Chapter 11
“Rys! Rys!” Fara shouted.
He snapped out of his stupor and looked at the fox next to him. Her tails weaved through the air, casting protective barriers around the strike team. Grigor and Fred took up defensive positions, while the noble demons shunted everybody else back. The Kinadain swordsmen tried to protect Alsia from all sides.
Above all else, everyone looked lost and confused. The chaos surrounding them made little sense, and only three people present knew what was going on.
Grigor’s and Fred’s countenances were grim, and their presences seemed to loom large over the demons. Their muscles bulged as they tensed and prepared themselves for the worst.
Both of them had been here in history.
“What the hell is going on?” Fara asked, struggling to make herself heard.
“The Fall of Ruathym,” Rys said.
A tremor ran through the demons, and they looked at him like he was insane.
Grigor let out a loud grunt. “I scarcely had the will for this horror but once. What sorcery has brought us back here?”
“We cannot truly have gone back in time,” Fred said. “The Empire fell 1600 years ago. This city doesn’t even exist anymore. The northern half of Gauron is a lifeless, blackened husk of its former self.”
“Indeed,” Orthrus said, as the golden wisp blinked into existence next to Rys. “This isn’t the past. Instead, it’s a recreation of history using the power of the Labyrinth. A perfect recreation of past events in a pocket dimension, isolated from the world you know.”
“It’s based on my memories?” Rys asked.
“No. It’s based on objective fact.” Orthrus tutted at him. “The past is a constant, and the Labyrinth can observe historical events using its magic. If it can bend time and space, why can’t it perceive history without the foggy lens of interpretation? While nothing you do here will affect reality, it is reality, in a sense.”
Rys’s mind raced as Orthrus’s words soaked into his mind.
This was the Fall of Ruathym, in every sense of the word. He was reliving his past, but not as a flashback or a memory.
“Does that mean I can see things here that I never did in my life?” Rys’s voice was thick with emotion.
If the answer was yes, then he knew what he had to do. There was only one thing he could do.
“Within limitation, I imagine. This is a defense mechanism of the seal,” Orthrus explained. “Although it has been adjusted. Whoever sealed you away must have updated the simulacrum used to defend each power conduit. Something this complicated must be created in advance, and the events taking place here took place millennia after the seal was constructed.”
“Focus, Orthrus. What do I need to do? And what can I do?” Rys asked.
But he knew what he wanted to do, no matter what Orthrus said.
In the distance, Malusian’s palace towered over the city beneath a furious red sky. Dozens of lesser castles and manors surrounded it, but they paled in comparison to the domain of the archdevil himself.
Right now, the palace was a pyre of glittering magic and dragonfire. Explosions and flashes of light lit up the grounds and walls, and a smoldering hellfire blazed in its depths. When the dragons had struck, the palace had been the primary target. Within it was the portal that had sustained almost every infernal remaining on Harrium.
By destroying it, the rebel dragons led by King Mylar had ended the Infernal Empire overnight and caused what was known as the Forever Banishing. But they had overcome one of the most powerful infernals in existence in order to do so.
In history, Rys had only found his broken, shattered body long after he had died. The days Rys had taken to reach the palace while trying to put down the chaos of Ruathym had prevented him from finding out what truly happened.
Could he find out the truth here? Or was it still too late?
Could Rys meet his old friend and mentor?
Orthrus spoke up, “The solution to these simulacrums is simple enough. Change history. It must be irrevocably altered in some way that would decisively change the course of Harrium itself. If your actions here would still result in the same outcomes in history—were you to somehow repeat them, that is—then you will be expelled from the simulacrum.”
“Change history?” Fara repeated.
Alsia crept closer to them, despite her guards’ insistence otherwise. The battle in the streets avoided them, as few people wanted to challenge a pair of demon princes.
“Does that mean we must save Ruathym?” Alsia asked. “I don’t know what actually happened here, but this situation looks hopeless for a force this small.”
Anger welled up in Rys, but he suppressed it. This was his home once, but not anymore.
