sense to him.

Flesh, so it had called itself. That was a title he could recall.

Making sense was hardly interesting.

He huffed, his attention turned to where the butcher had once waited for them. A few steps took him away from the volatile group, to kneeling before a pile of ash. Tilting his head this way and that, he reached out, blackened his fingertips with the remains, then brought him to his tongue.

He preferred the snakes.

[Espy]

Dante grabbed at the wall, propping himself up against it against the desires of his feet. The emotions racing around his head didn't quite seem like slowing down to be handled one at a time, and he wasn't sure any words he spoke would come out right. Still, there was a point to be made.

"Though no human, he de--" Dante's brain suddenly refused to make proper contact with his newly-reformed lungs, sending him into a coughing fit. "...I was saying, he deserves to be treated humanely. Not...eaten. Not thrown to...the buzzards of hell." He glanced at Diogenes, but the man was as unreadable as any "fancy" contract was to Dante.

Turning to the girl who'd helped save his life, he continued. "...Don't try. I suppose you can see it as much as I can. There's no taming that inky darkness, and I won't help you if you try."

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Fixed on the creature Na'lsa, Diogenes snarls at Dante's words.

"What would you have me do? There are no angels to spirit this fallen flesh to blissful rest. A cairn in Hell is hypocrisy enough to make Satan himself weep amid his death throes in bitter laughter. I don't suppose you've sunfire on hand to blast those titanium bones to ash?

Let the heretic rot."

Struck by a sudden realization, he diverts his attention from the demon to kneel beside the priest's body and roughly rolls him onto his back, exposing the devastated ruin of his face. Gripping the neck of the robe, he sends a jolt of psychic force to his muscles and violently tears the kevlar apart, revealing the armored vest beneath.

And secured in the top-most compartment, the Ordinance Transceiver entrusted to the priest. Diogenes takes it and secures it on his own person.

As he is about to rise, something strikes him. Ethereal, ephemeral, an instinct, a sensation, a revelation.

This.

Is.

Not.

Real.

Something not himself speaks the word aloud.

A voice echoing from nowhere, omnipresent, crushing, sibilant. An ancient sound, bound with authority, bound with the majesty of Hell, cacophonous with inconceivable potentials, unthinkable atrocities. Beautiful. Rapturous. Erotic.

And the world falls away.

Gone is the asylum, the carcasses of the vipers, the ashes of the angel. Gone the strange stars above.

They stand once more in daylight, in the barrens of Smyrna, inside the Abbot's chamber in the monastery tower. It was built for luxury, for opulence, velour carpets in crimson, stretching from one corner fifty feet and more to the other, now tattered, stained, faded, moth-eaten.

Against the far wall, surrounded by the mauled corpses of a dozen monks, stands the Abbot's bed, draped with sable shrouds, nested in a frame of tarnished gold. A strange coalescence of power, like dusted pearls, exudes from the ivory crown upon his brow.

But he is irrelevant, insignificant, to the other occupant of the chamber, circling the room in obese coils, sheathed in oiled scales like feathers of nauseous gray: a serpent. Hundreds of feet long, bloated impossibly and leaking rank blood and... smoke... from what appear dozens of wombs in the grotesque heaps of her flesh. The shapes of unholy things writhe visibly within, bulging and deforming her body.

And at the head, looming over the priest's rest, where the scales taper away, is the torso of a woman like a statue carved by hallucinating angels. Knotted clumps of night-dark hair fall in torrents down over an inhuman skull. She has no flesh, and maggots crawl across the necrotic tissue of her face, into the pits of her eyes. Long arms of dull, bare bone fall from warped shoulders, jointed at impossible angles. Her ribs jut outward, stretched taut with spidery tissue and tumescent veins, laying bare a pit of obscene organs within.

Seeing the party, a horrific smile splits her features, and she spreads her arms in welcome.

Again, the voice comes, haunting, appallingly dulcet, the song of a profane muse. ""All the Host of the Heaven recoiled, and called me SIN. His own begotten daughter."

Rippling with vulgar motion, heaving, excreting blood and bane, she extends herself closer to the group, her words assaulting them like the cataracts of Hell. "And see what I hath become,accursed and driv'n out from the palace of my Father.I once held in troth the Tarterian Key itself,to open the Adamantine Gates and so release Hell in all its terror upon thy world. But he came, the glorious one, Adonis, the Scepter'd One, Beelzebub, and did wrest it from my grasp. I have been usurped, unable to avenge Michael's regicide upon my father. I am hunted by demons, hated by Heaven, and the nightmare of every man."

And then she sees, the slavering form of Na'lsa on the ground far below. And her smile widens.

"Oh, my beautiful son...."

[Salone]

"Hello...Mother."

Na'lsa spoke with all the awkwardness of a teenager encountering their overbearing parents. Stepping hesitantly towards her, he opened his arms in a semi-welcoming gesture.

"It has been so very long. I have grown so much. So very much, Mother. I have gone in to the world. I have opened my gaping Maw and consumed, I have gorged myself. I have evolved from the quivering masses of primitive flesh I once infested. I have risen."

He stopped, staring at her quivering scales, at the mass of movement just below them that housed untold numbers of his siblings. Untold amounts of unprotected sins made manifest, all yearning to be let loose upon the world.

"I grew within your womb for sustenance..."

So much flesh. It writhed. Called him to enter. To impale. To open. To violate with his maw and consume. Her innate urges called to him, but on the same level of his own perversion. Oh, the HUNGER finally ate to his last vestiges of sanity.

"AND I WILL RETURN FOR THE SAME!"