He had already made his peace with his actions in Ruathym. What he did here wouldn’t change history or help the people of the city.
“The city can’t be saved,” he ground out. “Even with an actual army, the best I managed was to quell the fighting, the worst of the fires, and to get as many people out as possible. The dragons came and burned down the rest of the city anyway.”
Hundreds of thousands died. To say nothing of the millions who perished in the continental aftermath of the collapse of a superpower and the resulting power struggles.
In order to achieve freedom, Mylar and his dragons doomed many. Fury bubbled within Rys as he witnessed the destruction of his home, remembering his powerlessness.
Even as one of Malusian’s generals, he had been unable to stop this from happening. Now, he witnessed it again, and nothing had changed.
“Does that mean we should try to focus on the dragons?” Fara suggested.
“What if we leave?” Alsia asked. “That would be different, wouldn’t it?”
“Doubtful,” Grigor said. He rested on his axe, the embers within his mask smoldering. “Our efforts saved many, but were ultimately fruitless. The event itself is what mattered. We must find or do something that redirects the flow of time itself, not merely disturb it.”
Once again, Rys found his attention drawn to the palace.
“Rys,” Grigor uttered.
Their eyes met. They nodded.
“We’ll advance on Malusian’s palace,” Rys ordered, shaking everyone from their thoughts. “Stop for nothing and no one, crush all opposition in our way, and avoid the dragons overhead.”
His orders were followed to the letter. The Kinadain struggled the most, as they had to ignore the plaintive screams for help from thousands of people as the city burned around them. Even the demons were troubled, as they witnessed an event that they had consigned to myth.
Ruathym was the jewel of the Infernal Empire. It had been a sign of the glory of infernals. In their hearts, it belonged to a time when demons and devils had been free to walk Harrium and ruled the world. Here, they watched it be destroyed.
Despite that, everyone pushed on. They bulldozed minor skirmishes between rebels and soldiers. As they went, hundreds of soldiers in Imperial uniforms joined them. Grigor and Fred were demon princes, and even in this recreation, they commanded immediate loyalty from others.
Not to mention that Rys was arguably the most powerful being on the continent at present.
“Is there something important in the palace?” Alsia asked as they moved.
“Besides the fact it was where the greatest nation on Harrium once governed all of Gauron?” Rys said with a wry smile. “The last portal to Hell was there, although it’s destroyed now. I never found out how the dragons managed to break it. All the shards had been removed by the time I arrived.”
“General, do you think he’s still alive up there?” Fred suddenly interrupted, reverting to Rys’s old title. Grigor turned his head as well.
“Who?” Alsia asked, and Fara raised an eyebrow as well.
“Duar,” Grigor said.
Rys grimaced. He hadn’t known whether to bring up Duar’s potential presence. “Can you see him?”
“Our soul sight isn’t working right now,” Grigor said, pointing at his eyes. “The destruction of the portal is producing considerable interference in the magical and astral planes.”
Ah, Rys had forgotten about that. “Then we’ll find out.”
“Duar?” Fara asked.
“Archdevil Malusian’s right hand, one of the oldest infernals in existence, the defender of the portal, and the devil who promoted me to general,” Rys said as he squared his jaw.
Fara stared at him. After a few moments, she realized what happened to Duar, and her eyes closed.
The palace appeared to be built atop an artificial mountain at first. The foundation was really made up of other buildings, as Ruathym was a massive urban sprawl that literally built on itself. At one point, there had been a river system beneath it, but it had been drunk clean long ago and replaced with sewage.
A river of blood poured down one of the walls, often ignoring the path of least resistance. Its behavior was openly unnatural.
“What is that?” Fara asked, her tails standing on end.
“One of Kauros’s artificial vampires. He created the damn things, and spent a lot of time tinkering with them,” Rys said without giving the stream of a blood a second glance. “Ignore it. We don’t need to fight the thing inside it.”
“Created?” Fara hissed.
“Vampires aren’t natural. The curse that produced them originated in the Infernal Empire, as a means to turn mortals into weapons during the Emergence,” Rys explained as they pushed on. “Originally, it didn’t propagate, but that meant vampires needed to be constantly replaced. So Kauros had the bright idea to create a self-propagating curse, and that created the vampires you likely know about.”
“Rys, I’m beginning to think there’s a good reason this city is burning down,” Fara said flatly.
“There is.” His expression was like stone, however. “But all this anger resulted in little other than a lot of dead people, destroyed cities, and what history tells me is nearly a thousand years of nothing. You won’t convince me that a world on the brink of complete destruction is better off than what the Infernal Empire gave it, for all its faults.”
“I’m not trying to convince you, but maybe don’t create an entire race of vampiric superweapons,” Fara muttered. They remained silent for a few minutes. “Is infernal sorcery that good at… altering people?”
“It turned me from an ordinary human into what I am. Infernals excel at twisting life itself to their will.” He shrugged. “I take it you have something in mind?”
“Maybe. We can talk about it later.” Fara’s expression showed how torn she was. After tearing him a new one over the evils of the Empire, she wanted to use the same method for her own gain.
They arrived at the outer edge of the palace, at an expansive courtyard known as the Hill of Dreams.
“I expected something far more grisly,” Fara admitted. “Especially given what it looks like now.”
The hill was lined with stakes. Hundreds of them. Heads, dismembered bodies, and sometimes entire corpses were all impaled together. The rebels hadn’t distinguished between women or men, although Rys saw no children.
Anyone in the palace had been killed and stuck up like a trophy by the rebels. They wanted everyone to know that they were overthrowing their oppressors, and anyone aligned with them was just as bad. Rys didn’t know how many had been killed in the original assault, compared to those the furious rebels had personally slain. He didn’t care.
“This was where Malusian held many public events, particularly celebrations. If you became someone in Ruathym, you might be honored here one day,” Rys said. “I was promoted to general here, among other things. It’s called the Hill of Dreams because it represents the aspirations of the millions of desperate people trying to escape their tired lives.”
“Hence why it’s been despoiled,” Alsia said. “It’s symbolic.”
“Yes.”
Atop the hill, a battle took place. Makeshift fortifications blocked passage deeper within the palace complex. Walls had been constructed from sandbags, furniture, and whatever wood had been salvaged. Craters dotted the ground.
Behind the walls were hundreds of elves—a mixture of the different strains from Gauron—plus humans and dwarves defending the chokepoints. They used equipment from the Imperial Army, but had scratched off the emblems and regalia.
Opposing them were hundreds of human soldiers in the uniform of the Ruathym guard, led by a Bausfrahr demon prince roughly the same height as Grigor. Magic rained down on his troops while he battled dwarves in rune-crafted heavy armor.
“I don’t know who is in the right here,” Fara said.
“It doesn’t matter. We just need to get past them.” Rys pointed at the palace itself. “The fastest method is to blast our way through. With the help of another demon prince, we can likely get in before any of the dragons notice us.”
Rys ordered everyone together and to prepare to assist. The hangers-on who had joined them rushed forward. He had started with a tiny force, and now had hundreds.
“Make sure the locals go in first,” he told Grigor. “This isn’t real and they’re already dead. We’re not.”
“Understood, General.”
His army joined the fray with screams and shouts. The local demon prince let out a roar, and redoubled his effort to break past the defenders. He was joined by Grigor and Fred, who began to blast apart the barricade with their enchanted weapons.
The defenders didn’t panic, however. Their officers barked out orders in various languages, and they regrouped. Magical lances ripped into the new arrivals, while tree roots burst from the ground to restrain the princes.
Rys summoned a huge ball of hellfire along with the Ashen. They hurled it over the barricades and disintegrated dozens of enemy mages. But more magic kept flying.
When the dwarves fell, elves replaced them. They wore black enchanted armor and wielded rune-crafted weapons as fine as any in the Empire.