He had barely finished speaking before he reared back his head, his jaw unhinging in a nightmarishly huge bite. Na'lsa threw himself forward with great force, clawing in between Sin's feathered scales. His mouth worked furiously to consume bits of scale and flesh. His hands found the wound he had caused, and with great strength he forced his body head first inside her, splitting the gouge open even further. And as he burrowed, he fed on the countless fetuses that were his siblings. Plucking them like grapes from their many wombs, he tore into and devoured them, ripping their sanctuaries apart with his mindless hunger. Organs and body parts and various giblets pressed in against him, but he burrowed still in to brethren. There was no caution. There was no consideration. No preservation.

There was only hunger, and the need above all else to sate it.

[Lawtan]

Without an answer from Diogenes, Kadia took initiative. Mentally, she commanded Rurik to lock onto Na’lsa with the net. Kadia twisted the studs from the far end of the building, forming them into metal snakes. With a command, she sent them to the embodiment of hunger. Kadia would attempt to shove the demon under Lev again. Sitting down in a cross-legged position, she closed her eyes. Within a few breaths, the world around faded. The snakes and Rurik would do their work. Opening her eyes without seeing, Kadia began her meditation…

A trickle of water fell in her minds eye, swallowed by the heat of her element. The water vapor congealed and spread, becoming both dark and light. Droplets became stars, swirling in eternal expansion. She pushed herself into it. The tempest, the water, the universe, it entered her crown and filled it, an orb of power and wisdom. Kadia had done this before, opening her mind, but never to work anything. She felt the auras around her, but they were off. This hellhole…it was something far more foul...

Sins and memories of regrets and wrongs distracted her from any attempt to exorcise or contain Na’lsa. Beatings and orgies, murder and betrayals rushed by in traumatic pictures too quick for the conscious mind. Fast as light the image of her first friend, dead at the behest of a paid assassin. Then the charred remains of her mother in her hand, courtesy of demons. The strong bum who raped her, his hands… Suddenly, everyone was too close to her. Every person…a threat of wrongs and sins to her. All had a presence that she needed to be free of. Above them, Sin touched all, even her. To be touched...she had to be rid of that touch. Kadia screamed as she touched her own spirit, and felt the presence of Sin.

The ground around her erupted through the dissolving illusion, forming a tornado of hellish debris. All her blades, from knives to the flame wheels, circled her as both approached the source. The source of the dead loved ones. The source of the traitorous gangs. The source of vile judgments and prejudices. The source of beatings. One thought ran through a mind shut down to logic: “You will not survive ME!”

A mantra formed as Kadia walked slowly to the creature. “Blood! I will rend your mouth! Flesh! I will rape your brain! Soul! I will end you NOw! No More! No More! Blood! I will rend your mouth!” A fell light, the corruption of what weak Theulogical ability she had, scattered within the whirlwind, causing it to spin much faster. This was Kadia the huntress, the hidden destroyer, marching with a gale of remains, marching to her death in the name of righteous vengeance - vengeance for the force of Sin and wrong

.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

This. This is what he was created for, the demoniac truth at the heart of all their absolute dogma. This... excess, this obscenity, the wretched powers of the world that would see Mankind as ants in a burning hill.

And that cannot be permitted.

Even as the demon charges its mother, tearing into Sin's flesh in the violation of reversed birth, Diogenes acts, stretching his mind out beyond walls of stone, out to the soldiers in the assault vehicle beyond the walls.

The entity has revealed itself. This site is consigned to holy purgation. Destroy it by any means necessary.

He further commands his men in the chamber to hold fire, unnerved by the writhing bulges in Sin's many wombs. Stooping, he collects the hypersonic rifle from the priest's corpse, by far a mightier weapon than his own, and chambers a round, leveling the five-foot barrel at the demon-mother's skull.

He imparts a psychic charge to the bullet within and pulls the trigger. Flashfire sprays from the barrel as the tungsten-carbide round blasts through the intervening air with a defeaning sonic burst.

There is a sound of... shattering, but it is not the devil's bone that scatters across the carpet. Tungsten-carbide dust. There is a visible dent in Sin's brow, but nothing more.

She does not seem to acknowledge the attack.

Instead, she seems preoccupied with the assault inside her, staring at the wriggling shape of Na'lsa at it mutilates her from within. She looks... saddened, remorseful. Worried.

And then her multi-hinged jaw stretches open in an impossible gape of abject horror.

She manages a single word,

"No

before it begins. The birthing.

Sin's coils pulse, gorge, buckle, and constrict horribly in a spasm that draws a keening, sobbing gasp from the demoness. She shudders, is still for a moment, and then heaves, cloacae opening all along her glutted form, twelve at least, ripped savagely open in flooding blood and spattering placentae.

Heads emerge from the savaged orificia, massive, thick skulls coated in squalid amneosis; deep, predatory eyes sparking like furnaces; Cerberian snouts, gushing Hellish smoke, lined with hierarchies of acrid fangs. The stench is like nothing on Earth.

The Hounds of Hell, bastard children of Death, filled with the Profane Spirit. They stand at least seven feet at the shoulder, impossibly muscled, ebon claws the length of shortswords slashing the carpet as they stamp and shake the clinging afterbirth from their hides.

But they do not attack, not immediately. No, their unholy maws part, slavering tongues flitting, and a voice, a single voice, proclaims in thunder from their throats:

IN NOMINE SATANAS, ET BESTIAE ET SPIRITUS PROFANAE, VOS ADVERSUM EGO EVOCANT DIABOLUM, PER EXITIUM CRUCE CHRISTI ET LUMINOS LUCIFER, ANIMA VESTRI DAMNARE AD INFERNOS ETERNUM

And as one, they rear onto their hind legs, towering fifteen feet on titanic legs. Their throats swell and bulge, and as one, the Hounds slam back to the ground, shuddering the chamber, and vomit utter darkness upon the party.