Many of the rebels had been elite soldiers from the Imperial Army. The dragons led by Mylar had been bred and trained as elite weapons, only to turn on their masters. These elves were no different and used their masterwork weapons to devastating effect. They rushed the local demon prince without regard for their lives, keen to fell him.
Despite the dozens of elves who were blown apart, they succeeded, and swiftly turned their attention to Grigor and Fred.
“Grigor, pull back!” Fara snapped.
Once the huge demon leaped back, her tails unleashed a devastating barrage of force against the elves. A dozen of them collapsed to the ground, spewing up their internal organs in the process.
The rest hesitated and stared at Fara in shock.
Of course, they had never seen a mystic fox before.
Magical lances slammed into the elves from Alsia and the Kinadain, followed by Grigor’s earth spike Gift. Swiftly, the enemy elites collapsed. Then the rest of them followed.
Rys sent his demons in, and they cleaned up within seconds. The rebels tried to flee, but couldn’t run fast enough to escape. Within a few short minutes, the battle was over, and all resistance had been reduced to paste.
In the aftermath, Rys ordered the Lilim to heal up any wounds. They restrained themselves, given the circumstances. Not even their perpetual horniness survived this situation.
Then they moved into the palace complex itself. More battles awaited them. News of the portal’s destruction had likely spread, he realized.
A single shard from a destroyed portal could be used as a powerful summoning catalyst, circumventing the incompetence of the summoner. Looters battled rebels, who battled defenders. Amidst it all, some palace staff tried to flee when opportunities arose.
“I don’t think I’ve seen so many different races in one place,” Fara gasped out as they rushed past one huge brawl in a dance hall. “Not just dwarves, elves, humans, and demons, but all the monsters. Sprites, elementals, phantasmal beasts, constructs—this is insane.”
“This is the heart of the Infernal Empire. We should count ourselves lucky we’re not fighting dragons.” Rys gulped down some water from a flask. “Grigor, how are we doing?”
Rys already knew at a glance, but it distracted Grigor to give him orders.
“We have lost all the spares. Multiple demons have fallen. I… do not know if they are banished or not. Without my soulsight, it is difficult to be sure.” The prince ran a hand over his stone mask. “I would deeply appreciate it if you could check on their essence once we leave.”
They both knew that Rys could check at any moment, as he was their summoner. But Grigor likely didn’t want to know, and telling him the truth might harm morale.
There was too much magic being thrown around for the lesser demons to survive. The demons would be celebrating the passing of many kin later.
Finally, they made it to the portal room. The overwhelming magical power emanating from the room felt completely unlike what Rys had felt when he had been here in reality.
The room itself was cavernous, and large enough to fit a whole other palace inside. When whole, the portal had stood 50 feet tall and 100 feet wide. The entire thing had been formed from a huge growth of crystal, the shattered remains of which coated the entire floor of the chamber.
These shards changed color depending on the magical energy of the being near them. Each of them was coated in gore and rapidly changed color. Most of the time they looked purple, but flickered blue and red at times.
Three adult dragon corpses lay atop the shards. The ceiling had been melted open by dragonfire, and the molten steel, glass, and stone that resulted gave the room a twisted appearance.
But Rys’s attention was drawn to a woman standing in the center. She had vivid blonde hair that fell to her waist, a modest bust, and a short, trim figure. Her clothing was that of a white and gold uniform, with select pieces of gleaming armor. She held a lance nearly twice her height, and it was covered with angelic runes on almost every inch of its gleaming silver surface.
More importantly, glowing tendril-like blue wings in the shape of a hawk’s extended from her back. They had a wingspan of dozens of feet and exuded raw magical energy.
“The Angel Lord Sirion,” Grigor breathed out, his eyes wide behind his mask.
Sirion turned toward them. Her eyes scanned over the two princes, then locked onto Rys. She inclined her head in greeting.
“Rys,” she said, her voice like the chiming of a bell. He knew the sound of it all too well. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Her lance whirled in her hands, and she pointed it at him while summoning astral power. “You literally shouldn’t be here. Who and what are you?”